NotebookLM for Business: Unlocking Valuable Insights

Drowning in documents, meeting notes, and scattered data? Wondering how to extract meaningful insights without wasting hours sorting through files?

In this article, you'll discover how to use NotebookLM to turn your content into an intelligent, searchable resource so you can streamline your workflows, surface key insights, and make smarter decisions faster.

Why NotebookLM Matters for Marketers and Creators

Lisa Monks, a social media and AI strategist and founder of Chip Monk Media, describes NotebookLM as “one of the most underrated AI tools out there.” 

The tool is developed by Google and offers several compelling advantages that set it apart from other AI platforms:

• It can parse various sources that other models cannot simultaneously accommodate. This flexibility means you can consolidate diverse content types into a single, searchable knowledge base.
• As part of the Google ecosystem, it provides a more secure environment than many other platforms.
• NotebookLM utilizes a retrieval augmented generation system (RAG), which references only the material you upload into your notebook. If your material is factual, this approach dramatically reduces the AI's tendency to hallucinate or generate inaccurate information.

The platform's efficiency in content summarization makes it particularly valuable for marketers who need to pull information from various sources and create content summaries, study guides, and briefing documents. Whether you're working with one document or fifty files, NotebookLM allows you to create comprehensive overviews while maintaining factual accuracy.

#1: Explore NotebookLM's Core Features

When you enter the NotebookLM platform, you'll encounter three main portals that form the foundation of your workflow.

NotebookLM Add Sources

The sources panel is where you upload all your source information. 

NotebookLM accepts a wide variety of file types, making it exceptionally versatile for different workflows: .txt., Markdown, audio files such as an mp3, and PDFs. You can also paste in text, add links to websites and public YouTube videos, and integrate with Google Drive through Google Docs and Google Slides.

Before you upload PDFs, Monks suggests recommends converting them to Markdown documents. The Markdown format turns the document into readable text that keeps the formatting but strips away everything else that might confuse the AI. In Monk's testing, she found that results were significantly better when uploading Markdown documents rather than PDFs with complex formatting, as NotebookLM sometimes skipped information when documents weren't in an optimal format.

Pro Tip: Use ChatGPT to convert your PDF to a Markdown document.

Discover Sources

The Discover Sources feature allows you to expand beyond your uploaded content by pulling in additional information from the web. If the suggested sources come from reliable outlets you trust, you can add them to your notebook as additional resources to enhance your existing content.

After you've uploaded your factual content into NotebookLM, find the Discover Sources tab at the top of your notebook. Tap this option to request more information on your topic, and NotebookLM will search the web and return ten sources with clear citations. All sources will be pre-selected, but you can choose which ones to pull into your notebook based on their reliability and relevance.

NotebookLM Chat

The chat panel lets you interact with whatever data sources you've uploaded.

Interactive Mind Maps

The interactive mind map feature represents one of NotebookLM's newest and most impressive capabilities. This tool becomes particularly powerful when working with content that covers multiple topics over time, such as podcast episodes that discuss different subjects each week.

When you select all your resources and generate an interactive mind map, NotebookLM breaks down the content into subject matter categories. For instance, if you've uploaded multiple podcast episodes that mentioned custom GPTs at different times, the mind map will create a custom GPTs section. It then generates subcategories for that section, such as how to create a custom GPT.

When you click on a specific section of the mind map, you'll see a reference for the exact podcast episode or document where that topic was discussed. You can then ask for more information, and the system will provide detailed responses based on the source material. This process creates a comprehensive visual overview of all available content while maintaining direct connections to the original sources.

Audio Overviews

Audio overviews generate realistic conversations between two AI hosts discussing your uploaded content. These conversations sound remarkably natural, with the hosts covering key topical information, benefits, and insights from your source materials.

What makes audio overviews particularly powerful is their interactive capability when used on desktop or laptop computers. While listening to the generated discussion, you can interrupt the conversation to ask specific questions or request deeper exploration of particular topics. The AI hosts will adjust their conversation trajectory to focus on your areas of interest, provided the information exists in your source documents.

For example, if the AI-hosts mention a specific strategy and you want more details about implementation, you can stop the conversation and ask for clarification. The discussion will then pivot to address your question before potentially returning to the original conversation flow.

Pro Tip: All audio overviews can be downloaded for offline listening, making them perfect for learning during commutes, exercise, or other activities where you can't actively interact with the platform.

NotebookLM Studio

The studio panel is your output center, where you select and generate the content you want to create.

Briefing Documents

The briefing document feature breaks down all the key points in your selected sources and provides a structured summary you can reference and build upon.

You can work with individual files or combine multiple sources for a comprehensive overview. This flexibility makes briefing documents particularly valuable for getting quick overviews of large amounts of content or drilling down into specific materials.

For example, suppose you have fifty files uploaded into NotebookLM. You can select all of them to generate a briefing document covering all that information, or you can focus on just one specific document.

Study Guides

Study guides represent one of NotebookLM's most practical educational features. Again, you can select one document, multiple documents, or an entire library of documents to create a study guide.

The study guide feature goes beyond simple summarization by creating comprehensive, interactive learning materials. NotebookLM generates questions based on your uploaded content and provides answers at the bottom, allowing you to quiz yourself on the material.

This facet makes it an excellent tool for mastering complex topics or preparing for presentations where you need deep knowledge of your source materials.

#2: 5 Ways for Marketers and Content Creators to Use NotebookLM

Identify Content Gaps

You can use the mind map feature to see what content is missing from your catalog.

For example, if you’re a podcaster, create a notebook that contains all your podcast episodes, then generate a mind map. 

Take a screenshot of the mind map, upload it to ChatGPT, and ask for suggestions about additional topics to cover or potential interview guests who could address unexplored areas.

Learning and Content Curation

Monks, who listens to multiple podcasts, has developed a systematic method for maximizing learning from audio content with a deep dive.

Her process begins with listening to podcasts during daily activities like driving or walking. When she returns home, she uploads the audio podcast into NotebookLM using a YouTube link, assuming the podcast has a transcript available. Alternatively, she can upload audio files directly or use transcript documents.

Monks has created separate notebooks for different podcasts she follows regularly. As new episodes are released, she adds them to the appropriate notebook. This systematic approach allows her to build comprehensive libraries of information organized by source so she can create study guides for specific episodes. 

These guides help her educate herself on new concepts and test her knowledge with AI-generated questions and answers. She can also generate briefing documents that summarize key points from individual episodes or multiple episodes combined.

The process extends beyond individual learning. Monks can create audio overviews that function like secondary podcasts, providing a conversational summary of the original content. These audio overviews allow her to interact with the content through questions, diving deeper into topics that interest her most.

News Curation and Research

To stay current with rapidly evolving AI developments, Monks uses the Discover Sources feature to curate weekly news.

NotebookLM searches the internet to provide current information. The curated news can then be ignored or pulled into her knowledge base, where she can analyze trends, create summaries, and identify important developments she might have missed.

Meeting Documentation and Follow-Up

One of Monks' most impressive use cases involves helping a tourism industry client manage a massive trade show with up to one hundred meetings over three days. The Australian Tourism Exchange functions like speed dating for the tourism industry, with eight-minute meetings between international tourism operators and Australian businesses.

The systematic approach they developed demonstrates NotebookLM's practical business applications.

The client recorded audio from each meeting using the iPhone's built-in Notes app. After downloading the audio files, they uploaded them into NotebookLM, organizing them by day. NotebookLM transcribed all the meetings automatically, providing complete written records of every conversation. From these transcriptions, they could select individual meetings or groups of meetings to work with.

The next step involved creating detailed meeting notes using specific task prompts that outlined exactly what information should be included. Once NotebookLM generated the meeting notes, they converted these notes back into source documents within the platform, creating a searchable library of all meeting content.

The final step involved generating follow-up emails. They could request emails for each meeting with key discussion points, action items, and relevant next steps. This automation transformed what could have been weeks of manual work into an efficient, systematic process that ensured no crucial details were lost and that all follow-up communications were comprehensive and professional.

Legacy Content Preservation and Utilization

Monks shares a compelling example from her peer who works as head of tech at Kerwin Ray's organization. Kerwin Ray, described as Australia's version of Gary Vee, sadly passed away but left behind thousands of hours of recorded content from elite three-day masterminds conducted over ten years.

The team recognized they had valuable information in archives but lacked an efficient way to access and utilize this content. They solved this challenge by transcribing the recorded sessions and uploading the transcriptions into NotebookLM, creating a comprehensive knowledge base of Kerwin's teachings and strategies.

Using the mind mapping feature, they could visualize everything they had created over the years, easily access all historical content, and begin creating new materials based on existing knowledge. The team reported this implementation was an “absolute game changer” for accessing and leveraging their extensive content library.

This use case demonstrates how organizations with substantial archives of video recordings, YouTube channels, or other historical content can transform inaccessible information into searchable, actionable knowledge bases. Many businesses have years of valuable content sitting unused simply because it's not easily searchable or accessible to current team members.

#3: 2 Ways for Teams and Employees to Use NotebookLM

NotebookLM's team functionality transforms it into a powerful organizational knowledge management system. The platform works particularly well as a secure knowledge base where teams can store, organize, and access critical information efficiently.

NotebookLM offers different capabilities for teams depending on whether you use a free Google account or a paid Workspace account. 

The sharing functionality differs significantly between the two options: 

• With a paid account, you can share notebooks within your team while controlling access levels. For example, you can only share the chat functionality, hiding the source documents from team members and allowing them to interact with your knowledge base without seeing the underlying materials. Alternatively, you can grant access to the source documents and chat features.
• When you share from a free account, recipients can see your entire knowledge base and have full chat capabilities. You cannot restrict access to just the chat function.

The account notebook limits also vary substantially: 

• Paid accounts significantly expand these limits, offering five hundred notebooks, three hundred source documents, and five hundred chats. These expanded limits make paid accounts essential for businesses with substantial content libraries or multiple team members.
• Free accounts allow you to create one hundred notebooks, upload fifty source documents, and have fifty chats.

Create an Organizational Knowledge Base for Customer Support

You can upload comprehensive information about your products, services, policies, and procedures into NotebookLM. 

Support representatives can ask specific questions during phone calls or while responding to emails, receiving accurate information instantly. Because the responses come from your curated knowledge base rather than general AI training data, the information remains consistent with your company's specific policies and procedures.

If you use the paid version of NotebookLM, your team members can quickly find accurate information to handle customer inquiries without giving them access to potentially sensitive source documents.

Collaborative Content Development

The notebook-sharing functionality enables collaborative content development workflows. 

Teams can contribute different source materials to shared notebooks, combining diverse perspectives and information sources into unified knowledge bases.

For example, a marketing team could create a notebook containing competitor research, industry reports, customer feedback, and internal strategy documents. Team members could then collaborate on developing content, campaigns, or strategies based on this comprehensive information foundation.

The ability to convert chat outputs back into source documents creates iterative content development processes. Teams can generate initial content ideas, refine them through conversation with the AI, and then save the best results as new source materials for future projects.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Facebook and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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