Messin’ with AI

Auto-Formatting Blog Posts With Gemini In 10 Min.

Leveraging Google’s AI Agent, Gemini, to auto-convert Google Docs to blog posts.

One of the appeals of blogging or any kind of direct-to-audience address is that carefully constructed words (well, sometimes; sometimes I’m writing in an airport terminal) come across informally, like a stream of consciousness. This, of course, was the appeal of early blogs: Anyone could have a platform to communicate whatever they wanted in the ugliest form imaginable. Reader loyalty could overcome blocks of unbroken text.

But as writing, attention spans and platforms themselves have evolved, there is, now, a greater necessity for structure. What begins on my phone as a note or, as you’ll see, as a Google Doc, can eventually be shared with (sometimes) a lot of people. On top of the need to create something somewhat legible to a human audience, anyone who writes and publishes with regularity also needs to create work that is machine-readable, so your work doesn’t get buried under a wobbling pile of SEO “content.”

And while formatting is a necessity, to be frank, I don’t enjoy it.

If I knew those who gratefully read and engage with my work would tolerate a Google doc with a haphazard title (in journalism we call these “slugs”), that’s what I’d publish. But since I want to be “professional” I spend up to 30 minutes adding titles, subtitles, images, links, bullets, etc.