We’ve made some serious updates to our Nota toolset with the Fornax the Furnace release. Get full details and instructions here.
BRIEF:
- Nota releases LETTER, a tool to easily compile and customize newsletters.
- The Nota Chrome extension allows easy collection of newsletter content from any webpage.
- WordPress plugin now displays character counts
- Nota debuts new brand design.
LETTER via the Dashboard
LETTER is the latest tool in our Nota tool suite. You can access LETTER a few different ways, let’s start with the dashboard. See below:
After clicking the ‘LETTER’ option on the left navigation or the ‘Create Letter’ button on the LETTER tile, it will bring you to the Newsletter Content Creation screen. See below:
From this screen, you can insert up to 10 links to build your newsletter. Simply copy/paste the links from the published articles you want to include in the newsletter.
On the right-hand navigation, you have the option to set the writing tone for the intro to the newsletter and article summaries. There are six options to choose from: serious, neutral, conversational/casual, funny/excited, upbeat and inspirational.
Once you have added all of the links you’d like to incorporate into your newsletter and have selected the tone, simply click the “GENERATE” button in the top right corner of the screen to get to the newsletter editing page.
On the editing page, there are a number of ways to edit your newsletter:
- Add a section - Add a blank section or incorporate another section linked from an article (visible when hovering over the top left corner of a section)
- Add content - Add a heading, description or image to any section that doesn’t already have those elements pre-populated (visible when hovering under the category, headline or content outputs within a section).
- Add a hyperlink - if you generate a new blank section and want to add the hyperlink after, click the link icon next to the category name or to the right of “New section.”
- Add an image - if you’d like to add an image from the article you’ve selected to your newsletter, click the “+ Add Content” button on the relevant section, then click “Image.” That will open the right-hand navigation and display fields for populating image attribution and alt text (pictured below).
Here you will see image options (similar to those that exist in our IMAGE and VID tools). You can include a stock image, generate an AI image, leverage a linked image or upload an image from your hard drive. You have the option to add text for image attribution and alt text.
- Section options - by clicking on the diamond icon next to the category title for that respective section, you can choose to have Nota regenerate the headline and copy for that entire section, change the tone for that section or remove that section entirely.
- Regenerating a headline for a section - If you’d like a different option for the headline of a particular section, simply hover over the headline, click the diamond icon to the left of the headline and click the “Regenerate” option (remember you have complete control over edits!).
- Regenerating/editing article summary - If you’d like to regenerate the copy or change the length of the summary, you can do so through the diamond icon next to the summary output. Simply hover over the copy, click the diamond icon and you can either regenerate the summary or adjust to one or two sentences (remember this is completely editable!).
- Reordering sections - if you hover over the top- right corner of a section, you will see that you have the option to grab that section and re-order it if desired.
- Collapsing sections - if you want to collapse a section for ease of re-ordering, just click the down carrot icon in the top-right corner of the section.
- Writing tone - If you’d like the entire newsletter to be in a different tone, you can select the desired tone in the right-hand navigation. All of the summary copy will update for each of the articles in the newsletter.
- Preview mode - You can toggle between edit mode and preview mode by clicking the “Preview mode” toggle to get an idea of how the final output will look.
- Newsletter summary - If you’d like Nota to produce a summary of the entire newsletter, click the “Generate” button in the below section.
Once your newsletter is in a good place and you’re ready to export, hit the “Export” button in the top right corner of the screen. That will open your preview and export module.
Nota will pre-populate options for your email subject line and preview text. You have the option to edit or regenerate the copy by clicking the regenerate icon on the right-hand side of each text box.
On the bottom portion of the screen, you can see how this email will appear in someone’s inbox if using our integration with an email service provider.
You have the option to copy your newsletter to your clipboard or export an HTML file for Mailchimp. Simply click the “Confirm” button based on the option and you’re done!
To import directly to Mailchimp:
- Select the “Export HTML for Mailchimp” option. A zip file will download automatically to your computer.
- Follow the import ZIP instructions as documented by Mailchimp. When prompted for a file, upload the file exported in step one.
LETTER via the Chrome Browser Extension
You can access all LETTER has to offer through a Chrome browser extension. You can use it to source the articles for inclusion within your newsletter with the click of a button.
To download the Chrome extension, follow these instructions:
- Navigate to “Nota AI Tools” in the Chrome web store via this link
- Select the “Add to Chrome” option, and when prompted to "Add Nota AI Tools" confirm by selecting “Add extension.”
- The extension is now added and may be accessed from the “Extensions” option in the Chrome toolbar.
- You can pin the extension for quick access by selecting “Extensions” from the Chrome toolbar and clicking the pin icon next to the extension. This will add it directly to the toolbar.
Now you’re ready to build a newsletter directly within your browser window! To build a newsletter using the Chrome browser extension:
- Navigate to a webpage of the published article you’d like to include in your newsletter.
- Click the Nota browser extension icon on your toolbar.
- From this screen you can name the newsletter if you’d like, and click the “Start creating” button.
- Nota will pull in images from the article. If you’d like to include an image in the newsletter you are creating, select a photo and click the “Save Article” button. You will receive the below success message after saving your article.
- Repeat this process for all of the articles you want to include in your newsletter. Once you’ve saved all the desired articles, you have a few additional options within the browser extension.
- Re-order/edit/delete articles: Click the blue hyperlinked text “Saved articles # of 10” at the top of the extension.
- Reorder articles - to the left of the article you will see the drag icon to move the article to the desired position within your newsletter project
- Edit articles - if you click on the three dots icon on the right side of the article, it will give you the option to edit or delete the article from your newsletter project. If you select “Edit” it will return to the screen that allows you to select/change the image you want to include from the article.
- Remove articles - if you click on the three dots icon on the right side of the article, it will give you the option to edit or delete the article from your newsletter project. If you select “Delete” it will remove the article from the newsletter project.
- Once you have all of the articles you want to include in your newsletter coupled with the appropriate images, click on the “Go to Letter” button at the bottom of the browser extension. The LETTER tool within the Nota dashboard will open and take you directly to the edit screen for this newsletter project. From here, you can finish editing and export your newsletter.
- When you’re ready to create a brand new newsletter leveraging the browser extension, simply click the “Clear saved links and start over.” hyperlink within the browser extension.
Help Us Help You
We now make it super simple to access our knowledge base within the toolset. Navigate to the bottom of the left-hand navigation and you will see a link to our knowledge base right under settings (see below).
