Why Transcripts are essential for podcasts

How many of you love to spend watching shows hosted by some famous people or hear some podcasts during your commute to work? As time goes on, the podcasts that were once digital audio files have developed visually that are supported by various apps like Spotify or YouTube. 

And the reason behind the rising trend of visual podcasts are increased competition, branding, engagement and monetization. Along with this, there is another trend that has been used in these podcasts and that is - Transcripts, which are helping in scaling up and growing the audience. Wondering how? If you're a new podcaster or a listener to the podcasts who has no idea about how these transcripts work for you, this blog is just for you.

What are podcasts? 

First thing first, let’s just have a quick brief about the podcast. A podcast is a program that used to consist of a series of episodes of digital audio files. Nowadays, some of the platforms have been upgraded to include the video formats of these podcasts, leading to the increasing sensation of the visual podcast among the younger generation which are known as ‘ vodcasts’. These podcasts and vodcasts cover various genres such as comedy, tech, pop culture, thus hooking in the audiences of all different age groups. 

Let’s see some of the stats of about podcast usage:

• More than 546 million people are listening to podcasts globally, and this industry is expected to grow by $94.88 billion by 2028.

• 84% of Gen Z listeners consume podcasts through video. 

• An average listener listens to seven hours of podcasts a week.

As you got an introduction about the podcasts, let’s dive into the transcription of podcasts.

Podcasts Transcriptions

So, what exactly are podcast transcripts? These are basically transcriptions of the audio. 

To know more about the transcription, check out our blog What are Transcriptions? 

In a simple way, these transcripts are a document that includes word to word of all dialogues/audio spoken throughout the podcast episode.

Why should you create transcripts for the podcast?

Well, the transcripts are not just writing of an audio but they come with a huge number of benefits. And here goes the details of those benefits: 

1. Transcripts enhance the accessibility of your podcast

According to WHO, about 5% of the world population suffer from hearing impairment. Since the podcast comes under audio content, this shows that a significant portion of people in the world are not able to access the podcast due to their impairment, which means losing a potential number of the audience of your podcast. 

Incorporating transcripts helps these populations to access your podcast, thereby increasing your reach and followers. 

Besides, there are non-native speakers who aren’t able to access the podcast due to language barrier. Let’s just take the example of India, which is rich in languages. If your podcast is in Hindi, and the listener only knows Telugu, these transcripts will surely come in handy for them!

2. Transcripts is equal to increased SEO and visibility

Search engines like Google can’t hear or see your video but surely it can read the text. This is why transcripts are used which help the search engines to crawl and index your videos. 

Transcripts basically consist of keywords. So, when people search something random in these search engines, if these keywords match with their search, this will cause the search engine to pop up your video. In other words, transcripts help your podcast’s searchability and visibility to people, increasing your views. 

3. Transcripts provide backlinks and references

As you know, a sea of data is entered everyday, and it’s important to find a way to improve the visibility of your podcast. 

Most people think transcripts help in SEO through the keywords. But there’s more to it. Another way it improves the SEO is through the backlinks and references.

Let’s just take an instance that your podcast is about some research about health and fitness. Most of the bloggers and researchers who are in need of such information wouldn’t have the time to go through the entire episode just to get specific information from the podcast. 

This is where transcripts come into play which helps them to access the specific part, and allows them to link back to posts, blogs or cite it in the research papers, allowing your videos to have more impressions.

Along with this, the search bots see these backlinks and references, and help to pop your video more to audiences thinking your work deserves to be shown to more people.

4. Transcripts and social media

Let’s not forget the transcripts' role in social media. Sharing your snippets and some featured quotes helps in less scrubbing and speeds up the process of finding any sensational information in your podcast, driving traffic to your podcast channel.

5. Repurposing your content 

Transcripts allow you to repurpose your content, allowing you to create blogs, articles or social media posts. This is especially concentrated towards the people who prefer text over audio. Additional sources like infographics and e-books can be generated using these transcripts. Thus, all types of content from a single podcast just by using transcripts. Cool, isn’t it?

6. Transcriptions and revenue generation

Last but not the least, the podcasts have to generate revenue. As we knew, the revenue is primarily generated through advertisements. 

Transcripts helps you to generate more views and impressions, thereby indirectly helps you to get more advertisements and thereby generating revenue. 

Wondering how these transcripts help you in revenue? Let’s look into it:

• Transcripts acts as a medium to highlight your sponsored podcasts, thereby increasing visibility of your sponsor.

• Transcripts can be an added value to your premium subscription models, allowing listeners to invest into your content.

• Video monetization through e-books can be an added advantage to revenue.

How to generate podcasts transcripts?

There are three ways to generate transcripts for your podcast which are:

1. AI Transcriptions: There are many apps that help you to generate transcripts for your podcasts. They are user friendly and time saving. But these transcripts are not accurate and often you might need to spend a lot of time correcting those mistakes. If you’re someone who needs transcripts at the last minute, this can be your lifesaver.

2. Manual Transcriptions: These transcriptions are done solely by oneself. But generating and editing all the transcripts on top of all shooting, editing the podcasts might drain your energy. Hence, these are recommended to those people - with infinite energy and lots of time!

3. Outsourcing: Professional transcription services are available which helps provide you with transcripts which saves your time and lessens your workload. 

Why choose Textar over other services?

Well, if you’re confused about choosing a transcription service for outsourcing, how about you check out the benefits of choosing Textar’s services? 

• Accuracy: Textar with more than 20 years of experience knows how much accuracy matters. All you have to do is send your podcast and we give you the perfect quality of transcripts.

• Human and AI intervention: AI is quick but its quality is questionable. But what if human accuracy combines with AI power to give you the seamless and quick delivery of work? This is what the Textar foundation stands on!

• Customization: Have you said too many ‘uhm’,‘haa’ in your podcast? Don’t want it while providing transcripts? Or do you need to add something in the transcripts to make it a perfect sentence? Let’s do it according to your needs. 

• Economical: Our work is perfect but you don’t need to worry about the prices. Our prices are economical 

• Fast delivery: Need your transcripts within a day? Do not worry when Textar can provide you timely delivery as per your demand. 

So, what are you waiting for? Contact us at sales@timbel.net to get your transcripts for your podcasts.