Why would anyone read a podcast?
Before we jump into this… if you don’t know what a podcast transcript is, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Transcribing your podcast is just the process of turning the audio of your episode into text so there’s a readable version of your show on your website (a transcript).
If you’re thinking “Isn’t podcasting about getting into people’s ears, not their eyes?” you’re right, but there are a few reasons why taking some extra time to transcribe your podcast is a really good idea…
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Podcast transcripts help with…
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Those three words are the difference between people finding your show when they search for topics in your niche on Google and your show remaining in the dark shadows of the internet.
Keywords are the words and phrases people use when they’re searching for things online.
Your content doesn’t pop up in search results by accident, it appears because it contains search terms people are actively looking for.
So, if you’re building an audience from scratch, this is an important way for new people to find your show (even if they don’t know you have one).
One of the simplest ways to ensure all the words you say in your episode are picked up by search engines is to include a transcript in the show notes on your website.
Building your show notes
It’s a good idea to create show notes for each of your podcast episodes.
Again, this is so your content can be picked up by search engines but also so listeners have a place to go if they want more information or to find out more about you and your episode content.
Building these from scratch can be a pain in the butt but if you’ve got a podcast transcript, you can use that as the base of your show notes and edit what you’ve already said on your podcast into a blog post.
These days, instead of re-writing the whole thing manually (like I used to), I feed the transcript into ChatGPT and ask it to generate a rough draft of a blog post in my voice.
Then I go in and tweak it, delete what doesn’t work and keep the bits that do.
It saves SO MUCH time.
Making your content more accessible
A less selfish reason to transcribe your episode is so your show can be enjoyed by people who are hard of hearing.
Or for people who simply prefer reading over listening.
If someone wants to engage with your content but can’t (or doesn’t want to) listen to it, having a transcript makes your show more inclusive and user-friendly.
Just remember: if you’re uploading an AI-generated transcript, always proofread it.
Even the best tools can mess up grammar, speaker titles or brand names (like writing “Pod School” instead of “PodSchool”).
But a transcript that’s hard to read defeats the purpose of accessibility.
Generating content around your podcast (thank you AI)
With AI tools like ChatGPT now part of everyday podcasting workflows, transcripts aren’t just for SEO and accessibility they’re the foundation of your entire content ecosystem.
A transcript of your episode is a script of your content, in your voice and it’s the perfect source material for AI to generate additional collateral including…
- Blog posts
- Email newsletters
- Social media captions (for every platform)
- YouTube titles and descriptions
- Polls, quote tiles, carousel ideas
- Tips, summaries, chapter makers, key takeaways and much much more
Instead of staring at a blank cursor thinking, “What should I share on social media to promote this episode?” or going through your transcript line by line to fashion it into a blog post (thank God those days are over), AI can help you create multiple assets in seconds.
What it spits out won’t be perfect and you’ll definitely need to edit it to put it into your own words.
BUT it’s a heck of a lot easier to polish a rough draft of something than to start from scratch every time.
How do I create a podcast transcript?
There are plenty of tools that will auto-generate a transcript for your episode, including transcription services like Otter.ai as well as editing tools like Veed.io, Descript and Riverside.fm.
Some podcast hosts also include transcription in their plans like Captivate which saves you from uploading and downloading files across multiple sites.
Just remember to run an eye over it because even the best auto-generated transcripts can have (sometimes amusing) errors.
I ask ChatGPT to clean mine because it used to be a task that I, or my assistant, would have to do manually.
You really have to hammer home the fact that you just want it to correct spelling and grammar and NOT paraphrase or do a full AI re-write, but once it understands that, it’s a massive time saver.
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4 Responses
I’m doing transcriptions of my podcast at the moment, but I’ve been having this question in my mind: am I not possibly partitioning my audience between transcriptions and audio? If I want the podcast to grow and want to show analytics to possible sponsors, shouldn’t I try and push everyone to listen to the audio and just make a short excerpt or just some show notes on the description? I’m using anchor.fm to host the podcast but then I create posts in my website with an audio player for the episode.
Hey Fausto, Transcribing your episodes is useful for a bunch of reasons including providing a way for people who are hard of hearing to read your content and to help with SEO. Having people find you via your show notes pages where you’re providing valuable content can be a way for people to discover your podcast so if it’s helping your SEO it can grow your audience rather than detract from it. Hope that helps. Rach
Thoughtful article. I came to find out why I should continue transcribing our podcast show (or not). But I wanted to add: Rev actually uses real people to transcribe. So it’s not automated. And that’s one of the reasons it’s better. Take one look at Youtube’s machine-made free captioning if you’re in doubt of the difference. Cheers.
Hey Emily, Thanks for your message. Rev actually has an option for human transcribed but also machine transcribed, Rach