Post Templates
NDA Note: Certain details may have been omitted or modified to honor confidentiality agreements.
Brief
About Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media management platform that helps businesses streamline their social media efforts through tools for publishing, analytics, engagement, and customer care.
Situation
In an effort to accomplish business goals of acquiring large customers and being more competitive in the market, Sprout Social made an effort to address pain points regarding creating and sharing reusable content. Large customers often had many profiles, locations, and a central management team in which leaders needed different levels of access to content than content creators.
Task
As the primary designer, I collaborated with Product, Engineering, Sales and Customer Support to determine a solution where customers could create and reuse pre-made content in a way that aligned with their team structure.
Actions
This project had a lot of open-ended questions. To address this vague problem I achieved the following steps:
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Determine the solution: Create a new post templates feature vs. enhance existing drafts feature
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Conduct market research to learn interaction patterns familiar to users
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Determine the location of the solution: An asset in the existing Asset Library vs. a new navigation tab for a new post type
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Determine implementation limitations and feature prioritization
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Conduct usability testing and user interviews to validate design decisions
Results
Introducing post templates as a new asset type in the Asset Library improved customer workflows and aided Sprout Social’s competitiveness.
Tools
Figma, Mixpanel, Gong, ProductBoard, Slack, Jira
Research - Discovery -
Internal Audit
The initial goal of the project was to enhance Sprout Social's existing draft features. To achieve this, I conducted a platform audit focused on how drafts are created, saved, and reused within the platform. During this audit, I discovered that profile validation requirements were limiting customers' ability to create content that could be easily shared or reused in the future.
In addition, I leveraged existing past recorded customer interviews to gain additional insight on customer workflows.
"And so what we do is either I or [Customer Name] create… create a kind of tool kit or assets in terms of graphics that can be modified for the departments’ needs."
- Customer
"So it wouldn't be like one person is creating all the templates for all the different brands and stuff like that. It would probably be like the specific brand team that works with the field would kind of manage like creating these templates and also setting up individual posts to compose to certain regions."
- Customer
Research - Discovery - Market
Following explorations of drafts in Sprout, I looked into how templates were used in other tools including: Hootsuite, Gmail, Notion and Figma. My analysis of template usage in other tools revealed key patterns, including their integration into workflows and the ability to save templates during the content creation process.
Research - Discovery - Internal User
To inform my research, I conducted an informal discussion with Sprout Social's internal social media marketing team. Given the close association between templates and drafts at the time, the conversation focused on differentiating the value of notes and drafts and exploring potential use cases for templates.
"I would say like drafts, most of the time, I'm using them just to like if I have copy ready, but like the image isn't ready yet or something, I'll just save it as a draft until like that's ready.”
"We use notes a lot as like placeholders basically like instead of having like a full publishing calendar, we use notes on the calendar.”
- Sprout Social
"...we don't like repurpose the exact same content all the time. We do have, you know, like series or campaigns where things almost could be templatized.”
- Sprout Social
Decisions From Research
This interview helped refine post template discovery questions for future customer research and revealed that companies may define templates differently. At Sprout, templates could serve both to repurpose posts and to guide team members in communicating specific message types.
Design Iterations
Version 1: Post templates as post type
My initial designs closely aligned post templates with drafts, as both originated from drafted or scheduled posts. Feedback from product managers and designers on the template addition modal, which resembled the Asset Library, inspired the idea to integrate templates into the Asset Library.
Version 2: Post templates as an asset
Integrating templates into the Asset Library initially raised concerns about permissions; however, my designs effectively addressed these challenges, gaining support from senior designers and product managers.
Version 3: Post templates MVP
Initially, post templates mirrored Compose functionality, including network-specific content like @mentions and product tagging. However, considering future roadmap plans and engineering constraints, I collaborated with the PM to define the best MVP for the project.
Usability Testing
The designs refined my research questions and clarified the definition of templates within Sprout Social, highlighting key areas for customer input. While there was debate about using a survey followed by interviews, the diverse interpretations of templates across customers made direct interviews more valuable. Participants were recruited through past interviews, feature request records, and Asset Library usage data tracked via Mixpanel.
Usability test feedback revealed key user requests for post templates, including time-limited availability, broader sharing options beyond social seat users, and network-specific template customization. Overall, users reacted positively to Compose and Calendar designs.
“That process looks incredibly easy. Seems very intuitive.
- Customer
“I think the calendar kinda helped me envision a little bit maybe when I start doing drafts as well and it would just be easy…”
- Customer
Feature Release
The MVP of the feature was released to a small percentage of beta customers with the intention of improving the feature iteratively in phases before release to the general audience. Beta testing uncovered expected limitations, including technical constraints with media uploads. Through interviews with beta customers, I learned about user expectations for advanced functionality, such as media templating, which had not been included in the initial scope. These issues delayed highlighted areas where user needs extended beyond the planned feature set. However, overall, feedback was positive.
“It’s a lot easier for me now to send potential messages to our team lead, rather than having to pull in links to our previous posts on these topics. I can just send him here and ask for feedback. It’s so much easier to look at and choose which message we want to rerun” - CDC
You can learn more about the launched post templates feature in Sprout Social's Help Center.
Reflection
Defining the post templates feature was initially challenging due to overlapping functionality with drafts and notes, but creating template concepts clarified their unique value. Recruiting participants for usability testing was difficult, as many users lacked template strategies, shifting interviews from discovery to validation. Beta testing revealed further limitations, such as media upload constraints and unmet feature expectations like media templating, delaying iterations.
Despite these challenges, the project demonstrated the importance of early design involvement in shaping solutions. User feedback informed designs, strengthened customer relationships, and influenced sales, with post templates becoming a key factor for potential clients. Collaborating cross-functionally and phasing designs strategically enabled effective prioritization, making this an iterative process that delivered measurable value for customers and the business.