Turn Your Blog into a Podcast with AI

Quick Overview

The video demonstrates how to automate turning a Circle community post into a podcast episode using AI voice generation from ElevenLabs integrated with Zapier, creating a four-step workflow that triggers on a new post, cleans the HTML, generates speech, and adds the audio as a comment back to the original Circle post, complete with an embedded audio player.

Key Points: The automation workflow uses Zapier to connect Circle community posts with ElevenLabs AI voice generation. The core process involves four steps: Circle trigger (New Post), Formatter by Zapier (Strip HTML Tags), ElevenLabs (Generate Speech), and Circle action (Add Audio Comment to Original Post). The content from the Circle post body must first be cleaned of HTML tags using Zapier's Formatter step before being sent to ElevenLabs for speech generation. The speaker cloned his own voice using ElevenLabs' 'Mike - Pro Voice (professional)' setting for the generated audio. The final step posts the generated audio file as a comment on the original Circle post, including an embedded audio player for community members. The speaker suggests the resulting audio can be repurposed for distribution on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or as Alexa Flash Briefings. The speaker highlights the ability to use ElevenLabs' 'Instant Voice Clone' (2 minutes, 10 seconds audio needed) or 'Professional Voice Clone' (30 minutes of audio needed) for voice cloning.

Context: The video, hosted by Mike Russell, presents a detailed tutorial on leveraging AI tools, specifically ElevenLabs for text-to-speech and Zapier for workflow automation, to repurpose written content from a Circle community platform into audio content, effectively creating an instant podcast version of written posts.

Detailed Analysis

The video guides viewers through building an automated workflow using Zapier to convert new posts made in a specific Circle community space ('New AI Tools') into audio format using ElevenLabs' AI voice generation. The presenter outlines a four-step Zap. Step 1 is the Circle trigger, monitoring for new posts. Since Circle posts contain HTML formatting, Step 2 involves using Zapier's Formatter by Zapier action to 'Strip HTML Tags' from the post body to ensure clean text input for the AI. Step 3 uses ElevenLabs' 'Generate Speech from Post Content' action, where the speaker selects his own cloned voice ('Mike - Pro Voice (professional)') and the 'Eleven Flash v2.5' model to create an MP3 file. Step 4 uses the Circle app again to 'Add Audio Comment to Original Post,' inserting the audio URL generated by ElevenLabs into the comment body, which results in an embedded audio player on the original Circle post. The presenter notes that while Circle doesn't have a direct 'Update Post' action, this comment approach effectively adds the audio version. He emphasizes the power of this automation for repurposing content across various platforms.