Why you should transcribe audio files to text files?

Grow your audience by transcribing your audio content

No matter what you do in life, I am sure you know how good it feels when in the evening you’ve achieved all the goals you have set for that day. Hopefully, most of the times, you will even have some spare time only for yourself. It is well known that achieving smaller goals can lead to achieving bigger ones and it is really important to define our goals at the beginning and to know what we want in life.

If you are a content creator, you probably already know all the steps that need to be taken to accomplish your business goals. During that process, you need to find ways how to get more things done with minimum effort. We can help you with that by offering you our transcription services. Transcriptions are written documents of a speech or audio record. You can, for example, transcribe interviews, webinars, meetings etc. In this article, we will try to show you why transcriptions are important and how you can benefit from them.

Are audio records enough?

Never in human history more audio content was produced than in the last ten years. Audiobooks, and especially podcasts are extremely popular. Here, we are basically talking about on-demand radio. The offer is immense and everyone can find something for themselves. While you are commuting to work you are most likely enjoying your favorite podcast or listening to some other audio content of your choice. But we are sure that there are also times when listening to audio content is unfortunately not an option: you forgot your headphones, you are at work, the internet connection is bad or maybe you are having hearing problems etc. Wouldn’t it be great that in cases like these you have the option of reading the audio files you normally listen to? Wouldn’t a transcription be useful in those cases?

Some podcasts are already offering transcriptions of their audio files and if you are a content creator you might want to consider doing that as well. We will list you some benefits that you will experience if you decide to transcribe your audio files. All of them will make it possible for more people to enjoy the content you created. Interested? Let’s start!

1. Transcription makes your content more accessible

If you are creating content, of course you want it to be accessible for as many people as possible, i.e. if you are a podcaster you want people to listen to your podcast. So, let’s just start with the ones who can’t! Approximately 15% of American adults (37.5 million people) aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing. That means that they actually depend on transcripts to be able to access various audio content, and this includes your podcast. The fact is, podcasts are a type of digital media that is yet to be made fully accessible and that accessibility rests on the awareness and willingness of podcast producers. Just by transcribing, by doing this small step, your podcast is becoming all-inclusive, making it possible for everyone in the community, no matter their disability, to listen to your podcast. By doing that you as a podcast creator are sending out a message that every single person in your audience matters and that everyone is important. In the same time, you are growing your audience. Just think about it: 37.5 million people isn’t a small number of potential listeners. 

2. Transcription improves your SEO

Transcripts are very helpful for content creators in terms of SEO (search engine optimization). What does that mean? It means that if you want to make your podcast more visible and easier to find on Google and increase the quantity of website traffic, transcribing your audio content will help you. The fact is that Google can’t recognize audio recordings which don’t have any transcripts. So, if you want to make sure that your audio file is easier to find among the vast amount of content on the internet, you would benefit from a transcription, because it lets Google know exactly what content the audio recording contains. People who search for terms you mention in your audio record will be able to find your audio file via Google. Conclusion: If you are serious about spreading the content you create; you should take transcriptions into consideration. They will make your audio content easily searchable.

Transcriptions make it easier to repurpose content

Content creators are always looking for ways to maximize their efforts. Why not use your audio recordings for other forms of content as well. If you decide to make a transcription of your audio recording, you can easily use the content from the audio file and create something new out of it. Here are just some just some ideas how you might benefit from that.

• If you for example were a speaker at a conference, you can just transcribe your presentation and turn it into a blog article. That way you are enhancing the ideas you were mentioning at the conference.
• We are sure that there are members of your audience, who simply don’t have time to listen to your whole podcast episode (which might last for an hour or more). For them, you can simply provide an easy-to-understand overview of the topic you were talking about (with key points). A transcription will make this task a piece of cake.
• If you decide to transcribe interviews with your costumers (no matter what your business is about), you could use the best quotes to write an email campaign and send the emails to other costumers.
• You can also record training sessions at work. If you decide to transcribe them, they can be used as comprehensive guides for your coworkers about the topic you covered at the training session.

4. Transcription could mean more shares on social media

If you transcribe your audio content more people will find it, and consequently, more people will share this content on their social media profiles. You need to know, that people will most likely not take the time to manually transcribe what you said in your podcast. Even if they do that, there is a possibility that they will not transcribe the quote exactly as you said it, which sometimes might cause problems. On the other hand, if you offer a transcription to your audio content, all your fans will have to do in order to quote you (if they got inspired) is copy and paste, and voila – they are already sharing your content on their social media (Tweeter, Instagram, Facebook). Your words will spread among their followers and most likely you will become more influential. So, transcribe your audio files and make life easier for your fans if they want to share your insights with their followers.

5. Listen or read – give your audience a choice

You need to listen to your audience’s needs and make your content available in different forms. They want to be able to decide how they want to consume your content. How do they feel today? Do they want to be viewers, listeners or readers? If you are offering them more options, you make sure that your content stays relevant and convenient and your audience satisfied. They need to have the freedom of choice to consume the content whenever and however it suits them, either by listening to your podcast while driving to work, reading the transcribed podcast at their desk while taking a pause from work or watching, listening and reading the content you created in front of their computer at home. It should be only up to them.

That is all fine and good, but how much does a transcription cost?

Well, it really depends. When it comes to transcribing you basically have three options.

1. You can do it yourself. This won’t cost you anything but your valuable time. On average, to transcribe 30 minutes of an audio recording an average person needs 2 hours.
2. You can use an automatic transcription service. This will cost you 25 cents per minute and the job will be done fast. The downside of this type of service is that it isn’t always accurate and that the quality heavily depends on the quality of the audio recording. You will need to double check the transcription after it is done, before you publish it.
3. You can hire a professional human transcriber. That process takes longer than automatic transcription services, but it is far more accurate. It will cost you $1.25 per minute.

Which option should you chose? It is really up to you. You need to see what is more valuable to you at this moment: time or money.

We can conclude that transcribing your audio files offers a lot of benefits. When you already invest your time to create high quality content, why not make the most out of it. When it comes to transcriptions, we got your back! Just let us know what you need and we are here to help.