Podcast transcripts are an often overlooked step in the episode creation process. However, with how many purposes they serve, and how easy it is to make one, maybe they shouldn't be overlooked. I'm Jordan host of Podcasting Q&A, where we answer your questions about how to start, grow and monetize a podcast. This week's question is from Joshua.
Josh:
Hello, Buzzsprout. This is Joshua from the fourth and flex fantasy football podcast. And my question for you guys is exactly how important is transcribing. I've seen a lot of videos and stuff talking about transcribing, and I'm just don't think I'm ready for that. But if it's something important that I should be doing, then maybe I need to look into it a little further. Also, will this affect my downloads not having transcriptions? I really appreciate it. Thank you guys.
Jordan:
Thanks for your question. There are many good arguments for podcast transcription. For example, it can be helpful for people who are hearing impaired and want to be able to follow along with a podcast. By making your podcast content accessible, you are opening your show up to a whole new audience of potential listeners. The second reason to utilize podcast transcripts is because they can also be useful for SEO purposes. By including a transcript of your podcast episodes on your website, you can make your content more discoverable to search engines. This in turn can help to increase your podcast visibility and ranking in search results. A transcript can also provide valuable keywords that can be used to optimize your website and help it to rank higher. Finally, podcast transcripts can be quoted in blog posts or articles providing a convenient way for readers to access the original source material. Whatever they use podcast transcription can be a valuable tool for podcast lovers and podcast creators alike. If you're still on the fence about transcriptions because you don't know how much effort or cost is involved, here are three different methods of creating a transcript. The first method is to hire a human to transcribe audio. A transcription service will use professional transcribers who are experienced in dealing with all sorts of audio, and they will be able to produce a high quality transcript that is accurate and easy to read. The reason for this is that human beings are simply better at understanding speech than machines. This is especially true for podcast transcriptions, where the quality of the audio can be poor, and there can be a lot of background noise or music. The downside of course, is that this kind of service can be quite expensive and turnaround time can be slow. Some places to find human transcribers is rev.com gotranscript.com, or search for a freelancer on upwork.com. The second way to transcribe your podcast is to have a bot do it with an automated service. Automated transcription services have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among podcast creators. These services use AI to generate transcripts of audio files, which can save time and money compared to human transcription. However, automated transcription is far from perfect. Automatic transcription services make errors in about 20% of transcripts, while human transcribers have an error rate of less than 1%. So if you do use an automated transcription service, and this is speaking from experience, be careful to review for accuracy before exporting the file. The transcription services I recommend taking a look at are otter.ai descript or Temi, and I'll link to a few others in the show notes. Some of these companies have free plans as well, which is great if you're podcasting on a budget. The third and most cost effective method is to do it yourself. And though it is easy to create your own transcript, be aware that it can be a huge time commitment. You can estimate time spent transcribing your own podcast be anywhere from two to five times the length of your episode. So if you have long podcast episodes, you're going to be transcribing a long time. If you do want to just try it yourself, the way to do it is pretty simple. You just open up a word processing document, start listening to the podcast and type out what is being said. Be sure to include speaker identification tags and timestamps whenever someone starts speaking. For example,
"Host: 02:
33", and I will link to an example of a transcript you can reference in the show notes. Once you've finished, you can copy and paste the text directly into Buzzsprout to be added to the episode. Be sure to check the show notes for links to more Buzzsprout blog posts and videos about transcriptions as well as links to all the services I've listed. I hope this episode of Podcasting Q&A has been helpful to you. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on a future episode go to pod inbox.com/buzzsprout out or click the link in the show notes to leave us an audio message and as always keep podcasting