If you have your own podcast or radio show, you may not have thought about producing transcripts of your content. Transcription is the translation of audio into text. This audio can be a single radio host speaking, or any number of guests having a conversation.
Although the process of transcribing may seem boring and painstaking, there are plenty of reasons to produce transcripts of your show. This guide will talk you through some of the benefits of transcribing and how you can do it.
Users Who Are Hard of Hearing Can Enjoy Transcribed Content
If your content is audio (or even video) only, this can mean that potential listeners who are deaf or hard of hearing can be excluded. There are around 10 million people in the US who are either deaf or hard of hearing, which is a twentieth of the population! Do you actually want to lose a twentieth of your potential listening audience? Providing transcripts on your site can help these users to engage with your content. Even people without hearing issues may choose to read a bit of your content first before they decide to subscribe to your show.
Search Engine Optimization is Improved
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of optimizing the written text on your website so that your site shows up higher on search engine results pages. Search engines like Google are not (at the moment, at least!) advanced enough to incorporate words that have been spoken and recorded into these results. Including transcripts on your site can boost it up the results pages for search terms that your transcripts include and therefore increase the traffic to your site.
Transcripts are Great for Social Media Marketing
Using social media to market your podcast or radio show is one of the most essential ways to recruit listeners these days. Even if you are broadcasting on a traditional AM or FM radio station, social media still offers you a huge market of potential listeners, and most stations have a social media page.
Having transcripts of your shows available makes it easier for you to include interesting and appealing quotes from the show in your social media posts. These can be shared among users and may even go viral if you’re lucky.
Transcription is Easier Than Ever Before
You may think of transcription as a lengthy and dull process of manually typing out each word of your podcast. Doesn’t exactly sound appealing, does it? This is the main obstacle for most people, although thankfully, there is technology available that can do this for you! Many companies offer transcription and video and audio captioning services at affordable prices.
Transcription Offers Futureproofing
Sometimes unfortunate and unforeseen events can result in an irreversible loss of data. Even if you back up your episodes in cloud storage, nothing is 100% safe and secure. In the event of a power cut, your archive will still be inaccessible. However, if you create transcripts and print them, you can make sure that there is at least written record of your content for the future!
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