As a podcaster, your work doesn’t end with simply creating great audio content. You want the episodes to be as discoverable as possible to help grow your audience. One of the ways this can be done is by including transcriptions on your website with your podcast episodes. There are a number of benefits that come with publishing podcast transcriptions, but some important potential caveats as well. So, should you transcribe your podcast?
The Difference Between Transcriptions and Show Notes
Transcripts are a verbatim, word-for-word text version of your podcast audio. Each word the host and guests say on the show is notated, and then this text is published on your podcast’s website.
Show notes, on the other hand, are a summarized text version of the episode. Show notes can take a variety of formats and include bullet points, teasers, plus other useful information such as links to resources mentioned in the episode. They are posted on the podcast website as well as displayed on the various directories such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.
Transcription Benefits
One of the top benefits of transcribing your podcast episodes is search engine optimization, or SEO.
Since search engines use text to help determine relevant results for users, having your podcast episodes transcribed helps ensure the audio content is fully searchable, as opposed to only having show notes. The goal is to have this content help you rank even higher in search results.
Another benefit of transcribing your podcast is accessibility. Those with difficulty hearing can benefit from your podcast’s content by reading the text if they are unable to hear.
You may find transcripts useful internally during the editing process as well.
How Transcribe Your Podcast Episodes
There are a plethora of options for transcribing your podcast episodes. Services like Sonix.ai and Otter.ai are a couple of the many AI-based services where a computer generates the transcript with no human intervention. You can even use Zapier and other tools to easily integrate transcriptions to your workflow. Think about having your editor drop a finished podcast episode in Dropbox, then a transcript being loaded automatically for your VA to publish.
Although the automated services are getting better by the day, they’re not perfect. The cleaner the audio, the more accurate the transcriptions will be. However, you’ll still have to read through and make some manual edits if you want the transcription to be perfect. We have seen some hilarious close-calls of AI typos nearly getting published!
If accuracy is crucial, you can try human-based options like Rev.com or Fiverr.com. Of course, the cost and time required for this is much higher than the automated transcription, which can be a barrier for many podcasters.
Usually, it’s the high profile podcasts which publish both transcriptions and show notes with each episode. But transcriptions are becoming more widespread, especially due to the discussion around accessibility. If your budget doesn’t allow for transcribing at this time, simply focus on creating great SEO-friendly show notes.
It’s also worth mentioning that some platforms, like YouTube, are already providing automatic transcripts. Spotify is introducing this feature as well. And Apple Podcasts also now provides automated transcripts. It’s also worth noting that as podcasting evolves, ways of providing a transcript of your own are coming to life so you don’t need to rely on the automatic versions.
How We Can Help
At East Coast Studio, we can streamline your entire podcast workflow. Simply upload your recorded audio to us, and receive back quality show notes, audiograms, transcriptions, and more. We can even upload and publish your podcast episodes, making your podcasting life easy! Book a no-pressure call with us today.