Why it makes sense to transcribe your podcast

The business of professional audio content is booming. Podcasts have experienced an enormous uplift during the pandemic; rarely before has so much audio been consumed as is the case currently. Podcasts address the full spectrum of conceivable topics, from true crime to the latest facts from virology and politics to comedy and relationship advice, they are informative, exciting and funny. And they are ubiquitous too: you can listen to them on the underground, while doing sports, while shopping, at work or relaxing at home on the sofa.

But what exactly does the term ‘transcript’ mean? Quite simply, a transcript is a verbatim transcription of the spoken word, in this case the podcast episode. It gives listeners and others who are also interested access to the podcast’s content in text form.

And, although a podcast is an audio format, content in text form can increase visibility in search engines, provide accessibility and reach even wider audiences.

Even if transcribing the podcast means extra work, it’s worth it. Content is enhanced and the advantages are numerous. We’ll show you which advantages there are, how you can transcribe your podcast without time-consuming typing and the alternatives to a full transcript.
 

A transcript of your podcast increases your online presence and you become more attractive to search engines. Search engines can then analyse your podcast’s content and then index it. This is what makes your podcast visible on Google, Bing and others in the first instance. Without a transcript, search engines have next to no means to evaluate the content of your podcast episodes.

Topics or keywords you cover can be found more easily with a text version of your podcasts. If potential listeners search for a specific keyword that you use in your transcript, the search engine can rank your content accordingly. This also gives you the chance to attract more interested people to your site and your content.
 

A transcription of your podcast episodes ensures your content is accessible. This means that you also reach people who are interested in your podcast but cannot listen to it. You also reach people who can better absorb visual content in text form. And don’t forget all those people whose native language is not the same as your podcast’s language and who have difficulty following your recording by listening only. 

Take advantage of the opportunity to use your podcast content across other multimedia channels and, in doing so, expand your target audience and open up new platforms. When using text, for example, you can prepare a blog post version of your podcast or use it on social media. By doing this, you also reach those who are interested in your podcast’s subject area but otherwise wouldn’t be accessed in audio form only.

In the transcript of your episodes, you and your listeners can easily find keywords or specific sections without having to listen to the entire podcast again. Make your media archives searchable in this way.

But what about the time factor involved in creating a transcript?

Transcribing a podcast manually is a lot of work. It costs time, gets on your nerves and can quickly become annoying in the long run. You can pass the job to a service provider or – even easier – use transcription software, however.

The advantages of transcription software are obvious: lower costs and an instantly available transcript – an AI-based speech recognition system like GoSpeech creates your speech-recognised transcript automatically and in seconds.

What do you have to do then? Just take care of fine-tuning your text document. With GoSpeech’s online editor, you can easily edit and finalise your text. To this end, additional useful functions such as the recognition of several speakers or dialects and also an individual dictionary are available. The latter ensures that the terms you enter are recognised and directly corrected in the future.
 

A full transcript of the podcast isn’t always necessary – sometimes a summary of the content or an excerpt will suffice. While the first variant briefly presents the material and the essential aspects of the episode, excerpts are used to highlight specific excerpts. In this way, listeners get a good overview of the content of your podcast episode in fast forward mode, so to speak, with the option of listening to specific passages.

Even if both forms do not reproduce the respective podcast episode in full, they are at least suitable for introducing it. This saves you the time and expense of a complete transcription while still allowing you to fully benefit from the advantages of a written version of your podcast mentioned above.

You can also save yourself a lot of trouble here by using a transcription software. With the help of a speech-recognised transcript, you can quickly create a summary of your podcast episodes. And you can use individual text sections of the automatically generated transcripts or also use the generated time stamps for your excerpts.

The podcast format has many advantages with great potential for growth. If podcasters want to be found in the jungle of the worldwide web, however, they have to face the challenge of the search engine. It is worthwhile to make the contents of the podcast available as text as well, therefore. With a transcription of your podcast, you can not only reach more people with your content, but also tap into new target groups and platforms – the perfect way to exploit each and every possibility.

Are you intrigued and considering transcribing your podcast as well? Take the opportunity to test our transcription software GoSpeech for free.

Try GoSpeech now