Weekly content brief generator in Notion
Every Monday at 8am, turn the past week's top-performing articles in your topic area into a ready-to-assign blog brief in Notion.
BuzzSumo
NotionMarketingContent GenerationAI ReportsResearch & MonitoringBuild me a weekly content brief generator that runs every Monday at 8am via a cron trigger and produces a ready-to-assign blog brief in my Notion Content Pipeline database.
Inputs I want to configure once: a list of topic keywords (5 to 10), the Notion database id for my Content Pipeline, and any keyword exclusions or domain filters I want to apply.
Each Monday, the agent should: (1) call BuzzSumo's Search Trending Content operation for the configured keywords, scoped to the last 7 days; (2) call BuzzSumo's Search Articles operation for the same keywords over the last 7 days, sorted by engagement, to round out the candidate set; (3) merge and de-duplicate the results, then identify the three highest-performing pieces by total engagement (combine total Facebook shares, Twitter shares, Pinterest shares, and Reddit engagements).
Then have the agent analyze what those three pieces have in common: format (listicle, how-to, opinion, case study, news), angle, headline pattern (numeric, how-to, question, contrarian), and approximate length. Use that pattern as the seed for the brief.
Draft the content brief with these sections: Proposed Headline, Target Keyword, Recommended Angle, Why This Will Work (one short paragraph referencing the engagement signal from BuzzSumo), Suggested H2 Outline (4 to 6 H2s), and Reference URLs (the three winning articles with their total share counts and the publishing domain). Keep the tone practical so an editor can hand it straight to a writer.
Finally, use Notion's Create a Page operation to add the brief as a new page in the configured Content Pipeline database. Set the page title to the proposed headline, populate the page body with the brief sections, and set these properties: Status = Idea, Owner = unassigned, Source = BuzzSumo trending. Include the run date in the page so I can tell briefs apart at a glance.
If BuzzSumo returns no qualifying results for a given week, still create a Notion page that flags the slow week and suggests an evergreen angle based on the strongest article from the previous run. Handle BuzzSumo's monthly Search API quota gracefully: stop calling once the budget for the run is hit and note any keywords that were skipped at the bottom of the brief.
What does this prompt do?
- Pulls the highest-engagement articles from the last 7 days for your chosen topic keywords using BuzzSumo's trending content and article search.
- Spots what the top three pieces have in common: format, angle, headline pattern, and length.
- Drafts a structured brief with a proposed headline, target keyword, recommended angle, H2 outline, and three reference links with their share counts.
- Saves the brief as a new page in your Notion Content Pipeline database every Monday morning, ready for an editor to assign.
What do I need to use this?
- A BuzzSumo account on a paid plan (API access is included with paid web subscriptions).
- A Notion workspace with a Content Pipeline database that has Status, Owner, and Source properties.
- A short list of topic keywords you want to monitor each week.
How can I customize it?
- Change the schedule, for example Friday afternoons for Monday planning, or twice a week.
- Swap the topic keywords or add domain filters to focus on a niche or exclude competitors.
- Adjust the brief template, like adding word count targets, internal link suggestions, or a CTA section.
- Point it at a different Notion database or pre-fill different properties such as Channel or Persona.
FAQs
Do I need a paid BuzzSumo plan?
Will it work with my existing Notion content calendar?
How does it pick the top articles?
Can I monitor more than one topic?
What if BuzzSumo returns no strong results that week?
Related templates
Every Monday, last week's survey answers and support conversations become one themed report in Notion, with the top five themes posted to Slack.
Every Tuesday we pull your best new reviews, draft social captions, email testimonials and product page quotes, then stage them in Notion for approval.
Each weekday morning, turn yesterday's major incidents into ready-to-review postmortem drafts in Statuspage, Notion, and Jira.
Every time someone edits your Tailscale access rules, get a readable summary of what changed, who changed it, and whether it made you less safe.
On the first of each month, your video library becomes a written review of what worked, what flopped, and three things to change next month.
Every morning, the posts you approved in Notion land in Sprout Social as scheduled drafts, with captions, images and publish times already filled in.
Stop staring at a blank doc on Monday morning.
Connect BuzzSumo and Notion once, and Geni drops a fresh, data-backed content brief into your pipeline every Monday at 8am.