You’ve just recorded your first (or your 100th!) podcast – congratulations! But did you know that with just a little more effort, you could increase the number of people who listen to it? Podcast transcription can help you expand your reach, find new listeners, and drive new traffic to your website. If you’ve monetized your podcast, that means more money in your pocket, too.
Here’s how podcast transcription can help you:
- Boost your SEO
- Make your podcast searchable
- Help people share your content on social media
- Provide quotable material for media and bloggers
- Improve accessibility for those who are hard of hearing
- Improve the experience for listeners who speak a different language
- Provide excerpts for your listeners
- Make your podcast more professional
- BONUS: Use your content for a future book
1. Boost Your SEO
Search engine optimization or SEO is a fancy term for making sure Google and other search engines can find your website. So, for example, if you have a podcast on woodworking and someone is looking for tips on how to build a rocking chair, they’ll easily find your podcast.
…or will they? Your podcast is an audio or video recording, so Google can’t search it directly. The text on your web page is what affects page ranking most. Google will have a much easier time understanding what your podcast is about if you add a complete podcast transcript. It helps improve the chances that the people who want to find you, will find you. (Plus, Google tends to give higher rankings to pages with more written content, so you win both ways.)
2. Make Your Podcast Searchable
We’ve all done it. You want a vital piece of information from a podcast you heard yesterday (or last week, or last year…) but you can’t remember where it was in the recording. That means seemingly endless scanning the audio back and forth to find the spot.
Podcast transcription eliminates that hassle. Your users simply have to type in the words they remember, and they’ll be able to quickly locate the information.
3. Help People Share Your Content on Social Media
Encouraging people to share your podcast on social media is a great way to get new listeners. However, people often like to add a short comment along with any links they pass along. Providing them with quotable snippets that they can paraphrase or (better yet) cut and paste will help make your podcast more shareable – and help you control what is being said about you.
4. Provide Quotable Material for Media and Bloggers
Similar to #3 above, providing media and bloggers with quotable text will make it easier for them to share. Often, the media writers are pressed for time and will search out the “easy” stories that they can write quickly. Why not make it even easier for them by providing quotable blocks of text? This can be in the form of a full podcast (they can pick the quotes they want), small excerpts, or quotable snippets. You can easily turn your podcast transcript into press releases as well.
5. Improve Accessibility for Listeners Who Are Hard of Hearing
Some of your listeners who are hard of hearing may have difficulty picking out certain words, especially if people are talking over each other as often happens. Podcast transcription will allow them to read any portions of the podcast they have missed. If you have a video podcast, you can turn that transcription into captioning as well.
6. Improve the experience for listeners who speak a different language
If your podcast has a global reach – and with the Internet, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t – it’s important to make it accessible to people who may not speak the language. A podcast transcript gives your international listeners another way to connect with you and better understand the content you’re providing.
7. Provide Excerpts for Your Listeners
Posting a simple podcast link to your page can be pretty barebones. New listeners in particular may be discouraged when they land on your podcast page and see only a link. One way you can beef up the content on your page is to provide an excerpt of the conversation. You can highlight an important point or a particularly exciting or humorous part in your discussion. This will fill out the page, provide listeners more information on what the episode is about, and entice new listeners to download it. Plus, podcast transcription – even an excerpt – gives you the added bonus of improved SEO mentioned above.
8. Make Your Podcast More Professional
With so many competing podcasts out there, it’s important to ensure that yours stands out. One way is to make your podcast look more professional. Think about it this way – which podcast would you trust? A web page that has a simple link to click, or one that has a well-designed layout with excerpts, explanations, and more? A podcast transcript is the first step to added credibility – and will increase the chances new listeners will hit “Play.”
BONUS: Use your content for a future book
Turning you podcast material into a book is a great way to get another stream of income. Some podcasters were experts in their field before they started their podcast. Others become experts over hours and hours of episodes. Either way, your podcast can be the source material for your next book. It is much, much easier if you have podcast transcription for every episode. That way, you can take the text that already exists and reformat it for book form. It also makes it more searchable, so that if you can’t remember every time you mentioned “purple widget manufacturing” over the years, you just have to search your transcriptions and every instance will come up.
Better Podcast Transcription = Better Results
Not all podcast transcription services are alike. Speed, accuracy, readability, and missing blanks are all important considerations. In fact, one podcast transcription can look significantly different from another if there are typos or misunderstandings on the part of your transcription service. Most crucially, you’re less likely to get ranked by Google if you get back “perpul wiget” instead of “purple widget.”
Elite Office Solutions offers a wide range of media transcription services including podcast SEO transcription. With fast turnaround, uncompromising quality, 100% US-based transcriptionists, and Quality Assurance Managers on hand to ensure accuracy, Elite will provide you with top-quality podcast transcription.
Contact Elite Office Solutions today to learn more about our podcast transcription services. Find out why we’re Elite!
