Listening to podcasts has become a popular way to learn, laugh, and relax. Over the last few years, podcasts have become immensely popular.
As a result, it is not surprising that businesses use podcasts to create thought-provoking content.
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What Is a Podcast Transcript?
Transcription is converting an audio file into a readable text file. Transcribers convert recorded audio into readable text that’s easy to consume.
What Can I Do with My Podcast Transcript?
You Get a Lot of Audiences
According to recent studies, millions of Americans enjoy listening to podcasts. Podcast listenership has skyrocketed from 12% to 24% between 2013 and 2017. Moreover, there are no signs of the trend slowing down.
As podcast listeners grow, more and more people cannot access podcast content. This is because podcasts rely on your ears to provide the content.
Deaf and hard-of-hearing listeners face a significant barrier when no supplementary transcripts are available for podcast content.
It is beneficial for your podcast to provide transcripts of its content. It can help you to expand your audience. However, your podcast can also be an inaccessible podcast that cares about its listeners.
You Improve Your SEO
Including a transcript of the text in your podcast can help you get more traffic when you optimize for search engines.
Search engines can now find your podcast content when you transcribe it. It opens up a whole new avenue for traffic. Podcasters are currently struggling to market their content outside of podcasts.
According to estimates, nearly one out of every 20 Americans are deaf or hard of hearing.
We can assume that there are currently 10 million people unaware of deaf-friendly podcasts.
Your podcast has the potential to connect with millions of people. It’s exciting for people to learn of new accessible content, especially if it satisfies their interests or needs like:
- entertainment
- news
- information
You Include Everyone
Most first-time visitors to your podcast will read a transcript to gauge how valuable the content is. Deaf audiences may appreciate this. But, those without hearing impairment would also enjoy the convenience of reading transcripts. It avoids possible distractions and the discomfort of listening.
Your Content Will Be Easier to Share
You can easily share your podcast content across social media if you have transcripts. Quotes and highlights are easier to communicate in text form and have a higher viral potential than images.
How to Transcribe My Podcast
There are many ways to transcribe podcast, but the process can be long and tedious.
Here’s how you can transcribe your podcast.
Human Transcription
Using human transcription gives you the most accurate results. Unlike machines, humans can comprehend the context and spoken sound.
A human would know where to place a comma if your podcast uses the phrase “rather than,” while a machine might not. So, for example, a device might misspell “than” as “done.”
However, it isn’t cheap either. Some transcribers charge by the amount of audio you supply. Others charge by the amount of time it takes them to do the job.
Transcribing audio usually costs between $1 and $2 per minute.
Benefits of Human Transcription
You can use human transcription as the final step. Finally, you can clean and polish your content before presenting it to your audience.
Businesses and brands that need high-quality transcripts should consider human transcription. For example, for podcasts that contain medical or scientific terms, human transcription would be ideal. The results are accurate.
Transcription by humans is slightly more expensive than automation. However, you can avoid costly transcription errors by having someone else go over your content. It can also take a long time to revise automatically-transcribed content. Human transcription can save you time.
When background noise is in the audio, transcripts produced by human ears can distinguish and filter out background noise. As a result, the transcript will be accurate, unlike automated transcription services.
- Transcriptionists are better equipped to deal with different accents and dialects.
- Transcribers are able to distinguish homophones easily.
- A transcriber can identify any number of individual speakers in an audio recording.
- Transcribers are capable of adapting to different templates. They can follow particular guidelines that vary from transcript to transcript.
- The use of verbatim versus non-verbatim is a significant factor as well.
You will get word-for-word transcription with computer software, including verbal nods and fillers. However, people prefer non-verbatim transcripts to follow the conversation quickly.
People who prefer strict verbatim will find automated software unable to record noises like laughter.
The only person who can understand what the different clients want as their end product is a human.
Automated Transcription
Have you ever used Siri, OK Google, or Alexa before? If you did, then you used an automated transcription service.
Automated transcription is a service where speech recognition technology transcribe audio to text.
AI for transcription works in the same way as other AI streams. They use high-quality datasets or examples to get accurate transcripts. The software gets better at building an algorithm with experience accumulated from datasets.
Currently, some of the world’s largest and most innovative AI companies, such as Google and Microsoft, have spent several years improving automated speech-to-text transcription. Yet, their accuracy rate is only about 88 percent.
The Downside of Automated Transcription
AI tools cannot recognize a language’s context because they are based on algorithms. Consequently, there will probably be some errors in the transcription.
In addition to this, the tools might not recognize words from speakers with heavy accents.
Even though speech recognition technologies have improved in recent years, they still have a few flaws:
- It is difficult for AI to determine if there are different speakers, especially if there is a rapid discussion.
- The software can mix up people and places.
- Transcription software can also have difficulty spelling out words in languages other than English.
- AI tools also lack the capability of detecting context, which is a significant problem in their functionality.
Combination
In recent years, automated transcription still needs a human editor despite technological advancements. They review the entire transcript for errors and inconsistencies to achieve 99% accuracy.
A combination of the two transcription services can improve turnaround time and accuracy.
What’s the Best Way to Transcribe My Podcast?
Both manual and automated transcription have their advantages and disadvantages. We just have to choose which factors are worth trading off.
- What is the turnaround time?
- Is this accurate?
- Is it expensive?
It is still essential to check if a transcription service is a good value for money and whether it can fulfill your long-term needs