Welcome to Fresh van Root newsletter #96!
As summer slowly ends in the northern hemisphere, I am transitioning from a three-week break into work mode until next Monday. In this newsletter, my favorite content piece is the story about how Notion handles social media, which showcases its unique approach. I also want to mention Lex page as my favorite app in this newsletter, as it provides stand-out features that greatly enhance the writing experience. I hope you enjoy the rest of the week, and remember to stay fresh!Rolf
Hello to 25 new subscribers. 👋 I’m Rolf from Fresh van Root. This newsletter features content and apps at the intersection of AI, marketing, productivity, tech, content creation, and social media – for curious minds – and creators of all trades.
🧠 Hand-Picked Content
Social: How Notion Runs Social Media (Blog post, 10min)
In this blog post the social media manager of Notion shares their approach to running social media and emphasizes the significance of slow growth over jumping on trends or relying on growth-hacking techniques. Notion believes building a sustainable and engaged community is more important than chasing quick wins. Additionally, the post delves into their unique perspective on using TikTok as a social media platform. It provides insightful examples and includes screenshots of internal documents to showcase how Notion leverages TikTok effectively. More
- Bonus: The social media platform strategy of Notion on one page. More
Marketing: Ranking in ChatGPT vs Google Search (Blog, 20min)
One key question marketers want an answer to since the public availability of ChatGPT is whether it is possible to influence ChatGPT results and if the same metrics apply to being listed in ChatGPT as they do for Google. One observation is that ChatGPT often presents only a limited number of products, requiring users to ask for more to access a broader range. In contrast, Google frequently displays numerous products that users may need to become more familiar with. As a result, ChatGPT poses more significant challenges for new products trying to gain visibility and discoverability. More
Metaverse: Biggest fail in tech history? (Article, 5min)
Hundreds of millions to gain a handful of active users. That was the Metaverse. Zuckerberg silently buried it. You see him only raving about Threads lately. This write-up summarizes the big announcements, brands, and architects who jumped on the Metaverse train – and burned money. More
🛠️ Tools & Apps & Services
Productivity: AI Chat For Company Knowledge
Eesel AI allows you to build up a custom AI chat based on the documents you provide. That can be Google Docs, Notion pages, or any public website. The use case is obvious: Instead of using classic search to find a piece of information, you can, for example, ask Eesel AI, “What’s our company’s social media strategy for LinkedIn.” And it will search your internal docs and provide the answer in natural language. More
- Bonus: Another eesel product is an extension that improves your browser history. It was featured in newsletter issue 87.
Design: Neat Looking Charts
Graphy was creating lots of buzz on social media. The product is straightforward: You paste your data table into Graphy and then work on customizing the design of that chart to share on other platforms. It can be helpful if you often want to share graphs from Google Sheets or Excel and are unhappy about how those charts look. More
Online Meetings: Video Chats Without Accounts
If you are annoyed by all the features of Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet, and other solutions, Yep might be the puristic alternative you are looking for. Jump on a call without an app or account from any device. More
Social: Publishing Tool For Small Businesses
Publer is a no-BS publishing tool without feature bloat. Create posts, publish them instantly, or schedule them. It comes with a friendly free plan, which is uncommon nowadays. More
Creator: AI Writer With Unique Features
Lex AI is one of thousands of AI writing tools. Many AI writing tools offer to rewrite complete paragraphs or posts. In Lex, you can select a phrase or word and start chatting about that specific phrase with AI. That makes it easier to improve parts of a text and get more information about a topic you write about. It works like adding a comment in a Google Doc. By mentioning Lex, you start interacting with the AI assistant. Screenshot | More
Design: Free Illustrations
“Transhumans” by Pablo Stanley is a set of 38 illustrations for your content production. You can download SVG versions to customize them for your needs or drag and drop the PNG version into your presentations. More
📣 Fresh van Root
A Workday With My AI Assistant (Blog post, 1min)
How ChatGPT helps me during a typical work day. More
Publish A Web Page From ChatGPT (Blog post, 2min)
Using the Netlify Drop plugin, you can publish a web page created in ChatGPT with one prompt. This opens up lots of opportunities. LinkedIn post | More
Destroying A Brand And Company (LinkedIn post)
How Elon Musk is running Twitter into the ground. More