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Extracting Written Content From Podcasts And Livestreams

I wrote before about not wasting content that you’re creating as you answer questions or interact on communities like Twitter, Bluesky, Discord or Slack.

One great source of content for your newsletter or blog is podcasts or livestreams that you are on. Here’s how I’d do that with an example podcast interview I did a few months ago.

First you need to transcribe it. Most podcasts and livestreams are posted to youtube, and my go to tool there is youtubetranscript.com. Here’s the transcript of the interview. I know people who are happy with Descript and I’m sure there are other solutions out there.

Most podcasts are a wide ranging conversations with multiple possible newsletters or posts contained within them. Sorting out these topic areas is a great use case for AI.

Paste the transcript text into Claude.ai and ask for topic grouping as well as verbatim text for the beginning of each of the topic groups.

Here’s an example of the Claude output:

Content Creation and Repurposing Strategies
Starting text: “I think that the reason I wrote this blog post is because I am a member of a lot of different slack communities or follow people on again on some of those platforms that I shall not mention and I see some great great content that comes out and great answers great wisdom and then it just and then it goes poof away”

Themes:

  • Leveraging existing content from platforms like Slack
  • Low-effort content creation
  • Transcribing podcasts for newsletter content
  • Maintaining authentic voice while repurposing
  • Best practices for newsletter creation

Claude identified five topic areas in this transcript. Once you have this, go back to the raw transcript. Search on a unique text string and. Pull out an interesting, relevant section.

I use the youtubetranscript site to understand where I stop talking and other people start. You can click on a section in the text and view the corresponding part of the video. There may be an AI solution or a specific GPT to do the transcription and have it include speaker names, but I haven’t found one yet.

Here’s an example section that I extracted:

I think that the reason I wrote this blog post is because I am a member of a lot of different slack communities or follow people on again on some of those platforms that I shall not mention and I see some great great content that comes out and great answers great wisdom and then it just and then it goes poof away and even on some some like I follow the ietf emailing lists around ooth and things like that I see some great content there but it it especially in in slack but even in those other places it just gets lost and so my point was by picking up and putting it onto um a newsletter you can and maybe you do some editing right because most stuff that you you um write off in a slack it might not be as Pol as you would normally put a newsletter but you can basically take this um wisdom exhaust right like it’s like kind of like data exhaust from the early 2000s but you can like pick it up and put it together and even if you don’t think you have enough content for a newsletter I think you do if you are active on those channels and by taking it from these walled Gardens of the platforms or slacks or discords and putting it out on a in a newsletter you do a couple of things one is you just showcase Bas your knowledge um the same way a Blog would you can deliver it to people you have a low effort way to connect with folks right if you ever run into somebody a conference or whatnot instead of asking them to follow you on something you can say hey I have a newsletter about real estate in Atlanta or I have a newsletter about how developers are the new king makers or AI or whatever it is and that’s just a lower ask than some other things and it will start to build up a longer term relationship with anybody that you’re um engaged with at low effort to you so that’s kind of the the purpose of the blog post is people are creating all this beautiful content and it’s just trapped especially stuff in slack

This one section is 383 words. This is the kernel of a newsletter edition or a blog post. However, this needs some work. I can’t copy it directly into a newsletter or blog post because I don’t talk as clearly as I write.

Let’s take the above content and lightly edit it to be something I’d feel comfortable publishing.

The reason I wrote this blog post about not letting your content go to waste is because I am a member of a lot of different slack communities where people post great content. I also follow people on Bluesky, that which was formerly Twitter, and other platforms where, again, people are dropping lots of knowledge. This even occurs on IETF mailing lists. There the content is available but it can be difficult to separate the gems from the dross.

I see great great content published and great answers for common questions. Then it goes “poof” away.

Especially in slack but even in those other places, this content just gets lost.

By picking up and putting it into a newsletter you save it. You have to edit it, because most Slack posts are not as polished as newsletter content would be.

But even with that work, you can basically take this “wisdom exhaust” and repurpose it. It’s kind of like data exhaust from the early 2000s. Even if you don’t think you have enough content for a newsletter, you do, if you are active on those channels.

By taking it from these walled gardens of the platforms, slacks or discords and putting it out on a in a newsletter, you do a couple of things.

  • you showcase your knowledge
  • you deliver it to people’s inboxes so they remember you
  • now you have a low effort way to connect with folks; if you ever run into somebody a conference or whatnot instead of asking them to follow you, you can ask them to subscribe to your newsletter
  • you start to build a corpus of knowledge and a set of people interested in hearing from you.

I edited to clarify and expand on the content. I added links where appropriate, and also updated it–Bluesky wasn’t a big thing when I did this podcast.

This is fewer words, but a firm foundation for writing a longer blog post. I could also review the transcript for more of my words.

So, that, in a nutshell, is how you can easily generate written content from a podcast, recorded presentation, or livestream.

Don’t Let That Content Go To Waste

If you are a member of an online community and you participate, you’ll often write a few paragraphs in response to a comment or question. This is also true if you use a social network like LinkedIn well. Both of these let you share your knowledge and experience with low effort.

While you can definitely gain visibility, your wisdom will only benefit a few people.

If you posted to a synchronous community, the people who happened to be around when you posted will benefit, but no one who visits the site in a few months or years will. Okay, if someone is determined, they might struggle through a search for the topic and find it. If what you write is really memorable, other people might link to your post. But most of what you share will go straight to the Slack memory hole.

If you post to a social network, you are at the not-so-tender mercies of the algorithm. What you write might surface for your followers a day or week later, but a month or year later it’ll be gone. Detritus floating on the scouring stream of witty content and pleas for attention, if you will.

But you spent precious time creating that post. You’re an expert in your field, and you post about it. You shared your experience and your wisdom. Why should you let it go by the wayside? Is there a way to leverage it without too much effort?

Yes.

Capture it in a newsletter or blog post. I prefer a newsletter, which has the following benefits:

  • you can easily build an audience of people who want to hear from you
  • you can have your ideas posted to a permanent URL that Google can find and others can share
  • a newsletter can be casual

First, you need to select a theme, usually related to your professional goals, and then set up a newsletter. Examples of themes can range from database optimization to product marketing; it doesn’t matter what the theme is as long as you have expertise and plenty to say. The nuts and bolts of setting up a newsletter and adding a subscription form to your website are well covered by the newsletter providers (Beehiiv, Substack). Therefore, I want to focus on the next step, gathering and publishing content.

After you read this post, you’ll know how to gather and publish the scraps of insight your share around on communities or social platforms in a sustainable regular way. You can start getting the first one hundred subscribers to your newsletter; people that want to hear from you.

Doing so is a four step process:

  • gather sources
  • schedule scouring
  • tell a story
  • schedule it

It’s important to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Finding, editing and shipping existing content in a newsletter is a process that you’ll get better at, but you don’t need your newsletter to be perfectly manicured like one of the big newsletters, or a newsletter from a large company. You may build your newsletter into that, but to get started, the goal is to enable you to send a regular newsletter. Remember, we want to avoid letting that great insight languish.

Let’s look at each of these above steps.

Gather Sources

First, gather your sources. I start with a google doc and write down links for everything that might be a source of newsletter content.

This includes social media platforms where long form posting happens, such as LinkedIn or Facebook. Also, include sites where you write substantive comments, such as Hacker News or Reddit.

The real gold is often in private communities such as slack or email lists. Make sure you respect community rules and never use someone else’s content. But your long, detailed answer to a common technical question is perfect for touching up and publishing to your newsletter list.

Another place to look for newsletter content is livestreams or podcasts you are a guest on. The technical conversations are a great source of content for a newsletter.

Any fully-formed GitHub project READMEs can also be good content, especially if they talk through the use cases of a particular tool or project.

Wherever you share insights related to your newsletter theme, especially if it is long-form and ephemeral, is fair game.

Add these to a list. Keep it up to date; as you appear on a new podcast or start posting thoughts elsewhere, add the links.

Scouring

Next, find some regular time to review these sources. I suggest doing this once every two months, but the right frequency depends on how many newsletters you want to send and how often you post.

In the google doc, do the following:

  • mark the date you reviewed
  • copy and paste the text
  • capture the link

Don’t grab one to two line comments or anything that is off-topic of your newsletter . Instead, look for the multi-paragraph insightful comments. If there was a discussion, grab all your comments. Don’t forget to grab any links you mention as well.

How exactly you grab the text depends on the source:

  • If you are looking at LinkedIn, you can search for all posts and comments you have made.
  • If you are using a podcast or video stream as a source, For these, you can use a tool like Youtube Transcript to extract text and then scan to find insights that you can repurpose. You can use GenAI tools to group the text into high level topics that you can portion up into newsletters.
  • If you are posting on a slack, you can search for all your posts using the from modifier.

Each source will have a different way to find your content, but after the first few times it’ll be second nature to grab it.

Tell A Story

The next step is to take the raw text and turn it into a coherent story. You want to do this every month or so, though you may need to front-load this if you are starting a newsletter.

You’ll need to spend some time on this process. The goal is to create something worth sending out to your readers.

Each post should be:

  • 500-1000 words
  • coherent; if you are merging together more than one comment, make sure tense and pronouns agree
  • edited; remove fluff words and anything that distracts from the point, especially if you are condensing a podcast section
  • on theme; if you are a devops consultant, don’t post about ice cream stores, unless they relate to devops

You will end up with a solid newsletter post. Mark this fragment with the date you reviewed and turned it into a story. This will prevent you from using the same text in six months.

In my experience, this is an AI-aided manual process. You can use the AI to condense podcast text, think of alternate angles, or give you feedback on any other areas to cover. But what you should not do, unless you want a newsletter that sounds robotic, is paste your text into ChatGPT and ask for a newsletter-length block of text.

Don’t rewrite the text. The whole point of this process is to leverage existing content you have created in a low-effort, sustainable way.

Since you have all your content in one place, you can repeat this process to get many newsletters ready. I like to get as many ready as I’ll send out in the next month.

Then, schedule them out.

Schedule It

You’ve done all the hard work, scheduling is easy.

Make sure any platform you select supports scheduling out newsletters.

Test sending them to yourself to see what they look like.

Schedule each story on a regular interval. I like to send on the same day of the week every time. Once every two weeks to once a month is sustainable but will keep you top of mind.

If there’s timely news that you want to address, you can bump one of the other newsletter editions.

Summing Up

This process is the start of a journey that will end with a permanent, searchable corpus of your insights, at relatively low cost in terms of effort and time. It also ends with you having a list of people who want to hear from you about the topics you cover.

You will no longer be letting your content go to waste.

It is not, however, a quick process. You may send newsletters to hundreds of subscribers for years. There are two ways to think about that:

  • oh man, I only have 200 subscribers and therefore I compare poorly to people who have tens of thousands of subscribers or more
  • oh my, I have 200 subscribers who want to hear what I say and are willing to let me into their email inbox regularly

Which do you think is the better perspective?

What I’ve learned from a weekly newsletter

I run a weekly newsletter focused on customer identity and access management (CIAM), and it just hit 53 issues, which means I’ve been writing it for about a year.

Thought I’d share things I’ve learned.

Weekly is a big commitment

Make sure you want to do this.

Writing a post every week is a bit of a grind. However, just like with blog posts, you can batch up newsletter posts. There are some weeks when I write three or four posts and schedule them out. This means that I can regularly take a week or two off.

Scheduling will vary based on your topic, of course. If I were writing a newsletter about news or current events, scheduling wouldn’t work.

But for many topics it’s a great way to keep the content flowing while not being tied to the keyboard every week.

Great way to keep on top of an industry

There’s a reason there are many newsletters with this approach. It’s a way to keep in front of interested readers, but it also forces you to keep on top of the particular industry you are writing about.

Due to the deadlines mentioned above, you’ll be forced to regularly think about new trends, find articles and books, and read people writing about the industry or topic you are writing about.

The corollary to this is to make sure you love the area you are committing to. If I wasn’t interested in CIAM, it would be a lot harder to write it. (Of course, nothing is forever, and when it makes sense, I might wind this newsletter down the same way I’ve stopped other projects.)

Have some way to keep track of good ideas

You never know when inspiration might strike.

I like to mail myself content and ideas that I think might apply. I write ‘for ciam weekly’ somewhere in the message.

Then, when I have time to sit down and write, I can search my email for ‘for ciam weekly’ and see all my proposed topics.

You could do something more organized like having a spreadsheet or a folder, but I feel like this works for my level of commitment.

You have to promote it

You have to promote the newsletter. You can’t expect people to find it. Places I’ve promoted it:

  • Hacker News (here’s a podcast I was on where I talk about how to interact with that site)
  • Various slacks I’m a member of
  • In other substacks (referrals)
  • My LinkedIn and Twitter (often scheduled)

Your list might look different but don’t forget you have to do this.

But. Don’t be a drive by promoter. I don’t post in places I don’t frequent.

You can vary between original articles and commentary

I have written some long form posts, in particular a series about the multiple ways user data gets into a CIAM system.

I have also written commentary, where I look at a blog post about password honeypots or other articles that discuss CIAM topics, and reflect on that content.

Both work fine; varying up the content is a great way to keep things interesting for me and my readers.

It’s a long game

I have 80 subscribers with an open rate that is around 50%. Some might look at that and say “after a year, you only have 80 subscribers” and shake their head.

I look at it and say “there are 80 people who want to read what I have to say about CIAM!? And at least half of them read it!”

Newsletters are powerful because they deliver your thoughts to your readers’ inboxes, but they are a long game, especially when niche.