My Podcast Transcription Process

Fuzz Martin 0:00

Good morning podcasters. This morning, I'm going to give you a description of my transcription process.

Fuzz Martin 0:10

Welcome to this the 19th episode of the all-new Good Morning, Podcasters. I am Fuzz Martin, and I appreciate you listening, or reading.

Fuzz Martin 0:22

Let's talk about transcriptions. Actually, let's start with why we should create transcriptions for our podcasts. First and foremost, it's the right thing to do. Not everyone can hear. Obviously, transcribing your show instantly makes your show more accessible to people with hearing loss. Just like the reverse where audio versions of a written article help those with visual impairments. And just like most things in the world, if you do the right thing, you will be rewarded. Google and other search engines, which really means Bing, can read the text from your transcriptions. And when it's done correctly, it will help you in the search engine rankings. So first, do it for the people. And then do it for your show.

Fuzz Martin 1:11

Now let's talk about what software is out there for you to use. There's a ton of different transcription software's and I'm not going to go through every single one of them. And I'm not going to tell you which one you should use, I'll tell you which one I'm using and which ones I have used. But I can let you make the decision on your own. It really comes down to you shouldn't be doing transcriptions. But there's a million different ways to get there.

Fuzz Martin 1:35

Descript is very well respected. You also get their audio editor, their audiograms, and a whole lot more. I believe it's $12 per month, if you bill it annually. I used it for a bit. But then I stopped when I got a new MacBook with an M1 processor. And for a while they were incompatible with that I think they're compatible. Now I'm almost 99% positive, they're compatible now. But it wasn't for a bit. And that threw a wrench into my workflow.

Fuzz Martin 2:07

I've heard good things about Rev. But it's pricey. It costs 25 cents per minute, which for a 20 minute podcast is $5. And if you're doing for 20 minute podcasts a month, you're looking at $20. And then there are other options out there for transcriptions that will cost you less. So while I tried Rev, and I think the quality is good. I don't think the price is there for most podcasters.

Fuzz Martin 2:36

I've also heard good things about poddin.io. That's $9 a month that will get you two hours of transcriptions, or $19 a month for up to eight hours of transcriptions. I have not used it. But I've seen people like Danny Brown of Pod Chat, say nice things about that.

Fuzz Martin 2:52

So what do I use? I use otter.ai. So Otter has a free version, it's not really conducive to doing a podcast because the free version requires that you transcribe in real time. You can't upload a file you get like five uploads when you start your free version. But if you want to do that regularly, you need the pro version. So the pro version costs $8.33 per month when you bill it annually. It jumps up significantly like 51% if you don't buy annually, so it's $16.99 per month if you buy month a month, but $8.33 per month averaged out if you bill it annually. With the pro version, you can import your shows audio or video files, that gives you 1,200 minutes per month at that $8.33 per month level. The editor is super easy to use, you can add in different kinds of odd words into its library so that it gets the spelling right every time. If you have regular or rotating guests on your show, it will recognize their voices and put their name with it automatically. You don't have to go in and update that once you've done it once. So if you have a guest that's on one week, and then doesn't come back for a few episodes, and then they do come back out or will recognize their voice and attach their name inside of your transcript. It's really cool. So again, many different platforms for transcribing podcast, I didn't even scratch the surface. But I prefer otter and I really like Descript.

Fuzz Martin 4:34

So what's my workflow for adding transcripts to my show? Well, after I finish editing, I'll upload my audio file to my host Captivate and while that's uploading, I'll open up otter.ai and start uploading the audio there concurrently. While those are both uploading which only takes a few minutes because the show is pretty short. I finished my show notes and add in my research links in Captivate, then I toggle back to otter when the transcript is done, I'll click the Edit button and I'll go through make any updates to the transcript, any errors and things that I see it's not a human transcribing it so it gets you pretty close. But I would say, it takes me about five to 10 minutes worth of reading and making updates for a 10 to 15 minute podcast.

Fuzz Martin 5:23

Then I export the transcript as text. From there, I paste the transcript into the transcript section of my host on a new episode link. And then I schedule my episode.

Fuzz Martin 5:36

Once I do that, I open up Squarespace, which this websites on Squarespace, I'll open up Squarespace, put together my blog post, once the blog post is ready, I'll I'll add in what is called an accordion block to the site. And then I'll call the block transcript. And I'll paste the copy into the body of the accordion. So now when you go to goodmorningpod.com, you click on an episode, if you scroll to the bottom, you'll see the word transcript, you click on that and it will expand to show you the full transcript.

Fuzz Martin 6:06

On Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz, which is a hyperlocal podcast that I do, I use podcastpage.io. And they've got a handy transcript field that automatically pulls in from the RSS feed through Captivate. So it's a nice automated little feature where every episode that posts the transcript is automatically getting posted to the website, which really streamlines the process.

Fuzz Martin 6:30

And then on my wife's podcasts page, which is a WordPress website at smartinwi.com. I've added an advanced custom field just for transcripts into each blog post. So we'll create her blog posts. And then at the bottom, there's an extra field called transcript. I'll paste that in there. That's set up as an accordion field too. So once that blog post gets published, it's on there as transcript, you click on that, and it expands that accordion, so people can read it.

Fuzz Martin 7:00

Just a word of advice, though, when you're adding a transcript to your website, you could add it as an iframe embed a lot of the difference. Transcription Services offer this iframe embed. However, I don't like this for two reasons. One, an iframe is not going to get searched by Google, Google actually says we recommend you avoid the use of iframes to display content. So automatically, you're taking away from that SEO bump that you could get. And since Google said not to do it, there's no room for interpretation there.

Fuzz Martin 7:33

Number two, if you ever decide to cancel your transcription service, you're going to have a whole bunch of blog posts with broken embedded iframes.

Fuzz Martin 7:43

And I know I said two, but here's the third with an embedded transcript, you're often not able to make updates to the design or layout of the content. So if you're looking to make your site more accessible, that might mean increasing the font size or changing the font style. And that's easy if the content is actual text on your website. But if you're embedding from another site, it makes it really hard to do without some website trickery. So again, it's best to put that copy right onto your site and let it do its own work. So again, I put my transcripts into two different places, one in the area that allows on my host, so it gets into my RSS feed. Not all hosts have this feature yet, but if you have one, I recommend you take advantage of it. And then two, I put it on my website blog post that accompanies each of these episodes.

Fuzz Martin 8:41

That'll do it for another episode of The all-new Good Morning, Podcasters. If you have a different way of doing transcripts, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Hit me up on Twitter @gmpodcasters. Or you can message me on Instagram @goodmorningpod. You can find this show and its transcript at goodmorningpod.com And since you're a podcaster and this is a podcast about podcasting for podcasters, I assume that you know where to find podcasts and how to subscribe to them. So thank you in advance and we'll talk to you get a Friday. Right here on Good Morning podcasters