As a romance author, you know that good content is essential to your success. But what happens when you get stuck and can’t seem to come up with new ideas?
That’s where content templates come in. By using tried-and-true content templates, you can quicky and easily create the high-quality content your readers crave.
So, if you’re a romance author who’s looking to take your business to the next level? If so, then content templates are your secret weapon.
How to Edit and Customize your Content Template
Thank you for investing in a content template that’ll help you streamline your content creation efforts. That’s great! Having a solid foundation from which to create your content is a fantastic way to save time and ensure that your marketing materials are always on brand.
Let’s explore how to customize your content template so that it better reflects your brand voice, mission, and values. We’ll also touch on how to make sure that your edited template still meets all the necessary requirements for effective online marketing!!
This means that template users are more productive overall and end up getting more writing done in less time than those who don’t use them.
What is a content template?
A content template is a pre-designed framework that you can use to create new content quickly and easily. There are many different types off content templates, but they all share one common goal: to help save you time and energy by providing a structure for your content creation.
Why should you use templates?
Content templates are an extremely valuable tool that a busy romance author can use to save time and energy and a whole lot of hassle to coming up with new ideas from scratch every time you sit down to create content.
Templates allow you to maintain a consistent voice and style throughout all of your content pieces, which not only makes it easier to find you but also make your books easier to bring to market.
There are a ton of content templates available here on RomanceAuthorVA.com! While each of these templates will need to be edited a little bit different, the thought process is basically the same across all the templates.
Before we jump in how to edit your content templates, take a moment to understand the benefits to USING them to create the content you’ll need for your content marketing.
Let’s dive deep now into HOW TO EDIT content templates.
Create Your Own Content
With the help of using content templates, creating your own content can be done easily and quickly. Here are a few tips to get started on creating your content and what you should think about.
Define your content goals
Before you start editing your content template, it’s important to take a step back and think about what you want to achieve with your content idea. What are your goals for this template? Are you aiming to appeal to a new audience? Or are you simply wanting to freshen up your existing materials?
Yes, the ultimate goal to your content is to get more eyeballs onto your book, but whatever the case may be, it’s important that you have a clear understanding of your goals before proceeding. This will help ensure that your edits are purposeful and strategic.
Pick a content template
Once you’ve decided on a purpose for each template, it’s time to go to your template library. If you haven’t already checked out the template kit, go here to see what’s included.
You can Build Your Own Content library using any of these content templates to make them as website extras or even content opt-ins. These templates are the types of content found on many romance author websites. Some of these content ideas are ideas that I dreamed of having when I was finished reading your book.
Let’s take a look at one that’s ideal to add to your website as a website extra.
Take a look at the Inspirational Pics Template. I found fun graphics on an uber successful romance author’s website. The pics weren’t organized in any manner and were just added to the relevant book page on her website.
Yes, it was fun to see these pics. They helped to picture the main character and the person who was the muse for that character.
But I thought why isn’t this organized a little better. Why couldn’t these pics be offered in a more formatted way.
At the time that I found these pictures, this author offered it as a free download on her website. You can do the same thing, or you can make it gated. This means that you offer it to your readers in exchange for their email address. In the Inspirational Pics Template, you can add your pics in a way that’ll be more appealing to your readers OR offer it as a freebie to get more readers added to your email list.
Editing your content template
Each of these templates are to be edited in Canva. The whole point of the templates offered here, is to feature your book cover with the additional info you have to offer. This is the one thing that I found did NOT happen when I found extra content on any author’s website – they didn’t include the book cover so show which book the additional info went with.
I’ve included this as a key feature because you can then offer the same content idea for as many books (or book series) as you have because each content piece will be unique.
Here’s another example:
On another romance author’s website, I found a really informative character timeline that totally explained more about the characters in a romance book series that I really enjoyed.
The document I found was for an entire book series. It listed all the characters in the book series and connected them not only in the storyline but also within each book.
You can do the same. You can offer a character timeline for all the characters in each book series and then you’ll have a unique document for each of your different book series. Or you can take it a step further and make this timeline about each character individually. This would give you a ton of new content to share with your readers!!
There are instructions on each template, geared to that template. But it’s basically the same for each:
- add in your book cover, changing the frame colors to match your book
- add in your information – drafts, doodles, author notes, book details, inspiration pics
- change the elements to match your branding and style (font, colors, backgrounds)
- add in any additional elements that fit with the type of content and with your genre
- save and download your content making sure it’s in the format you need
- create a social media post (many templates include a social media template)
- upload to your choice of social media and share with your readers
Change your templates to look like this:
Sharing Your New Content Idea
The first thing you need to decide is whether or not you’re going to gate your new idea. If you choose to gate your new idea, then the steps involved are a bit more.
Sharing your content for FREE!
If you plan on just giving your new content to your readers, it’s pretty easy. Upload your completed document to your website and then offer it as a free download.
Plan on sending out a social media post about this new content so your readers will come to your website to see what’s it all about. You can even blog about it on your author website, including even more info on how this new content came to be.
If you choose to blog about it, you can dive deeper into the subjects that they’re connected to making your site even more interesting and compelling to your readers. This goes into external linking that’s vital to your content marketing strategy.
Gating your new content
If you’re going to gate your new content, then your email provider comes into play. I recommend Aweber as the go-to email provider, but the process is similar to whichever you’ve chosen as yours. Please look to your choice of email provider to know the exact steps to do this.
I like to add the document to my website and then add the link to Aweber. This gives me the ability to have my website name in the document URL! This gives me another way to advertise my site’s name.
Then the process is the same – send out a social media post about your new content compelling your readers to sign up to your email list to get the new info. Add this same sign-up link to your blog post, so there’s more than one sign-up out there.
Conclusion
Now that you understand a little bit more about content templates and how they’re vital to your content marketing strategy, it’s time to take a look at ones you might want on your website. Luckily for you, we offer a variety of customizable content templates that can be easily modified to fit your needs.
So, what are you waiting for? Get started today and see how content templates can help you scale your romance author business! Follow the link below to check out what content offers might be ideal for your website.
What’s Next…
Want a deeper look into how to create content that’s entertaining, educational, engaging, inspiring, and persuasive.
Still wondering about the benefits of offering quality content? Take a look at this article.
Make sure to add the essential content elements to your author platforms!
If you’re ready to take your website to the next level, check out how you can Build Your Own Content Library and pick a content template that fits your readers.
Check out the Ultimate Guide to Building your Content to get tips on how to do-it-yourself!
