Transcription
If you spend too much time typing up notes from meetings, chances are you've heard of this little thing, the Plaud Note, and its little sibling, the Note Pin. They're tiny, smart, and packed with AI. But today, I'm going to show you seven pro tips to squeeze even more value out of your pocket-size productivity sidekick. Let's go!
Right, let's jump straight in. You probably know that this thing records meetings and phone calls really easily. That's pretty much the baseline. But did you know you can also use it to record lectures, webinars, and even conferences? Well, I took my Note Pin to a big conference a few months ago, and I clipped it onto my pocket during one of the big keynotes and then hit record. Later on, I selected the built-in lecture template, and boom! The AI broke the session down into clear sections. It pulled out memorable quotes, and it even suggested further reading based on what the speaker had covered. I mean, where was this when I was at Uni? It would have been an absolute lifesaver.
Tip number two, and this is important, the real power of the Plaud Note is in the software. You can actually chat with your recording. If you're on one of Plaud's Pro plans, the built-in AI lets you search your recordings using natural language. So, let's say someone suggests a book you should read, and you can't remember when in the conversation they said it, you can just ask the AI. It'll pull the exact moment out from your transcript. You can also ask it things like, "What were the action items from this call?", "Who said what about that budget?", and then "Summarize the risks that we discussed." It's way easier than scrubbing through an hour-long audio file, or worse still, scrolling through pages of handwritten notes.
Now, tip three is a simple one, but it makes a really big difference. You can adjust your gain and audio settings right in the app. Now, the default settings on this thing are decent, but if you're recording in a noisy cafe or a big, echoey boardroom, tweaking the input gain might massively improve the clarity of your recording. You can also enable noise reduction or fine-tune the microphone sensitivity depending on your environment. So, although you can just use this out of the box, if you're finding yourself recording lots of different kinds of environments, you'll get loads more out of your recordings if you just tweak the audio settings in the app.
Tip four: Make your own templates. Plaud do give you a bunch of templates to start with, let's say meetings, interviews, and calls. But you can also customize them to suit your workflow or even design your own. Let's say, like me, you run coaching sessions. So, you could create a template that breaks each session down into key questions, themes, the client goals, and also their takeaways. Or, if you're doing user interviews, you could design one that tags their pain points, maybe mentions their products, and also competitor references. You just set them up like any custom AI prompt, and then you can refine them as you go if it's not giving you what you want. And once you've got these custom summaries set up, every single future summary will get automatically structured exactly the way you like it.
Tip five: If you really want to level up your workflow, you can export your transcripts into whatever format you like into a much more powerful AI system like ChatGPT's latest reasoning models, or even something like Perplexity. Plaud's built-in AI is great for quick summaries, as it draws on ChatGPT 4.0 or Claude. But what if you want deeper insight? Well, here's what I do. After a really important meeting, I often export the transcript and then drop it into ChatGPT, maybe using Advanced Data Analysis, or maybe a custom GPT that I've designed. And then I can ask it all sorts. Maybe to turn this into a client proposal, maybe give me five headlines based on the conversation, or maybe highlight any emotional objections that were raised during this call. Or, if you want to get really interesting, "Draw me a picture that captures the discussion in this transcript." And then, with something like Perplexity, you can even cross-reference your content with live internet results, or get smart follow-up questions, or referenced academic materials that will support your transcript. So, don't stop at the Plaud app. Use it as your capture tool, and then plug into something even more powerful to get next-level results.
And here's tip number six: You can use Plaud's new segments tool. Let's say you record a five-hour strategy day, which sounds mad, but you can actually record continuously for up to 30 hours on this little thing. So, Plaud have built this new segmenting tool which detects topic changes and then breaks the whole thing down into separate, labeled sections. Now, this is an absolute dream if you're dealing with long conversations, maybe interviews, or big group discussions. And there's no more guessing where something was said if a conversation happened over for several hours.
Now, I would have loved to show you the next tool, but at the time of making this video, it only works on PCs. Well, Plaud have launched a full-blown desktop app that records meetings directly from your computer, whether it's Zoom or Teams, you know, the works. No more placing the recorder next to your speaker and just hoping it catches everything. Now, until then, I'm quite happy getting by with the old-school workaround of just leaving this next to my computer. But yeah, when the Mac version drops, that's going to be a massive game-changer. Watch this space.
So there you go, six, possibly seven, smart ways to get even more from your Plaud Note or your Note Pin if you've got one already. Hopefully, these tips will help you level up your workflow. And if you're thinking of getting one, just check out the links in my description for any offers or best prices because if your week looks anything like mine, I'm guessing this will probably save you hours of time. Now, if you've got a cool way of using yours that I haven't covered in this video, please drop it in the comments because I'd love to hear about it. And if you found this useful, you'll probably love this video over here too. See you next time, folks!