Neal MannMar 1, 2026

How to Build a High-Quality, Narrative Newsletter with NOAN

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How to Build a High-Quality, Narrative Newsletter with NOAN

Neal Mann

Learn how to create a high-quality newsletter with Known, a platform that leverages AI while maintaining accuracy and a personal touch. This video showcases how to set context and build a narrative for your content, drawing from the founder's experience in content creation.

How to Build a High-Quality, Narrative Newsletter with NOAN

Neal Mann

Learn how to create a high-quality newsletter with Known, a platform that leverages AI while maintaining accuracy and a personal touch. This video showcases how to set context and build a narrative for your content, drawing from the founder's experience in content creation.

Chapters

00:00

Founder's Newsletter Launch

Introduction to the weekly founder's newsletter

00:44

Content Creation Expertise

01:09

AI vs. Known's Method

01:33

Personalized AI Context

01:56

Setting Newsletter Context

Transcript

00:00

Hello everyone.

00:00

Obviously transparency for how we're building at NOAN is a big part of what we want to do.

00:04

And this week I decided to start a new weekly newsletter founders newsletter from me, updating kind of on things that I've seen this week, things that are interesting topics, themes and then also obviously a bit about NOAN and what we're doing.

00:19

So this is the email that you're all going to get if you're a NOAN subscriber, you're going to get it or you're going to get it if you're on a newsletter.

00:26

it's a really, I think a good newsletter that weaves together lots of different kind of topic areas and aspects, but all around a kind of theme.

00:36

And I come from the content world so obviously I've worked, Sky News, the Wall Street Journal, you know, I know and understand content creation and how to build a narrative.

00:46

but the output of this I think is great, really good.

00:50

And I just want to show you kind of how I did it because I think you can all take something away from this in how to create a really high quality newsletter.

01:01

Lots of people out there are obviously making things with AI and if they're doing it directly with Chat, GBT or Claude, the output is not going to be always accurate.

01:12

you'll find it's quite, you'll get a lot of kind of you know, pretty kind of work sloppy type content if you're going directly.

01:20

Whereas obviously on NOAN, we've got all those facts of your business and my newsletter this week is a bit about that.

01:24

but also when you work with the assistant, every time you work with it, you can create context around the thing that you're working on.

01:33

Right.

01:33

So yes, you can store in like newsletter structures if you want to just do something that's a standard newsletter.

01:39

But let's say you want to do something like I've just done, which is really a narrative newsletter, around a topic or a theme and it needs to feel like it's coming from you.

01:47

There's a way to do that.

01:48

So because you've got new context every time you work with the assistant and you're ultimately starting with it kind of clean, the first thing I do is I set the context of what I'm going to work on.

01:58

So I've said I want to write a newsletter that's going out to all of our users and it's in the first person, just clarity of how to create it.

02:04

It's about my experiences of the week.

02:07

Firstly, I want you to read the full thought leadership piece that I wrote that you understand as part of the context.

02:13

So then I dropped in and I wanted all the details in here.

02:16

I didn't just want it to search and get the core key themes, I wanted all the details of this thought leadership piece that I published this week.

02:23

And so I dropped in the copy of that.

02:25

soon you'll be able to just reference that piece and create.

02:28

but for the moment I dropped in the copy.

02:30

You can see here what the assistant has done.

02:32

Is it said.

02:33

Okay, understood.

02:34

Here's a concise summary of the key context and themes from your thought leadership piece which we can weave into your first person newsletter.

02:39

So can you.

02:40

You can see what I'm doing here is I'm starting to build the layers of this first person newsletter that I'm going to create.

02:45

It's got the problem, my AI memory isn't enough.

02:48

Alignment, et cetera.

02:49

Perfect.

02:50

Really good.

02:51

Okay, now here is more context for something else I want to reference.

02:55

On LinkedIn, the CEO of the Atlantic talked about how AI can't read PDFs.

03:00

We've been talking about this for a while.

03:02

I then put Nicholas Thompson's post in and then I linked that post there so that we had that, and a link to the piece.

03:11

And then here's a quick distilled summary and angle you can use to reference Nicholas Thompson's point in your newsletter, tying it to your API native fact based philosophy from my thought leadership piece and obviously our product vision that is in NOAN.

03:24

Right.

03:25

So this is then tying that together and you can see now we've just added another layer of this narrative.

03:29

This is exactly how a journalist or a content creator works.

03:33

You have your overarching narrative and then you start to build the different layers and weave them together.

03:37

See, here we go.

03:38

Perfect.

03:39

and you can see here it's giving me even a creative angle for this.

03:43

Great.

03:45

Now here's some more context that we will need to include the key features that we've shipped over the past two weeks.

03:51

I've then dropped in from our changelog all the key features we've shipped.

03:55

Perfect.

03:56

all of that in there.

03:57

So it's got all the details and then here's a concise newsletter ready summary of the key features you shipped in the past two weeks.

04:04

Boom.

04:05

Fact checker, project management, filtering by all of this kind of stuff that's in there.

04:10

Perfect.

04:11

So now we've got the solid context that I wanted to have underpinning this newsletter.

04:17

So we've got those different layers and it understands all of that context and obviously it's got all of my facts right.

04:22

but now I wanted to add a very specific aspect of this which you'll see and read in the newsletter.

04:30

And I said, okay, now I want to work on the email.

04:32

I want you to create the email in the first person.

04:35

It's storytelling about what I've been thinking and experiencing this week as we build our own AI native company.

04:42

I want you to start the piece by talking about how my 5 year old son is LEGO mad.

04:46

He loves Lego in particular Star Wars Lego, and he leaves LEGO bricks on my desk at any time.

04:51

This has been incredibly helpful for me and it really has.

04:55

I have them here, I've used them in demos.

04:56

Some of you would have seen them because it's an amazing analogy of, how NOAN works.

05:03

You lock these bricks together, outline how facts are LEGO bricks for your business and they create context for AI so you get accurate results.

05:10

If you need to make a change, you just switch the brick in and out.

05:15

Then add the paragraph about Nicholas Thompson.

05:18

So now I've told it what to do and how to start.

05:20

Then to add the paragraph about Nicholas Thompson.

05:22

and then I want you to outline our product vision and talk about how I wrote a thought leadership piece in a matter of minutes using AI this week, which I did obviously.

05:32

And then wrap up the newsletter by talking about our new features.

05:35

Add some case studies where the LEGO brick analogy has clicked for our users and they've understood it and they can store their facts.

05:44

And here we go.

05:45

And this is the newsletter done.

05:50

And it's.

05:50

Honestly, I'm really, I'm actually quite proud of this newsletter.

05:53

I think it's a really interesting, good newsletter.

05:56

and then I've just asked it for a really catchy subject line and pre header that will make someone open this email.

06:01

And so if we just jump back to the newsletter here, you're going to see all of that in here.

06:06

I've just then obviously added my own touches and those are largely, images.

06:11

So I bring in an image here.

06:14

everything's linked.

06:15

Nicholas, Tom Thompson dropped in our product vision image, into Fact Checker.

06:20

and then I've actually taken a great screenshot from Susie from our community that she posted on LinkedIn because it just adds a nice little, little touch.

06:28

it links to the case studies, added one of our ads at the end and then we're good to go.

06:33

And so that is, how I have managed to essentially, when I actually asked it to create the newsletter, one shotted it.

06:41

And what I've done is I've got all my facts in NOAN and then I've layered the key bit of context for that specific piece of work, within the assistant, step by step.

06:53

I want you to know and understand this, I want you to know and understand this, I want you to know and understand this.

06:57

And then I've given it the instruction of how to weave that narrative together and that is how you build a really good piece of content, whether it's thought leadership or newsletter with NOAN.

07:08

And the key thing just to remember is all those LEGO bricks, they're all stored so it knows all those facts.

07:14

You don't need to tell them those facts.

07:16

But also, the most important thing is that when you start working with the assistant, every time you start on NOAN, it's new context, it's fresh context, and as a result you've then got a clean slate to essentially paint what you want it to do.

07:32

If you're working with the likes of ChatGPT and Anthropic, you've got two issues.

07:36

One, is that when you're talking to them directly, all of that conversation is just laddering up into context, which it doesn't know.

07:44

And scientific studies have shown this, the difference in fact and fiction.

07:48

The second thing is that it's very hard to start clean.

07:51

We've built NOAN to start clean on every instruction because you don't need to tell it anything because you've got those facts as that core, understanding business brain essentially.

08:00

and then you can nail it like that, really easily if you just keep that in mind and think about how you structure that narrative.

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