When I sold Roundpeg, I wondered how I could keep producing high quality content to stay visible now that I was a team of one instead of a team of ten. The answer might surprise you. I’m creating more content than ever before, but I’m spending far less time doing it. The secret? I have discovered simple, affordable, easy-to-use tools that condense hours of work into minutes, st streamlining the entire process, making content creation efficient—and even fun.
Here’s my lineup and how it all comes together:
StreamYard: My Content Creation Studio
Whether I’m going live or pre-recording, Streamyard lets me produce professional-quality videos with custom backgrounds and branding. Once the video is ready, I can push it out to multiple platforms in just a few clicks.
The best part? StreamYard creates individual video tracks, which makes it super easy to grab short clips of my guests or myself for social media. Speaking of short clips, let me introduce you to my newest favorite tool …
Opus Clips: Effortless Video Shorts
Creating snappy, engaging video shorts is a requirement these days, but it didn’t seem worthwhile to spend an hour on a one minute video. Along came Opus Clips. This AI-powered tool takes a full-length video and turns it into 3–5 polished clips in minutes. It finds the most impactful moments, ranks them, adds captions, and lets me customize the look and format. The result? Attention-grabbing videos ready for social in record time.
Microsoft Word: The Underrated Transcript Hero
When it comes to repurposing content, transcripts are my secret weapon. Blog posts, social media updates, even podcast descriptions all start with a transcript. While there are plenty of transcription tools out there, I’ve found a surprising ally in Microsoft Word. By uploading an MP3 file, I get accurate transcripts—free for up to 300 minutes a month.
AI: My Part-Time Employee
With a transcript in hand, I bring in my AI “assistant” to craft summaries, headlines, and social media posts. I rotate between tools like Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, but ChatGPT tends to capture my writing style best. Of course, that’s no accident—I’ve trained it well with clear instructions about tone, word choice, and even my love of metaphors.
Canva: Graphics Made Simple
While Adobe has its perks, nothing beats Canva when I need graphics fast. The drag-and-drop interface, customizable templates, and brand kit make it a breeze to create on-brand visuals in no time.
Publer: Social Media Made Easy
With my content ready to go, Publer takes care of distribution. It allows me to post videos, images, and text across multiple platforms, tweak the messaging for each audience, and schedule weeks (or months) of content in advance. Even better, I can track engagement and reuse my top-performing posts. This tool ensures I stay visible—even when I’m on vacation.
Constant Contact: The Email Workhorse
If you know me, you know email is my not-so-secret weapon. Since 2002, Constant Contact has been my go-to for email marketing. It’s affordable, user-friendly, and constantly evolving. Most importantly, it keeps my audience connected and drives consistent traffic to my website.
The Workflow
Here’s how it all comes together:
- Record a video using StreamYard.
- Break it into shorts with Opus Clips.
- Generate a transcript using Microsoft Word.
- Use AI (Chat GPT, Claude or Poe) to craft blog posts, summaries, and social media copy.
- Design eye-catching graphics with Canva.
- Schedule and distribute posts with Publer.
- Reach out to my email list using Constant Contact.
The best part? This entire process takes about 90 minutes. With these tools, I’ve not only simplified content creation but also reclaimed time for other parts of my business.