From blog to audio capsule: how to better leverage your efforts

We live in a moment of informational intermediation crisis that affects the media and also impacts us as individuals, as companies and as a society. The direct relationship between media and audiences has been fragmented and reconfigured through technological platforms, algorithms and new production and distribution formats. In this context, traditional media and communicating companies face the same challenge: how to reach their audiences without being diluted in an objectively saturated ecosystem.

Consumption habits have been shifting towards the brief, the mobile and the audiovisual. According to recent data, podcasting has consolidated as one of the main channels for informational attraction and monetization in Spain. But the question now, especially if you have a certain budget to communicate, is not just whether we should produce audio, but how to do it meaningfully.

It’s clear that being present is not enough. Let’s keep in mind that we find ourselves at a moment in history when AI allows a company of just 8 workers to create 3,000 podcasts per week automatically. The difference will be marked by quality, coherence and real usefulness of content. And in any case, the ability to generate good products efficiently in terms of productivity and cost.

We wanted to conduct an experiment. Writing a good article for the Smart Team blog consumes time and energy. Although this production incorporates some help from LLMs, the truth is that to stand out and create content we can be proud of and that search engines can separate from the junk generated directly with AI without any filter or criteria, we’re talking about 4 hours of intensive work. In our case, moreover, each piece is translated into 3 languages. After this effort, the article is present on the web, we ensure it gets indexed soon and we distribute it on social networks.

Can we get a better return on this effort?

More lives for our content

A blog article is static editorial content. It’s published on the web in three languages, which really turns it into 3 pieces of content and is distributed on social networks to try to increase its reach. However, in an ecosystem of fierce competition for attention and where this attention is so fragmented, this effort may, for many reasons, not be sufficient.

Currently, we’re creating good articles that provide value to the reader while communicating with Google’s algorithm in the way it likes us to do it. Without cannibalizing concepts, always trying to clearly attribute authorship to professionals with their own voice, respecting internal and external linking proportions, providing quality references, tagging all content in the best possible way while ensuring everything works wonderfully on the web technically. In summary, we’re doing SEO while generating content production that also speaks to people and that will in no way make us feel ashamed. There’s nothing wrong with talking to the algorithm, it would be stupid not to do so. And according to Search Console we’re doing quite well.

We incorporate social media distribution into the recipe and we’d be done. But we can’t live on that alone and being honest, we know that formats change quickly and the trend toward audiovisual and mobile is currently unstoppable. We’ll see if it’s irreversible, but we’re on the way to these types of formats becoming hegemonic. We know we won’t be able to stay out for too long.

NotebookLM and the audio capsule

With this starting point already defined, we ask ourselves: how to add another layer of useful life to each article without exponentially multiplying resources?

It’s worth repeating: choosing an interesting topic, researching, generating a good article that speaks to the reader and also to the various algorithms that will evaluate it, translating it into 2 additional languages, designing creatives for all the channels we have available, posting it on the web in its 3 language versions, requesting indexing in Search Console and finally distributing it on networks, represents significant wear and a major investment in terms of time spent. That is, in terms of money invested, let’s not fool ourselves.

The answer was provided by NotebookLM, Google’s tool that allows generating audio summaries from documents. We knew it when it was still in testing period and the truth is that, as a work tool, it’s very good.

The dynamic is actually quite simple: we upload the article, mark the style we want the final product to have, provide additional parameters and in a matter of minutes we get a brief audio capsule that’s practically ready to be distributed on our creators profile on Spotify. Along the way, we improve the track quality with Garage Band, but nothing more.

Following these steps we have a “minimum viable product”. Here’s ours.

Another piece of the puzzle: Spotify for creators

It’s worth noting that the intellectual property of audio tracks is yours as long as you generate them from content that is your authorship or property. Therefore, as long as the terms of use of the tools don’t change, you won’t have legal problems with any of the intervening parties and Spotify accepts this type of content without problem.

We were especially concerned about having problems publishing the tracks. That creating “synthetic” content with an LLM could end up published on Spotify without problems wasn’t evident to us when we started the experiment. We researched and theoretically we had it clear, but that it would actually happen was an outcome we didn’t take for granted. But it worked, we created a profile on “Spotify for creators“, created a format, uploaded the track and in very little time it was available to any Spotify user anywhere in the world.

A model that opens new possibilities

The experiment was viable and allows us to rethink strategies, both ours and those of third parties that relate to us. First, we can modify our own workflow with the possibility of growing our reach, but we also have the ability to transfer this experience to the ecosystem of professional collaborators, as well as to our clients, current and future.

So far, the blog has been the heart of our content strategy and will continue to be. But by incorporating audio capsules into the product catalog, we’ll be able to achieve immediate reach while using a native audiovisual format and access audiences that might never enter our website in any other way than following a route from Spotify.

Additionally, we can embed the capsules on our website, a maneuver that doesn’t sound like a bad idea either as long as it’s done without generating technical problems that affect the core web vitals. But that’s another topic.

We haven’t yet started systematic production of these capsules, but we might not be far from doing so.