Ask Me Anything: Automation Questions Roundup  ## Metadata - Author: [[Streamlined Solopreneur: Tips to Help Business Owners Grow Without Burnout]] - Full Title: Ask Me Anything: Automation Questions Roundup - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/2cef6b4b-d8a4-45e0-80ee-a62da2d6e624 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Automate Social Media Scheduling** - Automate social media scheduling by keeping video details in Notion or Google Sheets and using Zapier triggers. - Send scheduled posts through Buffer or similar tools to streamline multi-platform content distribution. Transcript: Joe Casabona The first comment came from my good friend, Alex Sanfilippo. He said, today we started posting reels, shorts, and videos on TikTok. I'd love to just schedule all of them and have it done for the next 90 days like everything else we do with our podcast episodes. It looks like they have built-in schedulers. Any advice or thoughts? I definitely like the idea of using a built-in scheduler because I feel, though there's no hard evidence, that your reach is limited with third-party schedulers. That said, you could probably really automate things with this app here. And here's the automation that I recommended. Keep a Notion or Google Sheet, a Notion or Google Doc with the video name, text, hashtags, and publish date. When a row is updated, trigger Zapier to grab the info. Have Zapier scheduled posts using Buffer or another social media app. Similarly, there might be a way to do all of that via RSS feeds, though I'd need to think through that. And the trigger there would be new item in the RSS feed. The problem is that Zapier can grab videos from like a Dropbox or Google Drive link. So if you're uploading to, say, TikTok or Instagram, you can do that. Right now with podcast RSS feeds, there's no video tag in the RSS feed. So you'd still need to do something separately. So he said, super helpful. But this is, you know, this is something that I've considered for a while. I have an automation that will take video scripts and break it into, you know, link like social media posts that sound like me. And I'm very specific about make the content for that platform. Now, I am recording from the Karma studio here at Kit Studios in Boise. And I'm here for Craft and Commerce. And Nathan Berry spoke at another event that I was part of, Jay Klaus's The Lab Offline. And he repeated advice that I've heard plenty of times ([Time 0:02:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5b7e7d34-d59c-40ef-b93e-425655c3d700)) - **Focus on One Platform** - Focus on one social media platform and do it exceptionally well. - This concentrated effort beats spreading yourself thin across multiple platforms. Transcript: Joe Casabona Offline. And he repeated advice that I've heard plenty of times before, but like hearing him say it, like hit differently, you know, he said, pick a single platform and do it well. And so I think this is what I would, this ([Time 0:04:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/288f06fa-afec-4243-93e5-5400e0ad5565)) - **Automating Dishwashing at Home** - Joe uses a dishwasher to automate dish cleaning but jokes about training his nine-year-old to load it. - He expects that responsibility to shift to his child soon, easing his load. Transcript: Joe Casabona Dishes. If you can help with that, I'll be impressed. Look, I have a dishwasher, so that's automated. Loading the dishwasher, that's a different story. I'll have a nine-year next year, so I think she'll be able to load the dishwasher. Talisha, I think Talisha Davies, ([Time 0:05:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c0e28e90-8619-4596-ad10-fc6f15e1b4f1)) - **Shared Lunch Planning Note** - Joe and his wife share an Apple note for planning kids' lunches to avoid repetitive morning mental load. - Planning weekly menus reduces lunch prep stress and keeps meals varied yet appealing. Transcript: Joe Casabona Making my kids lunch, which I thought was really funny. We did have a further conversation. I said so much of my brain power goes to this in the morning. How do I pack, uh, a lunch for my kids that's different enough from yesterday that they don't eat the same thing while being similar enough that they'll actually eat it. And, uh, something that we're going to try for next year, right? Uh, two of my, two or three of my kids will be able to get hot lunch next year. And so hot lunch will help. But I think like, I'm just going to keep an Apple note that my wife and I share. And we're just going to say, hey, Mondays is this, Tuesdays is this, instead of trying to figure it out. Because like, we worry that our kids are going to get sick of this ([Time 0:05:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b2eeae16-97fe-419e-9f65-6217b1205f4e)) - **Automate Client Call Summaries** - Use tools like Fathom to get summaries of client calls and save Zoom transcripts to Dropbox. - Process transcripts with ChatGPT using custom prompts for different call types to save hours of manual summary work. Transcript: Joe Casabona Won't. Now, she also said, she said, but also anything email related or summary of weekly client calls, Fathom helps me with that now. So I said for email, another person, Matthew Campbell, asked about this as well. And I made some recommendations. I linked in a comment. So I'll jump out to that in a minute. But I said for summaries of clients calls, I'm working on I was working on that now. And so ideally, transcripts of Zoom calls will be saved into a Dropbox folder that I can ship off to ChatGPT. I am not fully doing that yet because the app I use to transcribe Zoom calls doesn't have that automation. I do get the transcript and I upload it to ChatGPT with a custom prompt. And this is what I've done. I've set up a custom project for different types of calls. So discovery calls, coaching calls, etc. And then I have like pretty in-depth prompts for each of those things. So this is something that's kind of always in flux, but eventually I suspect I'll be able to automatically send the transcript over to Zapier, get the prompts and get everything I need Back into a Notion document or something like that. ([Time 0:06:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/33249d6e-99b9-497f-b275-748461956a92)) - **Automate Email Management** - Combine SaneBox and Todoist to organize your emails and keep the inbox manageable. - Use Zapier to watch for specific emails and automate processing based on subject, sender, or keywords. Transcript: Joe Casabona So Matthew Campbell asked about checking emails. And I said, so I have, I have a blog post. I'll link this in the show notes too. I use a combo of SaneBox and Todoist to organize my emails. And then I also have like, so for certain emails, I have Zapier watching my email inbox for certain emails sent either by subject or sender, reading those emails for certain keywords, And then processing them. This is something I'm really working on. I wanted to get more sophisticated with LLMs, but I really haven't. I haven't jumped into that yet. It's probably something I'll do on a live stream. So subscribe to my YouTube channel. But this is a really interesting one because I think like SaneBox and Todoist keep my ([Time 0:08:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/229b3c43-ebbd-4eb9-ad98-ff898666e1c0)) - **Streamline Podcast Guest Research** - Find podcast guests using PodMatch and intake forms for self-selection. - Supplement with Google Alerts, PodScan, and ChatGPT to research and identify niche experts efficiently. Transcript: Joe Casabona Adam walker asks finding guests for one of my clients projects or podcasts what do you got? Okay, so I said my first recommendation is Podmatch. It will surface guests for you. That's like a dating site for podcast guests and hosts. Shout out to my friend Alex Sanfilippo again. But a couple of other thoughts. An intake form for people to self-select. I currently have this for my, you know, you can go to streamline.fm slash apply. And then I have my VA and chat GPT do some initial research. Now, I talked about this in a blog post I wrote more recent than this LinkedIn post called My Brown M&Ms. And I have a very specific ask on that form. And so if they don't answer that question, then it's easy. I filter out and automatically reject them. If they do answer that question, then my BA does the initial research and I take that and I do some deep research with ChatGPT. Google alerts for titles or other keywords to serve as experts in your client space. PodScan, which is essentially the same thing as Google Alerts, except PodScan will also alert you of in-podcast mentions. So you can find people willing to do podcast guesting. So like if there's a certain subject you're looking for or a certain niche or a certain type of guest, you can put it into PodScan. That's PodScan.fm. And if that surfaces, if that subject surfaces for you, you can see the person talking about it and reach out to them. And then this is, again, something I'm thinking about doing with ChatGPT, but run a Zap that asks ChatG or some AI search to find guests every month or what books in the client's niche Are coming out. And I think that's that's a really interesting one. Again, like, you know, as I record this, I'm in the summer. There's a lot of travel. The kids are out of school. But my ([Time 0:09:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9ce9b5b1-afc5-4fe0-b550-267277832980)) - **Create YouTube Chapters Manually** - Use Ecamm Live's Marker button to create timestamps while recording shows. - Later find these points in transcripts to manually create accurate YouTube chapters, improving viewer navigation. Transcript: Joe Casabona Dylan Redikop. Dylan, I'm sorry if that's, if I'm saying your name incorrectly. He said, reviewing our podcast episodes and creating YouTube chapters manually for the YouTube description. I've tried AI, but it kind of sucks at getting the timing right. I said, yeah, this one is tough for the reasons you mentioned. AI is not actually good at detecting chapter markers. What I do is I record an Ecamm Live, and one of my Stream Deck buttons is, it's built into Ecamm Live. It's called the Marker And so I can press that button and it'll create a timestamp. It'll also make an alert box where I can type in a quick note. And so I'll usually push that button when I'm recording. Since his episodes are edited, as are mine, I write down what I say at the beginning of the chapter and find it in the transcript. So like, you know, I'll take the edited episode. And then I will, in my notes, I'll say like chapter starts at, you know, when I say blah, blah, blah, I'll search for blah, blah, blah, and find the ([Time 0:11:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6b7a58f2-121d-42cf-8659-5a1622d40e3f)) - **Automate Social Media Post Creation** - Record audio or video and save it in Dropbox, then use Zapier and ChatGPT to create social media posts. - Schedule the posts weekly to avoid procrastination and maintain consistent content publishing. Transcript: Joe Casabona Make available because i'm using like a pretty specific app uh car Brower says social media posts, also a repetitive source of procrastination. I said, okay, this is great. Something I do. So I do talk through this in another episode of Streamline Solopreneur. I recorded a video or audio. I put the file in Dropbox. Zapier watches that dropbox folder sends the audio to be transcribed and processed via chat gpt chat gpt creates the posts and sends them to notion and then i set a time i set aside time Each week to schedule out the posts um and uh and i i link to that episode so and i link to it on youtube So there's a little show and tell feature. My ([Time 0:13:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6867a521-10da-4c33-beb7-205977c9e2d1))