3-Ways to Repurpose Your Podcast Using Transcribed Podcast Audio
Finding creative ways to build your podcast audience can be challenging, but there are many ways you can do it. In the next few minutes, I’m going to outline a few ways you can use the audio content you already have, to create an audio transcription and make it easier for audiences to find you on the we
If you don’t use a script on your podcast already, this can be a daunting thing to do by hand. Especially after recording. Thankfully, there are some transcription services out there that can help you with this.
Paid services like Rev work well but take both time and money depending on how much time you have and the level of accuracy you require.
Desktop apps such as Descript — a podcasting-centric tool with built-in transcription is great. It has a free setting that will let you do 3 hours a month, so if your podcast is short or you’re only doing small bits of audio, it’s a tool I definitely recommend. I found their AI-based auto transcription to be incredibly accurate. If you find a mistake, you can edit the transcription AND the podcast audio using the text editor. It’s pretty wild.
Google Docs has a voice typing feature in its Tools section if you’re looking for a cheap option. You can’t upload audio, but you can probably figure out a way to get creative and play it over a speaker so Google can work its magic. YouTube can also transcribe if you make a video version of your podcast.
Microsoft Word also has a similar dictate-to-text feature like above, but now allows you to upload up to 5-hours a month for transcription. I haven’t had a chance to try it out, but if you do, let me know what you think.
Now that you have all of that text, now what?
- Make a blog post.
This is a great way to introduce each episode or even offer a full breakdown.
Other than a weekly review, this is something we don’t do a lot of as a network, but it’s helpful for building SEO and getting some awareness if you’re an independent podcaster. Search engines can’t listen to podcasts or view videos, so if you’re trying to make your podcast more discoverable, you have to use text. The best way to do that is to get a transcription of your episode.
If your podcast is educational in nature and has subjects that people are searching for frequently, a transcription being used in the right way can work wonders.
You can take that transcription text make a blog post out of it on your own site or blog hosting service like Medium using the entirety of the transcription.
Now, I get that many of you will say, “If they can read my podcast — why would they listen to it?” Well, that’s somewhat true, but remember above when I said that people may not be able to listen to the audio while watching your video on social media?
I’m going to let that sink in for a second.
Just because they are reading it right now doesn’t mean they won’t listen to it later. Also, you don’t have to use the whole thing. Take some highlight pieces out and tie in together, or just start to do the first portion and leave a cliff-hanger and then ask the reader to continue by listening to the podcast either through an embedded player in the post or put up a link to your podcast.
2. Use it for your show notes.
Did you know there’s theoretically no limit as to how much information is in your show’s description?
Don’t get any crazy ideas.
Podcast listening services like Apple will cap it at 4,000 characters (roughly 500 words or full page, single-spaced). While the average show description is pretty short, that’s a lot of extra room to put some relevant keywords and build up that SEO.
3. Quotes!
Use an app like Word Swag or Canva and throw in the most compelling quotes over a cliche backdrop (or something original) and share it with your friends and followers.
4. Accessible Content
Yeah, I know I said 3, but there’s one more reason (and probably the most important reason) to transcribe your audio — making it accessible to those that are hard of hearing. A lot of RSS feed providers are now giving creators the option to add transcripts to their episodes which would be available through the web player or the microsite that is often provided.
Why should you do this?
In 2020, Gimlet Media was hit with a class-action lawsuit for not making their content accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. The lawsuit alleged they violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by not providing closed captioning.
I know at first glance that seems preposterous that they could get sued for that considering that a single audio-only podcast episode can be listened to on dozens of different apps or web-players that the creator has no control over. Not to mention those players don’t currently have a method to display captioning.
You can, however, make it available on your website or microsite. This doesn’t just remove the risk of litigation, it’s also the right thing to do.
How are you using your transcriptions?
