Turn a recording or email into a blog post with AI

Before you start

You already have the raw material: an email you sent, notes from a meeting, a recording. This is how to turn it into a finished piece, start to finish.

You can do all of this yourself. It takes a bit of time and a bit of know how. That is fine. It is also exactly the work we do on the paid plans, in this order, with the same rules.

The one rule

AI polishes what you said. It never adds a sentence you did not say. If a line in the finished piece is not something you actually said or wrote, take it out.

Start with something real

Pick one thing from the tips. Or the question from this week's tip. An email where you explained something well. A recording on the drive home. The notes from a meeting. A talk you gave. One thing is enough.

1. Get it into words

If it is already written, you are done. Copy it out.

If it is spoken, turn it into text. Most phones can transcribe a short recording now. For a longer one, find a tool or service that runs one of the Whisper speech to text models.

2. Fix what it misheard

This is only for spoken words. It is the step people skip. Speech to text gets names, places and trade words wrong. Those are the words your business uses most.

Fix what it misheard. Do not rewrite what you said. Keep a short list of the words it gets wrong: your name, your business, your clients, the words only your trade uses. You will paste the same list in next time.

3. Choose the key takeaway

Before you write anything, pick one sentence you actually said, word for word, that somebody should remember if they remember nothing else. Everything below carries that same sentence. The post, the email and anything else all say the same thing. Choose it once, here. Otherwise five pieces end up pulling in five directions.

4. Write the piece for your own website

Paste your words into an AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini with this prompt. The rules are in the prompt. They go wherever you use it.

Write a post for my own website from my words below.

Rules:
- Use only what I said or wrote. Do not invent facts, names, numbers, clients, results or quotes.
- Write in my voice, first person, as if I wrote it. Keep my words where you can.
- Plain and specific. No hype, no buzzwords, no emojis.
- Never use an em dash. Never put a comma before "and".
- Where a link belongs, write [LINK] and leave it for me to fill in.

The piece:
- A title of no more than 70 characters, taken from something I said.
- One short opening paragraph saying what this is about.
- This key takeaway as a quote on its own line: [paste your key takeaway]
- 300 to 500 words.

My words:
[paste them here]

If the title does not sound like you, it is still in there somewhere. Ask for five more and take them only from your own sentences.

5. Cut a short piece for social

Write one social post pointing to my website piece, for LinkedIn or similar. Same rules as above.

- Open with a line that makes someone stop, taken from what I said.
- Include my key takeaway: [paste it]
- 60 to 120 words, short paragraphs.
- End with [LINK] to the website piece.
- No more than three hashtags, only ones that are plainly relevant. None is fine.

My words:
[paste them here]

Post it wherever you already are, pointing back to the full piece.

6. Write the email

Write an email to my mailing list sharing my website piece. They already know me. Same rules as above.

- A subject line of no more than 50 characters.
- A preview line of no more than 90 characters.
- A body of 150 to 250 words that includes my key takeaway: [paste it]
- One link to the piece: [LINK].
- Sign off with my first name.

My words:
[paste them here]

7. If you have a recording

A recording of a talk, a workshop or a meeting gives you more than words. Short clips of the best moments travel further than the full thing. If a clip goes on YouTube, put the key takeaway in the first two lines of the description, because that is all anyone sees before "more".

8. Read the lot before it goes out

Read everything aloud once. You are listening for one thing: does this sound like me? Cut any sentence you would not say. That read is the last step and it is yours, whoever did the work before it.

The part AI does not do

There is real human effort in this and you should expect it. Two places need a person, every time. Somebody has to pick the real thing to start from and fix anything that was misheard. Somebody has to read the finished pieces and say whether they sound like you. Everything between those two is fast. Those two are not. They are what keeps this your real content, AI assisted rather than AI generated.

Budget half an hour for one piece. It gets quicker once you have your corrections list.

Automate as much as you can

The goal is that once you get started it runs with as little effort as possible.

• Capture once, use it three times. One real thing becomes a post for your website, a social post and an email. The prompts above do each one.
• Keep your rules in one place. Save the prompts and your corrections list in your AI assistant as a project or custom instructions. Every piece then starts ready, with nothing to paste.
• Capture into one place. Send every recording, photo and idea to the same note or folder. Nothing has to be found later.
• Write in one sitting. Turn the week of captures into pieces in one go. Switching in and out of it is the slow part.
• Schedule it. Your website, Facebook, LinkedIn and most email tools let you set a time. Write when it suits you. It goes out on its day.

Your weekly diary

Put the work in your diary on the same days every week. It becomes a habit rather than a decision.

• Every day. Capture a few lines on the day’s focus from the tips.
• One day. Write the post for your website.
• The next day. Cut the social post from it and schedule it.
• Another day. Write the email to your customers and schedule it.

Start smaller if that is all you have time for. One post a week, done every week, beats three that stop after a month.

Or we do it

On a plan you send us what you have and we do all of the above: the words, the corrections, the key takeaway, the website piece, the social post, the email and short clips from any recording.

We stop three times and wait for you. Once on the words, because only you know how your clients and your trade words are spelled. Once on the key takeaway, because it decides what everything else says. Once on the finished set before anything is published or sent. Nothing is published or sent until you have said yes.