Template Types for Online Biz Owners to Speed Up Processes
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07 | Templates for Online Biz Owners to Speed Up Processes

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Podcast Description

Want to get things done quicker? The most commonly known templates for online entrepreneurs are for social media graphics. However, there are wayyy more types of templates that can help you get things done quicker and more efficiently.

In this episode, I’m going to reveal the ones I highly recommend for you as an online biz owner, including some you may not have even considered or knew existed.

Links Referenced in Episode:

▶ Get your Canva 30-Day free trial

▶ PixiStock for all kinds of graphic templates

▶ View all template recommendations in the light pink boxes below

Connect with me: 

Website | FB Group | Instagram

Episode Transcript

(Note: This is a formatted AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through, but is not an optimized blog post. Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

Episode Introduction

Want to get things done quicker? It’s no shocker that most of us online entrepreneurs, heavenly use templates especially ones for social media. 

But did you know that there are actually a ton of different types of templates that are not social media and are not even graphic templates that can help you all around with your business? 

Yup. There’s templates for just about anything. And in this episode, I’m going to reveal the ones I highly recommend for you as an online business owner, including some, you may not have even considered or known existed. So let’s hop right in to find out what they are.

Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, your host of the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast, where I’m on a mission to help online entrepreneurs like you focus on all the right things and kiss overwhelm goodbye. Here, you’re going to learn strategies that will boost your productivity so that you can scale your online biz and impact lives sooner. 

It’s your time to shine! So let’s get started. 

Hey, hey, cheerful squad, welcome back to the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast, episode seven. I am so excited about this episode because templates are one of my slight obsessions. 

Actually, it might be a little bit out of hand. But whatever, you know what, at least templates or you must have, in my opinion, because if you’re wanting to speed up the creation process for just about anything, then templates are going to help you with just that. 

And thankfully, there are templates for everything. 

So today I’m going to share all of the different templates available for online entrepreneurs and how to know which ones are the ones that you need, starting with graphic design templates and ending with a few less common ones you may not even realize existed. 

So after this episode, you’re definitely going to want to head over to the show notes to find all of my recommended resources and everything that we’re covering in today’s episode by visiting cheerstoproductivity.com/episode7. 

My Favorite Graphic Design Tool

Now, personally, as someone who isn’t a graphic designer, although I considered it, my tool of choice and basically the only one I use, thanks to how easy it is to create anything and customize any type of graphics is Canva. 

I’ve tried a few others, but Canva is just so easy to navigate and to use, especially for those who aren’t specialized in graphic design. 

So, if you aren’t using Canva yet, you can use my partner link to get a free 30 day trial by visiting cheertoblogging.com/canva. 

Now if you are a graphic designer, then you might have other opinions and likely already know several the templates I’m about to share. 

But there are some towards the end of this episode that you might not even be using for your own business yet. So either way, whether you’re a graphic designer or not stay tuned. 

Graphic Design Templates

All right, so moving onto the templates. 

Social Media Graphic Templates

So the most common templates, you’re probably familiar with are social media graphic templates because hey, we all know how much work social media is. 

So the types of social media graphics you can use depend on which platform you’re active in. 

So there are graphic templates for just about every single social media platform out there. There’s some for Instagram. And this includes everything about Instagram. Your static, square posts, carousels, stories, reel covers, highlight covers. 

Facebook, you also have your Facebook posts, there’s Facebook page covers and Facebook group covers,they’re all different sizes. 

There’s Pinterest static pins, video pins, idea pins, YouTube thumbnails. You name it.

And besides using these templates to save you time in creating them, usually if you’re getting good templates, they’re optimized specifically to achieve a specific goal, whether that’s just to teach, to getting new follower, to get them to click on your link or to send you a DM. 

These are all things that you may not know how to do, especially if you’re not good with design and marketing combined. 

And let’s be honest. There’s no point, no point in posting on social media if they aren’t getting us results. 

So I’ll link to a few of my favorite social media graphic designs and the show notes. So be sure to check them out. But again, these are great because they’re going to help you specifically get the end result that you want from that post. 

Do not post if there is no optimization behind that graphic because the algorithm will not favor it and then that’s just a lot of time wasted, which we do not want. 

Here are some recommendations for these types of templates:

Printable + Digital Templates

All right. Moving on. The next set of templates that you can use are printables, workbooks e-books. And now I’m combining all of these into one because they all have multiple uses and benefits that are honestly pretty similar. 

So you can use these types of templates to create and put something up for sale as a small offer. You could use it as a bonus inside of one of your courses, or you could use it as a lead magnet to gain new email subscribers. 

So some examples of these templates are:

  • Planners
  • journals, 
  • checklists
  • worksheets
  • eBooks and other printables, like 
  • sticky notes 
  • bookmarks 
  • coloring pages
  • games, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 

There’s so many, so many types of templates and if you’re not currently using these types of products in your business, here is how you can begin to incorporate them into your business, no matter what niche you’re in. 

So you can start a printables Etsy shop, or you can just start a shop on your own website on your own blog. 

You can use it as a lead magnet with a small win that leads up to your signature course or offer or service. Like I mentioned, you can use it as a bonus inside of your course. 

You could use it as a fast action bonus or even an affiliate bonus to encourage someone to use your affiliate link to purchase whatever that thing is. 

Again, I will link to a few of my favorites in the show notes, but these are another great template that I actually use all the times where my own products. 

Here are some recommendations for these types of templates:

Related Post: 4 Lessons Learned After Creating 20+ Lead Magnets

Presentation Slide Templates

The next kind is presentation slides. 

So these are going to be more specifically for anyone who is doing some sort of video training or presentation, which could be in webinars, inside of your mini or signature course or a workshop, when it creating a summit presentation, or event like YouTube training for your channel. 

These are all ways that you can incorporate presentation slides. 

And the good thing about these templates is that besides giving you the templates themselves, they’re actually already usually structured in some sort of outline that you can follow if you’re newer to creating presentations. 

So for many, they will have like the title slide, then they’ll have an about me, then a what are we covering in this training. 

And they put them in the order that they should go in whenever you are presenting. So that makes it super easy for you to just plug and play your own presentation, script or outline. And perhaps even helps you call out anything that you may have accidentally left out. 

Here are some recommendations for these types of templates:

Blog Post Featured Image Templates

All right, so the next one is blog post featured images. 

This one is more for bloggers and not necessarily a must have, especially if what you’re doing is setting a stock photo as your featured image, which is an extremely common, especially in the B2C niches and what I do with my own mom blog as well. 

But for the B2B businesses and what I do on the blog for this business, and perhaps if you want to showcase a blog post topic that maybe it’s a highly affiliated or something that’s leading up the reader to buy your product and you want to show it in a more appealing, and visible way, there are also blog post featured image templates that you can use to make the titles stand out and draw more attention to it. 

Sometimes you may have still a stock photo image somewhere in the template. So these are really good idea for you to use as well. 

Here are some recommendations for these types of templates:

  • She Bold Stock (the only one I’ve seen to include these types of templates)

Tech Mockups and Promo Graphics

Next up is the tech mockups and the promo graphics. 

So, these are also must haves because as you’re promoting your products, it’s typically a huge way on how digital product creators or service providers, or basically any online entrepreneur that’s selling something online, it’s probably a big bulk of how you make your income. Right. 

But being in the online space, it doesn’t allow your customers to physically receive something, but you still need to show them what they can expect to get out of your course, your ebook, your training, your printable, your service or whatever it is that you’re selling. 

So, if you aren’t able to make some pretty mock-ups or appealing promo graphics, it could actually have the opposite effect of what you want and draw people away from purchasing versus towards it because they might associate the quality of your promo graphics or the mock-ups with the actual product that you’re selling which of course me and you know, that’s not the case. 

And maybe graphic design, just isn’t your strong suit, but reality is that’s how they might perceive it. And so that’s why it’s incredibly, incredibly important to have really good promo graphics and tech mock-ups that make your offer look super appealing. 

Here are some recommendations for these types of templates:

Media Kit and Pricing Guides

Next up is media kit and pricing guides. 

So if you’re a service provider or an influencer blogger who does sponsored posts, then having the high quality media kit or pricing guide can really help you secure those clients and brands. 

Similarly, to the mock-ups and promo graphics, the quality of these may also make a difference of whether someone wants to work with you or not. 

But the good thing about these templates is they already lay out the different things that you need to include in them depending on your business and depending on what you’re offering. 

So instead of trying to figure that out first, having this template will actually make it easier for you to know what you need to craft together and what clients are expecting to know before hiring you so that way you can go ahead and get all of that ready. 

Here are some recommendations for these types of templates:

Opt-In Banner Graphic Templates

And lastly, another type of graphic template you may consider using are opt-in banner graphics that you can promote either on your blog, your Facebook group, etc. 

So typically these banners are a combination of mock-ups showing off your freebie and a promo graphic with a call to action to be to hop on your wait list or to download the freebie or to sign up to the webinar or whatever your opt-in is. 

And you have a couple of options here. 

So you can either make these banners clickable and send people to your landing page for that freebie. Or if you’re displaying it on your website, then you can actually add it as an image directly on top of the opt-in form, that way you’re not sending them anywhere else. 

Here are some recommendations for these types of templates:

Graphic Templates Wrap-Up

So these are all the different types of graphic templates you could use and the ones I highly recommend for online business owners and yes, the ones that I use myself to not only help speed up the process for creating these, but to ensure that you’re getting the results that they’re meant to get for you and your business. 

So I’ll link to the specific template recommendations that I personally use in the show notes so be sure to check that out. 

Less Commonly Known Templates

But hey, graphic design templates are not the only types of templates that exist. 

Sure, they’re the most common ones and the ones that people think of first, whenever someone mentions the use of templates, but there are other templates that I loveeee, kind of so much more, starting with emails swipe templates. O-M-G. 

Email Swipe Templates

I am obsessed with email swipes, and have so many from so many great copywriters and email experts, it’s not even funny. 

It has it’s whole entire Trello board because, yeah, it was getting overflowed in the one that I had them combined into. Anyways, these are the ones that help you not start your emails by staring at a blank Google doc. 

And it gives you a good starting point, if not a plug and play swipe, that will speed up the email writing process times 10. 

So you can use email swipe template for things like, welcome sequences, launches, flash sales, getting clicks or replies to your newsletters, webinar invites. 

You can even use them as your weekly newsletter, like there are memberships to help you know exactly what to send out to your list every single week. 

And just as any template though, I do highly recommend that you customize these with your own voice to make them your own. 

So even though, many of them will literally just give you like a mad libs version where all you have to do is plug in a little sentence here and there, I do recommend that you go through it, read it out loud and just make sure that it sounds like something you specifically would say. 

But as a non copywriter, these are incredibly helpful and I use them all the time, so definitely have some great recommendations for you in the show notes. 

Here are some recommendations for these types of templates:

Related Post: Simple Email Newsletter Copywriting Tips That Get Results

Checkout and Sales Page Templates

Next up is the checkout and sales page templates. Raise your hand if you currently, or have ever had a pretty embarrassing checkout or a sales page. 

Yup. I’m raising my hands so high as I’ve been actively working on removing or updating many of my own that I’m pretty shocked I even dared to have them up. 

But, you know what. Whatever. We all start somewhere. But had I known that there was such a thing as checkout and sales page templates, I definitely would have invested in these so much sooner. 

These templates are also just kind of recently starting to gain popularity because of how much work they involve to make and again, because these templates are structured in a way to help you know exactly what’s supposed to be on them. 

Exactly what’s supposed to be on that checkout page to increase conversions. Exactly what’s supposed to be on the sales page and where the placement should be for like, ahem, benefits and testimonial section to ensure that they actually click over to that checkout page and buy. 

So some of the most common checkout and sales page templates available are Thrivecart checkout, and yes sales pages too! 

What?! Did you know that Thrivecart can become a sales page right above the checkout page? It’s pretty wild. So yes. There are templates for Thrivecart checkout and sales pages. 

There’s also templates for sales pages using Leadpages or Elementor. I recently saw some for Notion and Kajabi and ClickFunnels. 

There’s all kinds of templates, even sales pages using Canva because they now have this feature where you can create a whole sales page using their platform. And sometimes even your premium theme comes with some sales pages too. 

So incredibly useful resource, especially like I said, if you’re not in graphic design and you’re selling products, be sure to take a look at these templates because they could dramatically increase your conversions. 

Here are some recommendations for these types of templates:

Project Management Templates

And lastly, my absolute favorite type of templates are project management templates. 

These are templates specifically meant to help you run your business more efficiently and help you keep track of stuff, whether it’s data, workflows, tasks, et cetera. 

There’s so many different types of project management templates available for so many different tools and software, including spreadsheets on Excel or Google sheets, Airtable, Clickup, Asana, Notion, and of course my favorite and the ones I include in my signature program, Trello templates. 

These are all meant to make your life so much easier as an online entrepreneur and the sooner you can get these implemented, the better and more organized and more productive, you’ll be with less overwhelm. 

Episode Wrap Up

So there you have it. All of the best templates I highly recommend for online business owners, whether you’re a blogger, a digital product, content or a course creator, a coach or a service provider. 

These are all the different types of templates and to recap we covered:

  • social media graphics, 
  • printables, 
  • workbooks, 
  • eBooks 
  • presentation slides, 
  • blog post featured images, 
  • tech mock-ups and 
  • promo graphics, 
  • media kit and 
  • pricing guides, 
  • opt-in banners, 
  • email swipe templates, 
  • checkout, and 
  • sales page templates, and lastly 
  • project management templates. 

These are all the templates that could simplify your life and help you get things done quicker while ensuring your goals are achieved with everything you create and do. 

I’ll leave links to my personal favorites in the show notes. So be sure to check them out by visiting cheerstoproductivity.com/episode7. 

And save this episode for later. I’m also pretty curious. Are there any templates on this list that you haven’t started using yet? And which ones from this list are the ones that you already do use and love? 

Take a screenshot of you listening, post your reply to these questions in your stories, and tag me at @cheerstoblogging as I would love to know. And as always, thank you so much for listening and chat again soon.

Thank you so much for listening to Cheerful Productive Chats with me, Lucy Reyes. We covered a lot in today’s episode so to view the complete show notes along with my recommendations to everything mentioned in today’s episode, visit cheerstoproductivity.com/episode7. 

And before you go, make sure you subscribe wherever you’re listening so you know once the next productive chat is released. Talk soon and cheers to your productivity and success!

References

▶ Get your Canva 30-Day free trial

▶ PixiStock for all kinds of graphic templates

▶ View all template recommendations in the light pink boxes above

Don’t miss a single episode so that you can get productive and grow your online biz without overwhelm.

Subscribe to the podcast and tune in every Wednesday: 

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Podcasts | Pod.link / Pick Another App

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