Podcasts have gained much popularity in recent years. Most of us love reading. Due to the hectic lifestyle, time does not always allow doing it. Businesses and individuals have been using platforms to share exciting and engaging content. If you are still not one of them, read this article to know which benefits you can get from podcasts and how to arrange them.
Reasons for turning the content into transcription
Transcription is the method of turning a spoken speech into readable content in screenplay format. Aside from convenience for reading fans, audio to text transcription brings several significant benefits:
- People love podcasts. eMarketer, a company providing insights and trends of digital marketing, media, and commerce, reports: the community of podcasts listeners is worldwide and has already gathered 383.7 million people by 2021.
Thanks to covering a broad scope of subjects, people find the most interesting content easily on world-famous platforms. Millions of individuals and organizations use voice recordings to text to transcribe interviews, world news, educational content, literature, and many more. BBC journalists and ordinary bloggers expand their audience using accessible podcasts, engaging people with hearing disabilities.
- SEO optimization. Responsible for the growing quality and quantity of traffic, SEO assists in increasing the visibility of websites on search engines. Searchable keywords placed on the site with your podcast with an episode description help find your audio quickly in the ocean of content on the global network. Having a brilliant podcast without popping up in the search results makes almost no sense. SEO works excellently for making an audience from scratch. Since people with disabilities are a large group of people, you have no chance to engage them without converting audio to text.
- The convenience of quick reading. The text allows looking through the content quickly to estimate if the included information is necessary. Audio urges people to listen to it from the beginning to the end to understand the context. Naturally, the text version is more appreciated by listeners since it saves much time.
- Texts are easy-to-share. Parts of podcasts divided into quotes, highlights, or interviews are convenient to spread in social networks. They are open to comments, which motivates the author to generate more ideas for podcasts based on the audience’s feedback. Hence, the text version increases the viral felicity of audio content.
- Easiness of work with text files. When audio includes lots of data, figures, and other essential numbers, evaluating it is impossible without visual arrangements. The vital pieces of text are convenient to highlight. Excellent for the detailed perscrutation transcription prevents losing the slightest detail said in the audio.
- Tech convenience. Creating a text version allows attracting the audience who may experience some audio technical problems or traveling in a noisy environment without a pair of good headsets. Text is available whenever you can turn on your gadget. It takes less storage space, which is especially valuable for those who regularly sustain a lack of it.
- Engaging reading audience. Despite a wide circle of people who enjoyed podcasts, the group of people who prefer reading remains. With audio files only, they will never pay attention to your content even if it is super exciting and matches their interests just because they love to read. There are also such groups as heavy podcasts listeners and mind listeners. For instance, the research data of Nielsen, the global leader in audience insights, data, and analytics, explain that the heaviest podcast listeners (over 36 million) use them while being away from home. Nevertheless, the percentage of the light user remains. With the content transcribed, you cover all groups of listeners.
- Digital marketing assistance. Transcripts help generate blog content for related topics, and using it for various marketing campaigns and newsletters is possible thanks to text. Making transcription a part of digital marketing helps to generate focus groups. Transcription is live-saving for each marketer to gauge the target audience and deliver services and products addressed to the needs and wants of the target audience, creating more powerful social posts.
- Language translation. The text version of a podcast is convenient to translate into multiple languages. That is especially appropriate for multinational educational materials, world news, seminars, interviews, and websites intended for multilingual media content websites.
All in all, the benefits from transcription are pointful if you plan to win Internet popularity and make your hobby or professional activity grow.
Free ways to transcribe a podcast
Nowadays, technologies allow receiving free transcription. It matches excellently for those who want to transcribe audio without significant expenses. Have a look at the list of free transcription services:
- Google Recorder. This application for smartphones allows audio transcription simultaneously with recording a podcast. Whichever recording software you use, turn on Google Recorder. The microphone will pick up the audio during the speech, recording the transcribed words automatically. Stop it when finishing the audio recording and save the transcribed file for sharing or storing in Google Drive. With this application, no fuss with searching a particular word in the spoken speech is needed. Search the word in via the search function in the application. Since this app was developed originally for the Google Pixel 4 series, using the app without Android OS might be risky and cause potential malware issues.
- Google Docs Voice Typing. This Chrome tool is available for running during live video conferences or any video or audio recordings you may have. As soon as you start transcription, turn on the microphone icon, do not close or leave the Google Docs page. Otherwise, the feature stop functioning. For clearly speaking speech, this tool will do a good job. Once mumbling or non-clear speech occurs, the transcription quality will be worse. Moreover, expect to edit the document since the result will not include punctuations. Hence, Google Docs transcription is free but not accurate.
- YouTube Transcripts. YouTube generics captions automatically most of the videos after uploading using Speech Recognition technology. All you should do is enable captions. The service highlights the words with possibly wrong transcription to make editing convenient and quick. However, YouTube transcripts are not accurate, and correction may be time-consuming. YouTube settings allow both auto-generated transcripts and manually captioned videos.
- Transcription via Zoom. Enable transcription in the settings and start recording a podcast. When the record is ready, Zoom informs about it in email. Clicking the link allows access to recording and editing.
- DIY. To avoid the expenses for transcription, you can always do it manually by yourself without any programs. To measure the approximate time you will spend for this process, multiply the length of audio three-five times. The slow-down feature is probably the one tool that can ease this tedious process.
On the Internet, you can find plenty of transcription programs on a free and paid basis (Inqscribe, The FTW Transcriber, and others). Most of them allow free transcription of short audio (e.g., up to 45 minutes) with further per minute payment.
Paid ways to transcribe a podcast
When having a massive flow of podcasts, you barely have time for editing, which usually takes plenty of time. The best solution is hiring professional transcriptionists. Unfortunately, not every program can recognize narrowly specified terminology and provide clear text when a record has sound distortions. Only human transcription guarantees 100% of podcast correction. The editing and proofreading are part of the transcription service. As a result, you get the grammatically correct clear text without punctuational errors. It is ready for downloading to social networks or even publishing.
Summing Up
Transcription is an internal part of a promotion on the Internet. A professional approach to your podcasts will make your voice heard in every corner of the planet. You will significantly broaden the circle of your listeners, compensating your time and efforts for podcast recording, generating the target audience, and matching their needs.
For weighty blogs and professional usage, transcription specialists are essential. However, voice-to-text software from global leaders will help you to do this. Try this process if you have enough time for it.
Transcription will make a positive impact on your content Regardless of the method. It will engage people and spread your thoughts worldwide.
