4 good reasons to edit your author podcast transcript

So should you include a podcast transcript? And if you do, should you edit it? Here’s my take.

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Not all transcripts are equal

Writers don’t just listen to podcasts; they create them as part of their author-platform mix. Not all podcasters include transcripts (though I think they’re a good idea) and not all transcripts are created equally.

Some are rough and raw, some are smoothed, and some are edited to within an inch of their life so that they read more like blog posts.

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What is a podcast transcript and why should you have one?

​A podcast transcript is a written version of your audio file.
 
Many people glance at a transcript before they listen to a podcast because they want to know what the key discussion points are.
 
Skim reading allows us to digest large chunks of written content quickly. We get to pick and choose what to ignore and what to focus on. Skimming isn’t about deep comprehension but about getting a feel for what’s on offer.
 
People are busy. Podcasts are great because the audience can consume the content while doing other things. That’s great if the listening takes place on the school run or the dog walk.
 
However, that won’t be the choice for all your book-buying audience. Some will want to engage with your podcast, and only your podcast. Those listeners need to know whether you’re worth their time. We can’t skim a podcast (or a vlog) but we can skim a transcript.
 
The transcript is therefore more than a written record. It’s also the key that unlocks the audio engagement door.
 
Given that it’s a representation of what’s said in the podcast, should you edit it?
 
A better question is, what are the consequences if you don’t? Here are four.

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​1. Eyes before ears – visible content counts

If your listener is already fan, a sloppy transcript is unlikely to put them off because they probably won’t even read it – they’re there for you and your audio. But if they’re new, and deciding whether to commit to listening, the written word might well determine whether they leap on board or jump ship.
 
If the first thing someone comes across on the podcast landing page looks and reads like a dog’s dinner, what does that say about the likely quality of the audio content?
 
In reality, the audio content might well be outstanding, but the podcaster isn’t judged on that until the audience has decided to hit Play. It’s the visible content on the page that counts.

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​2. But it’s all about the audio, isn’t it?

Imagine you’re doing a presentation to a roomful of your author peers. You build your presentation around the problems you’re trying to solve for your audience, create a great slide deck, and rehearse like billy-o so that you’re on top form.
 
On the day of the speaking engagement you turn up ahead of time so that you can check that all your equipment and supporting materials are fit for purpose. Before you go on stage you do some breathing exercises to relax your throat – you want your voice to be clear and engaging for your listeners.
 
You look the part. You sound the part. And you’re a writer in a roomful of writers. That’s all that matters, right? After all, it’s a face-to-face speaking engagement.
 
The problem is, you haven’t brushed your teeth for three weeks and your breath honks. If you were one of those presenters that likes to be front and centre, the first row would be in trouble. But you’re a walker. You like to engage with your audience – a little bit of up close and personal.
 
It’s not the first row that's in trouble. The whole room is at the mercy of your Wookie mouth. Shame, because no one’s interested in your stunning insights, your top tips for how to overcome writer’s block, fact check, or edit the first draft, never mind that what you tell them could make their lives a hundred times easier. All anyone’s thinking is Stay back.
 
A sloppy podcast transcript is like bad breath. It focuses your potential audience’s attention on the wrong thing and risks putting them off before the audio fun’s even begun.

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3. Standing out

Podcasts are increasingly popular tools used by business owners, marketers, writers and hobbyists to communicate with their clients, fans and friends. And a lot of podcast transcriptions are sloppy. All the effort, and the budget, goes into creating great audio.
 
In ‘How to build a web presence that outsmarts, outperforms and outlasts the search engines’ (Summit on Content Marketing 2017), Stoney deGeyter talks at some length about being excellent in everything we do so that we’re not battling with search-engine algorithms and rankings. He advises focusing on extraordinary engagement that makes our audience/customer journey as easy as possible.
 
Good advice indeed. So why not stand out and create a top-notch podcast transcription?
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• Be the one who sets the bar.
• Be the one whose transcript is as standout as the audio file so that you keep your visitors happy whether they’re skimming the script or tuning in.
• Be the one who decides that it doesn’t matter what content’s being engaged with – the page title, the audio, the thumbnail image, the resources or the transcript. It’s all good, all consumable, all engaging.
• Be the one who embraces audiences with different abilities – not only those with visual impairments, but also those with hearing loss. My colleague Debbie pointed out that cochlear implants only go so far.

 
That way you give people nothing to complain about and everything to rave about. Word of mouth is more likely to kick in. And with it, audience growth, engagement, advocacy and book sales.
 
Certainly, some people won’t care if your transcript is a mess. It’s not them you have to worry about though. It’s about those who do care, those who judge you negatively because they think you don’t give a damn. Which leads us to the biggie.

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4. Wordy people need to do wordy well

You’re a writer. Given that your podcast is part of your author platform, the last thing you want to do is give anyone the impression that your writing is poor, even if you’re using audio as an engagement tool.
 
If a famous chef was promoting her new recipe book in my local Waterstones and the canapes made me want to hurl, certainly I’m not going to buy her book. But, much worse, I’m not going to book a table at her restaurant.
 
The biggest problem for the author with a sloppy transcript is not that no one will listen to the podcast but that no one will buy her books.

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How much should you edit?

It’s your choice but bear in mind that the goal is to encourage the listener to engage with the audio and buy your books. The podcasting author has to strike a comfortable balance between rigorous word-for-word accuracy and readability. Here are some guidelines:

• If it doesn’t aid comprehension, consider removing it. Examples include extraneous ums, ahs and stutters.

• Consider your author brand. If you think that under-editing will impact negatively on your writing ability, you might bend towards heavy smoothing of the transcript so that it reads more like a blog post.

• Correct all non-standard spelling (without disrespecting idiom and dialect, of course). People don’t spell incorrectly when they speak.

• Correct spoken non-standard grammar if its makes the transcript difficult to understand. Speech is often less formal than the written word – we speak in ways we might not dream of writing – but readability should trump slavish adherence to spoken accuracy. This isn’t an exercise in qualitative research methods or oral history. It’s about engagement, trust and communication.

• Introduce standard punctuation and other speech cues to aid readability. In speech, we start, stop, pause, emphasize, and interject with laughter, sighs, harrumphs and so on. Use ellipses (…) for pauses and trailing sentences, italic for emphasis, em dashes (—) for end-of-sentence interruptions, and en dashes (–) for parenthetical sentence fragments. Square-bracketed cues are perfect for oral interjections [groans] [laughs].

• Ensure the transcript reflects what was said, not what you or the transcriber thought was said. If the transcription was created by a third party, they might have made a best guess and introduced errors because the audio was unclear. If you’re unsure what was said (if you were talking to someone else in the podcast), consider a pro transcription trick – place a question mark each side of the queried word (?unnecessary?). Or ask the interviewee.

• If you’ve interviewed someone in your podcast, consider offering them the opportunity to review the transcript before it’s published. There are pros and cons. On the one hand, any misrepresentation will be corrected. On the other, the interviewee might want to use the opportunity to artificially clean up the record, which could spoil the rhythm of the interview.

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Ideas for you to steal

Even if you don’t include a transcript, consider the following:
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• Include an abstract that summarizes the overarching theme of the episode and some information about the speaker(s).

• Create a bulleted list of the key themes addressed in the podcast.
• Add time stamps so that listeners can hop straight to the content that’s important to them.
• If there’s more than one person speaking, indicate who’s speaking in the transcript.
• Provide a summary of related episodes so that your listeners can binge listen.

And here's a cautionary note from Tim Lewis:

Honestly, transcripts are a right PIA but you are right: they are well worth doing. Something for amateur podcasters to be careful with is that many automated transcription services such as Trint (and the free services) really struggle with anything that isn’t a standard US or UK accent, and if they don’t get to pretty high accuracy you will spend longer fixing it than the length of the interview. I use rev.com which is human-based (but more expensive). Even that’s not perfect though.

Tim’s transcripts are gently smoothed to aid readability, indicate who’s speaking, and include a brief content summary. He increases visual engagement by introducing eye-catching quotes from the show. 

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About Louise Harnby

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

• Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Crime Fiction & Thriller Editor
• Connect: X @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
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