Deal of the Week
tl;dr: Shortform AI* can easily save you an hour a day by Thanos-snapping away all irrelevant information in a single click. Try it for free and get 20% off* if you stay.
Heyo, Nik here!
A few weeks ago, my dear friend and longtime colleague Franz Sauerstein gave me some important business advice in our Mastermind meeting: "You need rich snippets!"
Now, before you look for a rapper of that name on Spotify, let me — or Franz, rather — clarify: "Rich snippets are when Google shows more than just text in its search results. Star ratings, item prices, additional details that get people to click on your website over anyone else's."
They can look like this, for example:
"Okay," I said. "More traffic. That's a good thing. Sounds rich indeed. What do I have to do?"
This is where the narrator would say, "...and that's when things got complicated." I won't bore you with all the technical details, but as it turns out, to implement rich snippets, you need to use Schema, a sort of special vocabulary, in your website's code.
Now, if you're thinking, "Dude, this is way over my head, why are you telling me all this?" then you've just grasped the point: I didn't have a clue either.
Naturally, I turned to the very friend whose demands confused me: Google. I found a familiar and trusted source to enlighten me about rich snippets in Backlinko, a great SEO blog I've followed for years (hi Brian! 👋🏻) .
They had a super detailed entry about rich snippets. There was only one problem: I was out of time. I had to mow the lawn before going on a trip (classic), and there was no way I was getting through 1,000 words of highly technical lingo with lots of pics and screenshots in just a few minutes. Enter: Shortform.*
On the outside, Shortform* is a premium book summary service offering over 1,000 guides to some of the world's best non-fiction books. Behind the scenes, however, their new browser extension, dubbed Shortform AI*, takes their library to a level Thanos would like: Infinity!
Shortform AI* allows you to summarize almost any resource in just a single click. It works on...
- News articles
- Blog posts
- Youtube videos (even long podcast episodes)
- Research papers
- Google docs
- Emails
- Amazon reviews
- Social media posts
...and pretty much everything else you can find. Needless to say, I insta-zapped the rich snippets explainer I found:
Not only did Shortform AI* allow me to quickly learn more about an important gap in my business strategy when I was pressed for time, it also delivered the answer to one of my first burning questions on a silver platter: "How do you implement Schema?" "JSON-LD is recommended as the easiest way to add Structured Markup to a webpage." Thank you Thanos!
Shortform AI* generates multiple sections whenever you click the extension button on a web page:
- The Summary
- The Context
- Learn More
- The Counterarguments
That's right! Besides blipping away all fluff, Shortform's* extension also offers some valuable context around the core topic of the source, just in case you need it.
In my case, the "Learn More" section was also super helpful: It gave me 2 additional, short resources (which I saved and read later), which explained why rich snippets are critical, what kind of results I could expect after implementing them, and more details on how to do so.
Finally, some counterarguments remind you that nothing in life is black and white. There are two sides to every coin, and it always pays to look at both before making up your mind.
What else does Shortform AI* work so well for that it would make Dr. Strange jealous of its time-compressing abilities? How about...
...complex articles about finance that help you become a better investor...
...long-form essays explaining huge societal and technological shifts affecting our future as a species...
...Youtube videos summarizing some of the greatest non-fiction books of all time (ahem)...
...3-hour-long podcast interviews with people you admire and want to learn from...
...and even foreign-language news articles about an issue you'll soon need to make a decision on.
If Shortform AI* isn't an amazing tool to save time and learn more than ever, faster than ever, I seriously don't know what is. Want to try it for yourself? Here's how:
- Sign up for a free 5-day trial of Shortform* (includes an exclusive 20% off if you keep your subscription).
- Install the Shortform AI Chrome extension.*
- Log in, and one-click summarize away!
Oh, almost forgot. Here's what else is in the membership:
- 1,000+ incredibly detailed book guides
- Audio recordings for each book
- Use-on-the-go with their mobile app and offline listening
- Personalized book recommendations
- Beautifully formatted PDFs of each summary to save, print, and use forever
- Highlights for your favorite passages, note-taking, and a community for book discussions
Let's go back to my rich snippets story one last time: How important was it that I learned more about rich snippets right away instead of just punting reading that article for a few days?
Well, you know how procrastination works. You put something aside and tell yourself you'll get to it in an hour, the next day, or by Monday at the latest. Then, life makes *poof,* and six months have gone by.
"How the hell did I fail to do this for so long?" Time flies when you're having fun — and, actually, also when you're not. It can take off right at the wrong moment. A small delay always feels harmless at first, but it can derail our most important plans for months, even years.
Reading a quick summary about rich snippets allowed me to keep the topic on my mind despite not having time to deal with it in all its complex detail. After I read the summary, I thought about rich snippets while mowing the lawn. I figured I might need some more help with it, and I came up with some actionable steps I could take to push this project forward.
Shortform AI* allowed me to prioritize the right work at the right time. It let me build momentum where otherwise a slowdown would have been inevitable.
If there's one thing I've learned over the last few years, it's that we live in an age of distraction, and whoever fails to focus will be left with mediocre results.
Shortform* can be a key puzzle piece in helping you keep and compound your focus. I hope you'll give it a try.
Happy reading,
-Nik
PS: As a Four Minute Books reader, you'll get an exclusive 20% off your Shortform* subscription should you decide to keep it. The discount will automatically be applied when charged if you join through our link*.
PPS: It's not the kind of Thanos-snap that supercharges your brain, but making half your Google search results disappear with a tap is still a cool Easter egg.
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