Transcription
Are you looking to improve your experience using Notebook LM? Well, guys, in this video, I'm going to show you some of my favorite Notebook LM hacks that you can start using right away to get the most out of this awesome AI tool. So be sure to stick around for the entire video.
If this is your first time on the channel, welcome! My name is Ryan, and my mission is to help you navigate the overwhelming world of artificial intelligence. If you want to know my favorite AI tools and prompts that I'm using for marketing and content creation, be sure to get my free AI Marketing Essentials guide. You can find the link below this video.
Now, let's dive back into some of my favorite Notebook LM hacks.
First of all, if you've never heard of Notebook LM, this is an awesome free AI tool owned and operated by Google. They define it as your personalized AI research assistant. There's so much that this tool can do. I do have an intro-level video on Notebook LM; I'll leave that in the video description below for you to check out. All you need is a free Google account to use this. Visit notebooklm.google, click "Try Notebook LM," and you'll be signed into your Google account. Then, all you need to do is click "Create New" to create a new notebook, and we can start diving into the magic of Notebook LM.
Now, I'm going to assume a lot of you watching this video have already used Notebook LM before and understand the very basics, like how to add sources in the top left and how to generate an AI audio overview. This was the big feature that really put Notebook LM on the map: generating AI-powered podcasts.
The first Notebook LM hack I want to share with you is the ability to customize this audio overview. Instead of giving Notebook LM full control, they now have a "Customize" button. If you click this, you'll notice a box where we can direct Notebook LM on how we want this audio overview to sound. You can focus on a specific source, a topic, or a specific audience. This update rolled out a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago. I remember making a video about this on the channel, so I'll find that and leave it in the video description.
Now, what we can do is leverage ChatGPT or Claude to help us with this. We can come into ChatGPT and prompt it with something like the following: "Help me customize the AI audio I'm generating with Notebook LM. I want the output to sound simple, professional, serious, and understandable at an eighth-grade level. Use a maximum of 500 characters."
Now, we can copy and paste this more advanced prompt instead of just trying to type something in there. You can definitely do that. Come back to Notebook LM, click "Customize," drop it in here, and now you'll see we have that more advanced prompt from ChatGPT. Click "Generate," and now it's going to generate this AI audio overview.
I'm going to skip ahead and wait until this is complete.
All right, now I'm going to play a few seconds of this audio overview, and let's see what it sounds like. Remember, in the custom instructions, I said to make the output more understandable at an eighth-grade level. If I didn't do that, I can promise you this would sound very technical, with a lot of words like LLM, machine learning, and other technical jargon that Notebook LM tends to use sometimes.
So, let's see what this sounds like: "Hey everyone, ChatGPT, huh? It's like everywhere these days. It really is! But like, what is it? Why are people freaking out about it? Well, on today's deep dive, we're going to figure that out."
Just from listening to the first 10 seconds of that, I can easily tell it is catered to an eighth-grade level. It's very understandable to the average person who has no idea what ChatGPT is. I'm glad to see that what I said in the custom instructions appears to be working.
So, that is the very first Notebook LM hack: using the customization with audio overviews.
Now, staying on a similar topic of audio, another Notebook LM hack you can explore is the ability to analyze podcast episodes and provide synopses and key takeaways instead of listening to an entire episode. There are some really long podcast episodes out there, one to two hours long. You could do the same thing for an ebook as well for what I'm about to show you.
You can visit a website like ListenNotes.com, and in the search bar—I'll leave this in the description below—you can type in any podcast or any specific podcast episode. Here's my podcast called Marketing Quacks. You can come into any episode, click the little button with the three dots, and you should see an option to download audio. This will download the MP3 file of a podcast episode.
Now, what you can do is come back to Notebook LM, add a source here, and remember you can upload these types of files: PDF, TXT, Markdown, and audio MP3 files. So, we can click "Choose File." Make sure you save it on your desktop or somewhere you can find it. I'm going to find that MP3 file that I just downloaded.
So, right here, Marketing Quacks podcast. I'm going to upload that MP3 file of my podcast episode, and as you'll see, it's right here. I'm going to skip ahead after this is done.
All right, now after the MP3 file is fully uploaded, simply click "Notebook Guide." If you don't see the menu, you can do anything you want here, but the two I would focus on are "Table of Contents" and also "Briefing Doc."
Now, also what's cool here is the summary. You would get this for any source using Notebook LM, I understand that, but if you're looking for a quick summary of a podcast episode, this is a really good summary right here that they provide. It's only one paragraph long versus sitting there listening to 30 or 40 minutes.
Also, what's important about this is not a lot of podcast platforms offer transcripts. You can obviously get that on YouTube, but I don't believe it's easy to get a transcript from Spotify, Apple, and all the other podcast platforms. I remember looking into it at one point, and it was a pretty tedious process. So, that's another benefit of doing that.
If I click on, I believe this is the table of contents, I like how it breaks this down: intro, pros of starting a marketing agency, cons of starting a marketing agency, alternative paths, and concluding thoughts.
Here's the briefing document. These are just the main takeaways: the pros, the cons, my alternative personal branding approach. Right? So here it has "Z." That's not how you spell my name, but I'm not going to complain about that.
Conclusion: there's just so much that you can do with this in terms of analyzing a podcast episode. That is the second hack, and it's not only podcast episodes; you can analyze any audio file using Notebook LM.
Another Notebook LM hack I want to share with you is utilizing this tool to create content outlines when you're trying to write blog posts for a specific keyword.
In this example, I've named my notebook "ChatGPT Hacks." That's the keyword I want to go after in this example. On the left-hand side, what I've done is analyze the SERP (search engine results page) on Google for the target keyword, which is "Best ChatGPT Hacks." Obviously, this would change to whatever your target keyword is.
I added Reddit, ClickUp, and this magical website as my three sources right here. Now that I have those three sources in Notebook LM, I can prompt it with the following, and I will leave this prompt in the video description below: "Give me an SEO content outline based on the sources for my top-ranking competitors for the keyword." This is where you would insert your keyword, "ChatGPT Hacks."
Let's do "Best ChatGPT Hacks." That's more of a long-tail keyword that I'm going to go after in the content outline. Include SEO title, meta description, headings, word count, LSI keywords, suggested links, and anything else you think would be important to outrank competitors for this keyword.
I'm going to hit enter and then skip ahead after this is complete.
As you'll see here, in a matter of seconds, Notebook LM drafted a content outline based on the information from those three sources, going after the target keyword "Best ChatGPT Hacks." Here's my SEO content outline.
Now, what I could do is technically come down here and say, "Now write me a blog post." But I want to be real with you guys: I don't really like Google Gemini for writing long-form content like blog posts. I'd rather use something like ChatGPT inside a custom GPT or Claude using a Claude project.
So then, what you can do is copy and paste this outline here, which I'm going to show you. Open up ChatGPT or Claude, and right here you'll see I'm on my Ryan Dozer AI agent. This is the custom GPT that writes like me. I basically said, "Help me write an SEO-optimized blog post when I provide the topic." Then I said, "Here's my topic, and here's also a content outline I want you to follow."
I'm going to click enter and skip ahead when this is complete.
ChatGPT went ahead and generated this blog post on "Top ChatGPT Hacks." Just scrolling through here, it looks decent. It looks like something I could definitely use.
Now, I would never recommend copying and pasting an entire blog post, posting it on your website, and expecting that to move the needle. You're going to have to polish this, add internal links, external links, images, and all the other tweaks that go along with a successful SEO strategy.
But that's just one quick hack I wanted to show you: leveraging Notebook LM to generate content outlines.
Why would you want to do something like Notebook LM versus coming to ChatGPT and saying, "Generate me a content outline?" By doing it this way, you're using three sources that you've directed Notebook LM to analyze and make a content outline based on those top three ranking sources.
That is the hack I wanted to show you for that.
The next Notebook LM hack I want to show you is not only repurposing written text into AI podcasts, which I'm sure a lot of you have done already, but also transforming written text into AI videos. I'm going to show you exactly what I mean by this.
I pulled one of my posts on LinkedIn about how to make a lot of money online without ethics. I should just do a full rant video about this; I'm so passionate about it. But anyways, you could do this for any social media post, any blog post, email, or any form of written text that you want to transfer to a video.
What you would do is copy and paste whatever that source is, add it into a source on Notebook LM, and you would simply come over here and click "Paste Text." Since we're not adding a link or a video, you would just paste that plain text right there.
Then you would generate an audio overview, which I have right here. I've already done this and sped up the process. Once that's done, you would click this little button here and click "Download." This will download an audio file in WAV format.
Once you've done that, you can head over to a tool like Revid. It's completely free to sign up. You do get a few videos on the free trial; it's a premium model. I would recommend coming here versus the other tools that I've been testing for this functionality.
Once you're on Revid AI, click "Create New Video" after you've signed up for an account. Then, what you want to do is click "Audio to Video." This is where we will upload the WAV file that we just downloaded from Notebook LM.
Make sure you click "Upload File," click this box, and then find your WAV file that we can now upload to Revid AI. It looks like it's successfully uploaded.
All right, welcome back, everybody, for another... Yep, all 5 minutes and 16 seconds right there. This is where you can set your parameters. I want to leave this at 9 by 16, and you want to add video footage. Make sure this is toggled on.
What I've learned from this, though, is that you can't do AI video; you'll run out of too many credits if you do that. You can do moving AI images and also stock videos. Once all of that is done, click "Generate Video."
Here is my finalized video file from Revid AI. This took about a minute, maybe a minute and a half. So let's go ahead and click in here and see what this looks like now.
What I noticed right away is it's 32 seconds long. I've optimized for mobile, obviously, like I directed it to in the settings. It has subtitles, right?
The purpose of this is you could use the audio file from Notebook LM, use a tool like Revid AI, and then post this across short-form video platforms: TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc. Just another way to redistribute your content and get more eyeballs on various platforms.
Let's take a quick look at this and see what it sounds like: "Okay, these folks are selling courses and consulting services on topics that they have no real expertise in." Oh wow, right? Pretty unethical. "It is, it's like they're profiting from misinformation."
Yeah, you know, they're taking advantage of people.
You see what it did there, right? It automatically reformatted the video, added the B-roll video behind it with that audio file to make it look more engaging versus just putting out an AI podcast. We see millions of those already that exist from Notebook LM.
That is a quick little hack you can do with the audio file: use a tool like Revid AI to repurpose that into engaging video content.
Another cool little hack I discovered with Notebook LM is you can leverage this tool as your own personal coach or consultant based on the source that you upload.
What do I mean by this? In this example, I've uploaded the entire book "The 4-Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferriss, which is my favorite book of all time, by the way. You can do this for any podcast, any ebook—whatever that source is, you can turn that book into your own personal coach or consultant with Notebook LM.
Let me explain this process. First, you want to upload your source in the top left. After you do that, you can head over to ChatGPT or Claude to complement this process. You can say, "I'm using Notebook LM and uploaded a book. I want to turn that book into a coach or consultant. Help me generate two prompts for Notebook LM: one for the audio and one for the text outputs."
I'm going to copy and paste this one from the text outputs first.
Come back to Notebook LM, and in the search bar, you would paste that right here, click enter, and remember we are using Google Gemini for this process. You probably could do something similar by uploading to ChatGPT or Claude, but also remember Google Gemini has a higher context window than some of these other large language models.
That's why using Notebook LM with Google Gemini is a perfect use case for this. As you'll see right here, it generated a step-by-step guide transitioning to a 4-Hour Work Week.
Based on the context from that entire book that I uploaded, it's now given me a step-by-step guide acting as a coach and consultant on how I can achieve this lifestyle.
Number one: Define your lifestyle.
Number two: Eliminate the non-essential.
The 80/20 rule: automate your work, liberate yourself from the office, launch your muse, tools, and scripts.
It's breaking down all of the important tidbits of that book into a step-by-step guide if I want to pursue this. Obviously, it would change based on whatever the context of the book, podcast, or ebook that you upload, but this is just a really quick example.
Now we can also click "Notebook Guide" and do the same thing for the audio version. I'm going to come back here, copy and paste that audio prompt it generated.
Now remember, it has to be less than 500 characters. Come back, let's see...
Copy. I'm having all sorts of little issues here, guys, as I navigate back and forth between the tabs.
Then you want to click "Customize," paste that in right here, click "Generate," and then I'm going to skip ahead and see what it sounds like when it's complete.
Let's listen to this really quickly.
Now remember, instead of just a general summary like you would normally get in these audio overviews, I set those custom instructions at the beginning to say act as a coach or consultant and not just a general summary.
So let's see what this sounds like really quickly for lifestyle design in "The 4-Hour Work Week."
Such a classic! It really is!
We're going to distill it down to a five-minute coaching session packed with actionable tips on productivity, passive income, and even how to achieve location independence.
So you heard that right; it's breaking it down into a coaching or consulting session.
Now, obviously, I'm not going to play all 16 minutes of this. I can leave it in the description if you guys are curious enough to listen to it.
That's what I wanted to show you with this quick little Notebook LM hack: you can upload any source like a book or a podcast and create both an audio and text version of your own personal coach or consultant.
Now, I want to show you a few little bonus hacks you can do using Notebook LM. You could also apply this same process to ChatGPT or Claude. Notebook LM, again, is just another great use case for something like this.
What you could do is have it act as your own little legal consultant. Now, a big disclaimer here: I'm not a lawyer, and I would never recommend relying on this tool for anything serious about legal issues. But for very basic understanding and questions, this is a great resource for that versus calling a lawyer and paying hundreds of dollars an hour for something you could just figure out in seconds on an AI tool like Notebook LM.
Let's say I want to learn about copyright law in the United States. What I could do is upload a whole PDF of U.S. copyright law, and I would also want to upload a whole PDF of the U.S. Constitution just to have that in there as well.
Once those are uploaded, you could do an audio overview if you want that, but you could prompt it with something like the following: "You are a legal expert and consultant. Provide bullet points of the five most important details about copyright law in the United States that I need to know."
Again, this could be for anything about the Constitution or any law that you're trying to learn. I just did a quick example of U.S. copyright law because it can be very confusing.
It says right here: "Here are five important details about copyright law in the U.S., explained in a way that a 10-year-old can understand."
I did add that little sentence at the end there just to make it more understandable to the average person.
What is copyright? A basic definition of copyright.
How long does copyright last? It says plus 70 years, even after they're gone.
What are the creator superpowers?
What if I want to use someone else's work?
Where can I learn more about copyright?
You guys get the point here. Again, if this is any serious legal issue, I would never recommend doing this. But for something very basic, if you're just trying to understand a legal concept like this, you can lean on a tool like Notebook LM to act as your basic legal consultant.
The final bonus hack I want to share with you isn't necessarily Notebook LM, but it's another Google AI tool called "Learn About." The reason I bring this up is technically it's in the same ecosystem as Notebook LM under what's called Google Labs, under emerging AI tools.
You'll see Notebook LM right here; that's the most popular one. And right here is "Learn About." This is a new AI tool they released a couple of weeks ago. All you need is a free Google account to use it.
If there is any topic that you want to learn about in-depth, in detail, in a digestible format, this is another great way to do it. Whether it's something like ChatGPT, you would just click that, and then you'll see what it responds with.
It gives me a quick synopsis, an interactive list. You could do the same thing on Notebook LM, but you have to upload sources. If you don't want to upload sources and just simply ask for a topic and rely on Google sources, this is a great way to do that.
Again, I know this isn't necessarily Notebook LM, but because it is under Google Labs, I thought this was a cool little hack I wanted to share with you.
With all of that being said, I hope there were some Notebook LM hacks in this video that you guys can find useful and start using on your own.
I appreciate you if you've made it this far into the video. Be sure to give me a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you found value.
But I also want to hear what you guys have to say in the comment section below. Are there any other Notebook LM hacks that I missed? I want to hear about it in the comments.
Most importantly, I hope you all have a great day!