The Power of Templating: 3x Your Productivity
As a marketing lead, content creator, or strategist balancing creativity with tight deadlines, working smarter is essential to thrive. While leading the in-house content studio at Cake Group, I learned that the secret to achieving this balance often lies in how we set up our systems. One of the most transformative methods catapulting our content production processes to new heights was the mastery of scrum—and more importantly, the art of templating.
What Is a Scrum Master?
Before we dive into the magic of templating, let me give you a quick overview of scrum mastery. In content production, a scrum master helps keep the creative engine running smoothly. Think of it as a way of managing projects that encourages teamwork, quick feedback, and continuous improvement. As the scrum master, my role was to facilitate collaboration, remove roadblocks, and keep our production cycle flowing efficiently. We used Asana as our productivity tool of choice—a platform that turned out to be a perfect partner for introducing one key superpower: templating.
Content Templating: The Key to Efficiency
Content Templating is exactly what it sounds like: creating reusable structures that streamline work and reduce redundancy. It allowed us to focus on the bigger picture—crafting high-quality, impactful content—without getting bogged down by repetitive tasks. By designing templates that could be adapted for different purposes, we amplified both our speed and our creative output.
Let me illustrate with a more specific content example: our Weekly Top Performer posts. These posts informed our community about the top price movers in the crypto space. FOMO-inducing content showcasing which digital assets appreciated the most over the past week, while also seamlessly plugging our products, such as smart bundles containing the highlighted assets.
By templating these posts, we were able to transform high-effort content pieces that often take days to animate in After Effects into low-effort productions that can be shared with other creators, repurposed, and deployed in much higher frequencies.
The beauty of this templating approach was that it allowed us to create consistent weekly posts while drastically reducing the workload for our creators. We could also adapt these templates quickly for other time-sensitive use cases—like highlighting major news or anticipated events in the crypto world. What started as an animated video format could easily become a static carousel post or in-blog content, with minimal tweaks required. We used templating for our blog content, email marketing layouts, hero banners, and landing pages, just to name a few. We called this method the Bento Box.
The Magic of Modular Designs
Our Lead Designer, Henry Velge, came up with the final design, which focused on a modular, adaptable structure – perfect for content creation. The Bento Box approach made it incredibly easy to mix and match components across various media types—whether it was stills, video, or animation, the modular nature allowed us to adapt content effortlessly. This kind of versatility was especially beneficial when dealing with different media formats, allowing us to pivot quickly and maintain consistent branding and messaging.
For example, a Bento Box design initially used for a short video could easily be repurposed into an animated social media feed post. This adaptability not only saved time but also ensured our content and campaigns had a unified look and feel.
Project Templating and Automation on a Campaign Level
But templating didn’t stop there. It extended to the way we approached entire projects within Asana. Creating project templates at a broader level allowed us to move swiftly on new marketing campaigns. Whenever our cross-functional teams needed content, my fully automated custom templates made sure everyone was aligned from the get-go. A project manager could simply click on a task template, upload a brief or GTM (Go-To-Market) document, and—like magic—everything else was set in motion.
The Asana template automatically filled out all the necessities for a campaign: it sent Slack notifications to relevant channels, tagged team members for their specific responsibilities, set due dates, and ensured that each person knew what to do. With just one click, we transitioned from planning to action, empowering everyone to focus on their expertise rather than getting lost in logistics.
Peter Drucker once noted,
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Templating allowed us to achieve both—working efficiently and ensuring that we were always focused on the right activities.
The Results: Speed and Quality
Templating transformed how we worked. By introducing scrum techniques and focusing on templates, we were able to triple task completion to 15,000 tasks each quarter while maintaining our high standards of quality. In web3, speed and timing are everything—the faster you move, the higher your brand visibility and credibility. By leveraging in-house production and templating, we created an agile, efficient content engine that delivered impactful results.
More than Just a Hack
Templating is more than just a productivity hack; it’s a mindset. It’s about creating systems that make room for creativity by taking the repetitive, manual work out of the equation. It’s about empowering your team to do their best work—to think big and execute tasks quickly.
For content marketing leads and creators alike, templating is the secret ingredient to consistently delivering high-quality content perfectly on time.
As Steve Jobs famously said,
Innovation is saying no
to a thousand things.
Templating helps us prioritize better, and complete smaller tasks quickly—allowing us to focus on what truly matters. It gives our team the freedom to innovate, connect with our audience, and create meaningful impact.
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