Welcome to Podcasting Q&A,
brought to you by the people at Buzzsprout.
I'm your host, Kara Pasetti,
and I'm bringing you the best tips and strategies
to keep you podcasting with confidence.
This is a super exciting episode
because today we are not tackling one question,
but three questions,
and we are talking all about podcast transcripts.
The questions we'll be answering today are,
how do I transcribe my episodes?
Why are transcripts so important?
And how do I get my transcripts in front of my listeners?
Transcribing your podcast means turning the spoken audio
from your episodes into written text.
And while this may just seem like one extra step
in your podcast production process,
transcripts can actually be one of the most valuable
additions to your podcast workflow.
Since this is a new step in your podcast workflow,
let's talk about how we do it, the logistics.
Good news is, if you are hosted here on Buzzsprout,
we make this even easier than ever.
If you are on any of our current Buzzsprout plans,
we will automatically transcribe your episodes for you
using high fidelity transcripts.
So every time you upload your audio files into Buzzsprout,
a transcript will automatically be generated for you
and available to you right inside of your account.
So this is a super exciting feature, super easy to use,
and makes it really easy to transcribe your episodes.
Now, if you're not hosted here on Buzzsprout,
there are some other options out there for you.
Descript is a great all-in-one option
for not only recording and editing your episodes,
but also transcribing them.
They will provide a high fidelity transcript as well
that you can use, and you can edit those transcripts
directly on their site.
The last option I wanna share is,
for those who aren't looking for an all-in-one service,
but they only wanna focus on transcribing
their audio episodes, I recommend checking out
otter.ai or rev.com.
These are gonna be great sources for transcription-only services.
So now that we know how easy it is to have a transcription
for your episodes, why do we even need them?
One benefit of transcribing your episodes
is that it's actually a very thoughtful way
to serve your listeners.
If you think about it, not everyone can easily listen
Some people are hard of hearing,
and others may just simply prefer to read
instead of listening to your episodes,
and so providing a transcript allows more people
to engage with your content,
which ultimately helps you to reach an even wider audience.
Transcripts also help your podcast show up and search results.
So when you publish a transcript on your podcasting website,
search engines suddenly have thousands of words of text
that they can index for each of your episodes.
This means there's an opportunity to discover your podcast
when people are searching the topics you've discussed,
the questions you've answered,
or even specific phrases mentioned in your episodes.
This discoverability piece of your podcast is done using SEO
or search engine optimization.
If you wanna know more SEO tips
and how you can sharpen that tool,
Send us a text using the text, the show link,
and I'd love to just highlight and dive deep into SEO
in the podcasting space on a future podcasting Q&A episode.
But for now, I am going to include our blog post
on SEO tips in the show notes below.
Another maybe hidden benefit of transcribing your episodes
that I think is a little bit underrated
is the use of transcripts to repurpose content.
Using your transcripts, you already have written words.
So when it comes to creating content like blog posts,
social media quotes that you're sharing, newsletters,
maybe you're creating episode summaries,
this is already done for you
because you have everything you said
during your episode in written form.
And so it makes content creation
and content sharing much easier.
In addition to that, if you have your transcription
for your episode in front of you while you're making edits,
it's very easy to follow along
and sometimes reading the words
can really point out if you are speaking out of turn
or maybe you could have said something better.
I find that if I'm reading my transcript
while I'm making edits to my audio episode,
So that's a little pro tip
if you want to take that and give it a try.
The last piece in all of this is
how do I get my transcripts in front of my listeners?
So when you're hosted on Buzzsprout,
your transcripts are included in your podcasting website
and specifically on your episode page.
So when your listener is listening to the episode,
they can be reading right along with your transcript too.
We will also include your transcript in your RSS feeds.
So any of the listening directories
that support transcripts will include the transcripts
Most directories will show the transcript
alongside the episode descriptions.
I know that for Apple Podcasts,
when you're using the Apple Podcast mobile app,
you can actually follow along
and the transcript will be presented as closed captioning.
As you speak, you'll see the transcript play out
on your mobile device.
It's actually a very eloquent and pretty look
and they also will show the static text
when viewing the podcast on their desktop app.
Keep in mind, while we can guarantee
that your transcripts have been added to your RSS feeds,
it is totally up to the directories
how they choose to display that information on their end.
If you have your own podcasting website,
then you can actually get your episode transcripts
in front of your listeners by adding your transcript
along your episodes to that website.
So you can use the Buzzsprout embed players
to go ahead and embed your episodes on your personal website.
And then you can copy and paste your episode transcripts
just below the embed player
to make a wonderful listening experience
for your listeners to follow along with your episodes.
In your Buzzsprout account,
you'll see a small link icon next to your transcripts.
This will provide you with a URL
that contains a full plain text transcription
So this benefit makes it super easy to copy and paste
into your website editing platform.
If you have any questions about transcribing your episodes,
you know we have a full team here
that's ready to answer them.
Just shoot us an email at supportatbuzzsprout.com
and we'd love to help you with that.
I'd love to answer any of your questions
about podcasting or transcribing your episodes
on a future podcasting Q&A episode.
So send us your questions by clicking
the send us a text link in the show notes
and let us know what's on your mind.
Be sure to join us every Monday to kickstart your week.
Thank you so much for listening.
And as always, keep podcasting.
