The Best Way To Transcribe Audio Podcasts To Text
Nov 16, 2017
Last week I was at the GoDaddy offices in Scottsdale, Arizona to talk all about podcasting with my friend, Heather Dopson. Not only do I love seeing Heather, but I love to educate small business owners all about the value of podcasting for their business. To get an idea of what we talk about, you can watch the video below.
Some of the best discussion that happens is usually behind-the-scenes and it was on this particular day that one of Heather's friends brought up a valid point about podcasters and transcription services.
Just before we were about to start, one of Heather's colleagues popped his head in to say hi and introduced himself to me. When he found out I did podcasting, he asked me, "Why don't podcasters have their podcast transcribed and put on their website. Don't they know the value of SEO benefits if they have their podcast transcribed?"
Well, he's right and this is a drum that I have been beating upon deaf podcaster ears for a long time.
I know what you're thinking: "My podcast is 30 minutes to an hour and there's no way I'm going to sit and write out all of the words that were said in my podcast interview!"
Time to introduce transcription services But first...
3 REASONS TO TRANSCRIBE YOUR PODCAST AUDIO
- Repurposing audio into text can be turned into a blog post
- Blog posts are a great way for Google to crawl your site and have your podcast discovered. SEO power, baby!
- Transcriptions are great to have in the case of creating an e-book later down the line.
Transcription services are really going to be all about your philosophy and how you want your content to appear online. You may tell yourself, "I want my content to be exclusive to audio only," whereas other people will happily get their audio transcribed to turn content into more content.
WHICH TRANSCRIPTION SERVICES TO USE
- REV - http://www.rev.com
A transcription service where you can dictate into your phone and have it transcribed for $1 per minute. You can also upload pieces of your podcast audio, send it off to the service and an actual human will transcribe it for you.
Human transcribers differentiate the audio speaker from one person to the next.
Depending on the length of the transcription, you can usually have a file returned within 12 hours. My YouTube video transcriptions typically take less than an hour.
I understand that this is a service that costs money, but I'd rather free up my time to create a better podcast than to sit and type out a transcription for a blog post.
2. Temi - http://www.temi.com
A sister service to Rev.
Podcasters can upload your audio to their service for .10 cents per minute.
This service has no human interaction and is all transcribed through their automated technology.
**NOTE** When you receive transcriptions for your podcast, the text may not be as accurate as you would get if you use Rev. Rev actually has humans transcribing your audio.
If you're doing a weekly blog and you have a little bit of extra money where it's going to save you the time use either of these services.
DIY TRANSCRIPTIONS WITH GOOGLE DOCS
I don't know if you knew this, but Google Docs has a function under the TOOLS menu called, Voice Typing.
This is basically dictation, but it's free with Google.
All you need is a microphone and patience. Just let Google do the rest for you. Watch the video at the bottom of this post to give you an idea of how to use Google Voice Typing for yourself.
One question you may have is, "Can I upload audio to Google Voice Typing?"
No.
I like to think of Google Voice Typing as a means to flesh out ideas and get ideas out of my head and onto paper.
Google Voice Typing can become a bit laborious, so if you're not about sitting in front of your computer to create a blog post and want to save time, your best bet is to dictate your ideas into your voice memo app on your phone and send it off to Rev or Temi.
Leave a comment down below and let me know if you're transcribing your audio into text for your blog.
