The number of people who listen to podcasts has changed dramatically throughout the years. With the podcast market expected to surge to $132.45 billion by 2032, these podcast channels are now excellent and popular platforms for sharing information, voicing opinions, and entertaining. Due to surging demands, these modern content creators are looking for ways to improve accessibility—and podcast transcription is the way to do it.
In this article, you’ll learn how:
- Transcripts make podcasts accessible to people with hearing difficulties and those who prefer reading while allowing search engines like Google to index your content since they cannot index audio.
- Transcripts allow listeners to navigate the podcast on their terms, revisit key points, or share impactful quotes while aiding different learning styles.
- Transcripts can be repurposed into blog posts, social media posts, or downloadable PDFs, potentially attracting new audiences and expanding your reach.
What are Podcast Transcriptions?
Podcast transcription is the process of converting an audio episode into a written text document—the transcript. This transcript is in article-like format, which makes the content easily indexed by search engines and searchable by people.
Podcast transcripts allow your audience to follow along easily, access important sections, and absorb insights more thoroughly. They also make episodes more accessible for different learning styles and use functionalities like copying impactful quotes to share on social media for engagement.
Podcast Contents That Require Accurate Transcriptions
Here are some quick examples of types of podcasts that can greatly benefit from transcription:
| Podcast Type | Reason for High Accuracy |
| Educational Podcasts (Science, History, Law, etc.) | Ensure listeners grasp complex topics and retain technical information for future reference. Inaccurate details can lead to misunderstandings of important concepts. |
| Legal Podcasts | Guarantee listeners understand the intricacies of legal information and jargon. Inaccurate transcriptions could have serious consequences if used for legal reference. |
| Medical Podcasts | Facilitate precise understanding of medical concepts and terminology. This is vital for healthcare professionals relying on the information and for patients seeking accurate details. |
| Research Podcasts | Enable researchers and others to meticulously analyze new findings and data presented. Inaccurate transcriptions could hinder proper evaluation and replication of research. |
| Financial Podcasts | Ensure listeners correctly understand financial advice and data. Misinformation in transcripts could lead to poor financial decisions. |
| Business Podcasts | Guarantee clear understanding of specific strategies, processes, and best practices discussed. Inaccurate details could lead to implementation issues. |
| Historical Podcasts | Preserve precise details of historical events and figures for accurate understanding of the past. Inaccurate information can distort historical narratives. |
| Interview Podcasts | Capture the speaker’s full intent, including subtle cues in tone and phrasing that can impact the meaning. This is especially crucial for interviews with experts or when discussing sensitive topics. |
Benefits of Podcast Transcription
Adding transcriptions alongside your podcast opens up many opportunities. Audio-to-text conversion makes content easily discoverable through search engines—the bread and butter of modern marketing. And hey, this benefit is just one of many. Let’s look at some of the major benefits, shall we?
Transcribing Podcasts Boosts Your SEO
As promised, let’s get on SEO.
One of the reasons why you should transcribe your podcast is so that search engines like Google can discover your content and make it an answer to a search query.
You can optimize your search engine by making episodes discoverable through listening and written content. Currently, search engines like Google can’t index podcast audio, and it’s likely to stay that way for a while.
Transcriptions of your podcasts published on your website allow search engines to crawl, analyze, and rank, which can attract more viewership. With transcripts, you also benefit from having long-tail keywords in your content without stuffing your metadata and risking it looking like an incomprehensible mix of buzzwords.
However, search engines are sensitive to spelling, grammar, paragraph structure, etc. Therefore, it is highly recommended that expert humans edit the podcast transcriptions as they have higher accuracy rates than automated services.
Boosts Podcast’s Accessibility
Roughly 505 million people listen to podcasts worldwide, while about 5% of the population have debilitating hearing loss. Accessibility in podcasts is the only way your content can reach the widest audience possible and ensure everyone can absorb and enjoy it. Transcripts and captions can remove barriers and allow many people to engage with your show.
Plus, accessibility benefits not just those with disabilities but everyone, as there are also people who prefer reading over listening, are in noisy environments, or have short attention spans (mainly the young‘uns). Then there’s also the obvious benefit of allowing non-native speakers who prefer reading over listening to access your content.
Providing this accessibility measure allows more individuals to engage with the podcast based on their needs and preferences.
Get Maximum User Engagement
Supplementing your podcast episodes with transcriptions allows your listeners to engage with the content on their own terms fully.
For instance, readers can easily scan for passages, understand complex points through re-reading, or simply follow along. In simple terms, podcast transcription can help you get more engagement and boost your audience’s comprehension in many ways.
Studies have also shown that captions can increase views by 40%, and 80% of these viewers are likelier to stay to the end of the video.
With expanded accessibility and greater engagement, your content can stand a better chance of creating deeper connections with your audience. This can foster a greater sense of community within your circles, creating brand loyalty over the long run.
Simplify Content Repurposing
If you’re a content creator, you probably know that posting content on different platforms is one of the best strategies to expand your audience. Guess what? Podcast transcription allows you to repurpose some parts of the content from your episodes.
You can excerpt quotes, statistics, and discussions for social media posts or compile insights into a blog article or visual graphic. This will help you get the most out of your content and amplify your message distribution to new audiences.
How To Transcribe Podcasts
Most people will tell you that there are two ways to transcribe your podcast episodes. There are actually three: using AI, DIY manual transcription, and professional transcription services. Let’s take a look at what each one can offer.
Using AI-Powered Automatic Transcription
Automated transcription uses artificial intelligence. It’s the quickest way to convert audio into text at the moment. And with AI being all the rage, it sounds like the best solution, doesn’t it?
However, there’s quite a gap between AI and professionals when it comes to transcription accuracy. One can better interpret context and nuances, while the other gets confused with background, heavy accents, sarcasm, humor, and more—you know which one.
Furthermore, AI transcriptions are only 86% accurate at best. It’s fine if you’re feeding the AI with studio-quality audio and only one person is talking. But let’s face it, how often does that happen?
If you are fine with “almost accurate” transcripts, then by all means. And, if you don’t have the luxury of sitting for hours on end combing through transcripts (you know, like the rest of content creators out there), human transcribers are your best option.
DIY Manual Transcription
Creating podcast transcripts yourself is easy – if you have plenty of time. However, it takes an untrained person as much as 10 minutes to transcribe 1 minute of audio. That might now sound like much; however, at that rate, it would take 10 hours to transcribe a 60-minute transcription. I don’t know about you, but that’s a long time.
The process starts with gathering an audio player, a comfortable pair of headphones, a quality foot pedal, and a computer to create a document. Then, the podcast dialogue’s meticulous relistening, rewinding, and typing begins.
Outsource To Professional Transcription Services
Having an experienced transcriptionist create your podcast transcriptions saves time while ensuring accurate, polished results. This is the most practical option since transcription companies provide dedicated professionals with transcription tools and are trained in podcast transcription.
Ditto Transcripts guarantees more than 99% accuracy for all podcast transcription jobs. The perks don’t end there, we also offer a wide range of advantages you can’t get with competitors.
Why Choose Ditto Transcribe Your Podcast Episodes?
Enhance your podcasts with our transcription and captioning services, and enjoy benefits such as:
- Accuracy: We guarantee 99% accuracy in every transcription project. All you have to do is focus on creating amazing podcast episodes, and we’ll transcribe them flawlessly – the first time.
- Human Expertise: Our team isn’t filled with robots—though they’ve become pretty good at making us coffee. We have professional transcriptionists who understand the subtlety of multiple speakers or the technical jargon. They’ll create transcripts that will reflect the natural flow of your conversation.
- Security: Podcast episodes aren’t created equal; we understand that some may contain sensitive information. For that reason, Ditto Transcripts is HIPAA, CJIS, and FINRA compliant. You can sleep well at night knowing that your content is secured with us.
- Affordability: For many content creators, podcasting can be a financial investment, and we acknowledge that. We offer high-quality transcription services that won’t break the bank. We have options to fit any budget without sacrificing a single bit of quality.
- 24/7 Customer Service: Our customer service isn’t fulfilled by chatbots—we’re all humans here. We take the time to understand your requirements and will gladly assist you with technicalities or answer any questions.
- Customizability: Our transcription services aren’t just about accuracy—they’re also about meeting the client’s requirements. Do you need a verbatim transcript that captures every “um” and “uh”? Or do you need a polished version for a blog post? We can modify the transcript to satisfy your needs and ensure you get exactly what you need to reach your goals.
Make Your Podcast Transcripts With Us
Do you need help transcribing your podcast? Worry not—Ditto Transcripts has your back. Our human transcribers (seriously, not robots) have the experience to turn your audio into easy-to-read transcripts—the ones that search engines can understand.
Experience high accuracy, reach more listeners, and free up your time to create meaningful podcast episodes by letting us handle the transcripts. What are you waiting for? Call us, and experience the Ditto difference.
Ditto Transcripts is a Denver, Colorado-based transcription company that provides fast, accurate, and affordable transcription services for businesses of all sizes. Call (720) 287-3710 today for a free quote, and ask about our free five-day trial.
