All Hail Templates, Savior of Marketers

One of the first services I offered as a freelancer (before I knew to charge for it) was writing resumes for people who didn't know how. I would collect their work history and education, and in half an hour I'd have a polished, keyword-balanced resume ready to send off to recruiters.

Every time, my friends would ask, "How did you do that so fast?!" I told them I was just really good at everything in life, and that I would someday be the Grand High Poobah of the Universe. (I didn't actually do that.)

My secret? Templates.

In my years as a marketer, writer, student, and user-of-the-Internet, it's come to my attention that most people don't use templates. Regardless of their age and technical expertise, most of the people I've met don't even know that hundreds of free templates exist on the Internet, for just about anything ever!

Need a resume? Bam, template. Starting a blog? There's a template for that. Writing a project proposal and you don't know where to start? Guess what? There's a template for that!

If you've never surfed around your pre-loaded templates, I have a surprise for you. Every program in the Office suite comes with pre-loaded templates that are ready for your juicy, juicy data. Don't have Office? Google has templates too! Google Docs and Google Slides both offer professional, colorful, pre-made guides to just about any project you may need to hand your boss — making you look just as good as your presentation.

Remember Canva, the free graphic design site I plugged a few blogs back? Guess what they have?

Go on, guess.

If you said, "TEMPLATES," you're the lucky winner!! Head on over to Canva.com for a free account and free access to hundreds — and I mean HUNDREDS — of pre-designed templates that will have you rocking your social graphics before you can say "Do it for the 'gram."

I hope your beautiful presentation slides make your boss as happy as me when I see branded fonts and HTML color codes.