NotebookLM: Not Just for Podcasts

NotebookLM, Google's AI-powered research tool and podcast generator, has become a breakout productivity hit in 2024. It helps businesses with three main pain points:

• Quickly generating FAQs, overviews and hgh-level reviews for complex data
• Turning documents and spreadsheets into audio for podcasts
• Significantly reducing research and brainstorming time.

Used properly, NotebookLM can simplify workflows and streamline any knowledge work that depends on a large collection of source materials (for instance, a folder of PDFs and Powerpoints or a compilation of hundreds of Google Docs).

The NotebookLM Difference

NotebookLM differs from competitors like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini in one significant way: NotebookLM only uses the source data you share with NotebookLM. It won't crawl the web to find answers for you. It won't make up books or reports that don't exist. It won't make up data. If you haven't shared the document with NotebookLM in your workspace, Notebook LM can't use it as a source.

Like any early technology, NotebookLM isn't perfect. It has misidentified key figures in projects and misinterpreted KPIs from old case studies. I would say it has an 80% correct rate. Factcheck everything and don't trust the AI to do everything correctly just because it's an advanced technological tool.

Efficiently Generating Client-Focused Content

From a small agency perspective, there's one thing NotebookLM simply excels at: retooling existing content into new formats.

NotebookLM is one of the easiest ways of turning client insights like meeting notes, project decks and product documentation into compelling blog posts, white papers, podcasts or newsletters.

For instance, you can use NotebookLM to turn transcripts of client discovery interviews (I typically get the transcripts from Zoom or Otter) into polished content in about 30% of the time it would take to make the content from scratch.

Repurposing Existing Agency Blogs and Content

If your agency already has an active corporate blog or social media feed, NotebookLM makes it extremely easy to build out a full content calendar with original, useful content that builds off of existing content that was made in other formats.

You can:

A) Use NotebookLM's voice discussion feature to turn articles into podcasts in conjunction with production software like Descript.

B) Turn blog posts into video scripts.

C) Build white paper text out of social media posts

This streamlines in-house content creation considerably.

Improving Client Deliverables

NotebookLM is also great for automating summaries and insights from client relationships.

By sharing text and documents with NotebookLM, you can quickly draft summaries of client reports, meetings, or campaign updates that tend to be more accurate than outputs by Claude or ChatGPT.

NotebookLM is also helpful for pulling key data from document collections you feed to it, which significantly speeds up proposal development and project updates.

Small Team Collaboration

Inside an agency environment, shared notebooks also help teams with internal knowledge sharing and collaboration.

NotebookLM's default options: Voice conversations about documents, auto-generated FAQs, auto-generated table of contents and auto-generated briefing docs easily help teams get around a project for a particular client or the data being used to assemble a deliverable.

This makes tracking project progress and keeping track of ideas much easier.

NotebookLM: A Small Agency Game Changer

For small agencies who want to do more with limited resources, NotebookLM combines efficiency and adaptability.

It hallucinates less. It only uses the documents you provide as a knowledge base. This ensures accuracy and a higher level of control than Claude or ChatGPT.

NotebookLM is a speedy, practical tool for content repurposing, client communications, and internal collaboration.

While it’s has limitations, NotebookLM’s ability to transform existing material into new formats makes it invaluable for content creation and project management.

Used wisely, it gives small teams a competitive edge for streamlining processes and delivering high-quality client-focused work.

Additional Resources

Tim Donovan: NotebookLM: Turning Agency Blogs Into Podcast Gold

Media Co-Pilot: How To Use Google NotebookLM

What are your experiences with NotebookLM? Let us know in the comments.

About the author: Neal Ungerleider runs Chicago-based boutique comms strategy firm Ungerleider Works, which has developed strategy and content for clients including Google, SAP, and T-Mobile.

If you're looking to boost your agency or freelance systems, reach out to Neal for hourly-based consulting.