Can my Podcast be Transcribed?

Why do you need a podcast transcription if you have the audio? This goes against the whole foundation of podcasting as an audio medium, but this is the age of giving the consumer the convenience what they want, before they move to somewhere else. Is your goal to be an audio purist or want your content be there in the website, so that everybody can read them? Transcription of your podcast would increase your audience many a times.

There are a few reasons for transcribing your podcast.

1. Posting the transcription of your podcast to your website provides the rich text content for search engines to index. Most search engines do not index your audio file. To get traffic to your site, you need regular, quality text content.
2. Your podcast listeners will enjoy having a text version side by side while listening for reference and skim. By providing all the options for your audience, they will remember which podcasts are more user friendly than others. What is important is that the audience is given a choice.
3. Some people simply prefer to read the content rather than listen. Many use the content as a reference for further studies and research. Reading a transcript can also be helpful if the voices on the podcast are hard to understand.
4. By transcribing, you are broadening your audience and reaching more people like hearing impaired people.
5. The transcribed podcast can be used with banner links in formatted and embedded form for advertising to sell your podcasts.
6. Transcribe your podcast into texts and e-book and sell them.

Having decided that transcribing your podcast is a good idea, what else you need to consider? You need to decide what type of transcript would be suitable. In the transcription industry, there are generally three styles available. Complete verbatim, intelligent verbatim and edited transcript. The most popular choice for podcasts is intelligent verbatim.

Once you have decided on the type of transcript you need, it may also be useful to consider transcription times-how long it will actually take to transcribe your podcast. Again, it also depends on how clear the recording is.