Over at Headliner, we think creating an audio transcript to accompany your podcast is really important; that’s why we made it a core feature of the editor. Here’s a look at four of the most important reasons to create a podcast transcript and how to add them to your videos created in Headliner.
1. Accessibility
First and foremost, creating a transcript of your podcast makes it more accessible. According to The World Health Organization, there are over 466 million people in the world with a hearing disability—that’s over 5% of the population!
Language Comprehension
Transcripts also make your content more accessible to those who may not speak the language you record in. Allowing users the option to read (in addition to listening) to your podcast can greatly enhance comprehension.
In addition, transcripts improve comprehension across the board for all types of users. According to a study on the uses and perceptions of closed captions and transcripts conducted by Oregon State University’s Ecampus Research Unit:
- 52% of students said captions help improve comprehension;
- 31% of students said captions help improve accuracy;
- 20% of students said captions help improve engagement;
- 15% of students said captions help improve retention.
Compliance with WCAG Standards
Transcripts are often required to meet certain accessibility standards. For pre-recorded audio (like podcasts) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines state that transcripts are required at WCAG Level A.
2. SEO Rankings
As a podcaster, you’re working in an audio medium. Unfortunately, search engines like Google can’t listen to audio, so your best bet to get your content ranking is to provide a text representation of your content for search engines to crawl and inventory.
When the ever-popular This American Life podcast set out to add transcripts to the podcast archive, they saw many benefits to their website traffic. In a case study by 3PlayMedia, This American Life saw an increase in user engagement of 7.23% and a 4.36% increase in inbound traffic attributable to transcripts.
3. Convenience
As a podcaster, your goal should be to make it as easy as possible for everyone to enjoy your content, even if they prefer reading over listening. Convenience goes a long way in instilling brand loyalty.
Listening to an episode of your podcast may not always be convenient for your audience. Some users may be able to read the transcript of your podcast much faster than it would take to listen to the episode.
Users may also be in a situation where the internet isn’t available. By giving them the option to download a transcript of your podcast ahead of time, they’d still be able to read it.
4. Content
If you have a podcast, you most likely have a website and social media accounts associated with it. Creating additional content for these properties can be challenging and time-consuming. You may have heard the content management adage “Create Once, Publish Everywhere,” or “COPE” for short. Your transcript is a key component that makes your audio content work a lot harder in creating additional content.
Transcripts allow you to more quickly and easily turn the audio of your podcast into content for other applications like:
- Blog post (or posts) associated with each episode;
- Captioned videos to promote your podcast on social media;
- Create infographics out of statistic-heavy content that points to the transcript and/or your audio episode.
How to Create a Podcast Transcript Using Headliner
Headliner offers transcription as one of its core features. We currently use what we believe is the best transcription software in the business, Google.
In this example, we’ll walk through adding transcription using the Audiogram Wizard, but transcription options are available for all video types (up to two hours).
Upload your audio or video file or pull your podcast episode into Headliner by searching for it by name, RSS Feed, or Descript link. Then make sure to turn audio transcription on, and choose the language you want to use for your captions.
Turn on Audio Transcription
Your file usually takes about half the time of the duration of the audio/video clip to process. Once the file is created, it should be 70-95% correct, depending on audio quality, accents, and other factors. Luckily, you also have full control to edit and add to your captions within Headliner.
Edit Your Audio Transcript
Download Your Audio Transcript
You can easily download your audio transcript as a .VVT file that you can use to create content or attach subtitles to your content in other platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
