Millions of people listen to podcasts to learn, relax, or laugh. With podcasts exploding in popularity over the last couple of years, there’s no doubt that individuals and businesses are using this platform to create engaging and exciting content that they can share with the rest of the world.
However, podcasts content creators should know how they can differentiate themselves, allowing them to stand out from the rest of the pack.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the reasons why you should transcribe your podcasts episodes. But we’ll first you with the basics.
Defining Podcast Transcripts
In a nutshell, a podcast transcript is a word-per-word account of your podcast episodes. It’s either you, a transcriptionist, or automated software that will listen to the episode, writing down every word spoken by you and your guests.
Although you couldn’t publish your podcast episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Play, you can post these on your website. Ideally, we suggest that you include the transcription of every episode on the same page as your audio player, showing the notes.
Why You Need to Transcribe Your Podcasts
Transcribing your podcasts offers tremendous value as it helps propel your content on top of Google’s search pages, improve web accessibility, and grow your subscribers.
Be more inclusive
According to the World Health Organization‘s data, approximately 5% of people have some form of disabling hearing impairment. While podcasts are an audio-first medium, it doesn’t mean that you couldn’t make your content available to those suffering some form of hearing impairment.
Audio transcription allows people to enjoy your content. They can either use it to supplement parts of the podcasts that they can’t hear or read through it entirely. You’re making your content accessible to non-native speakers as well. Putting your content in the written form allows them to look it up.
Moreover, by making your content available in more than one format, not only you can expand your audience but establish yourself as a brand that embraces exclusivity.
Enhanced Share-ability
Sharing your insights in just an audio podcast can sometimes be challenging and time-consuming. Providing the transcribed format makes it a lot easier and more engaging.
You can also create quotes, articles, and blogs and publish them on social media platforms through your transcripts.
For Content Repurposing
While you can repurpose video and audio content to audiograms or short clips that you can publish on social media, there are also plenty of things that you can do with text.
Written content can be turned into smaller pieces of content, easily shared, and consumed online.
Here are some of the things that you can do with your transcript:
- Take the most interesting quotes, and publish them on social media
- Repurpose quotes into graphics.
- Create short, or long-form blog posts
- Place as captions in your video files
- Create an interesting and sharable infographic
- Use transcripts for email newsletters and other related marketing campaigns
Reap SEO benefits
The thing about search bots is that they couldn’t listen to audio. Meaning they can crawl the metadata but not the content on the file.
Having a transcript for your podcast lets you convert keyword-rich content from these podcast episodes into text that bots can read.
Therefore, by publishing your podcast transcripts with your audio files, you’ll significantly boost your web traffic, enhance your discoverability, and allow you to find new listeners.
Create Better User Experience
Podcasts are great for people on the go- exercising, driving, or doing other tasks at hand. However, keeping people engaged can be quite challenging if they’re just there, sitting on a screen. Moreover, a lot of people prefer skimming through texts or reading while listening to the audio.
By having a transcript, it’s easy for people to read while listening to your podcast. To make it even more interactive, you can allow listeners to click on a word jump to that point in the audio, allowing them to scroll through a different episode section.
3 Ways to Transcribe Your Podcast Episodes
If you want to know how to transcribe audio, here are several ways that you can transcribe your podcasts:
1. Do It Yourself (DIY)
One of the cheapest ways to transcribe your podcasts is to do it yourself. You can take the manual approach by sitting down, listening to your podcast, and writing down the words you’ve said.
While this can give you handy insight, solidifying your brand requires a significant time investment. At times, it may also feel tedious and redundant.
2. Hire a transcriptionist
The second option is to outsource someone to do it. There are plenty of skilled transcriptionists online that will be happy to do the work, but it can also be pretty pricey.
For 30-minute podcasts published weekly, expect to pay around $90-180 monthly.
3. Use AI-powered transcription tools
Finally, one of the quickest and least expensive ways to transcribe your podcast episodes is to use AI-powered transcription tools.
All you need to do is hand in the finished audio recording, and the AI specifically designed to turn your audio into text will do that. AI transcription has minimal costs compared to doing it on your own or hiring someone to do it.
Over to You
Transcribing your podcasts offers you several benefits, both for you and your audience, giving them a more positive experience and letting them engage with your content.
Transcribing your podcasts will significantly help you in your podcasting journey. Good luck!
