Transcription may seem like a specialist service reserved for niche industries like journalism and law but this isn’t strictly true. In fact, every brand in the digital age needs to convert audio dialogue into text format in a growing number of scenarios, making transcription services more of a business essential than a specialist requirement.
In this article, we’re going to look at five scenarios where every brand needs transcription services. See how many of these apply to your business – you might be surprised by some of them.
#1: Transcribing video, podcast and AV content
Any brand producing video, podcasts and other kinds of AV or audio content should provide transcriptions for users. There are various reasons why it’s a good idea to do this:
- Some users prefer to read than watch/listen
- Some users aren’t in a position to watch/listen to your content (e.g.: on a bus without headphones, using a weak internet connection, etc.)
- Transcriptions allow people to quote your content easily
- Transcripts make it easier to review your content and make notes
- Search engines can’t crawl video content but they can crawl text transcripts
There’s a lot of talk in the online community about the power of video content, but not enough said about the potential downsides. There are pros and cons to everything and the simple fact is videos aren’t always convenient or desirable and it’s important to provide an alternative. Otherwise, people might skip your content altogether and you’ve invested a lot of money into video content that neglects a chunk of your target audience.
#2: Transcribing content for hard-of-hearing audiences
We could have mentioned this in the previous section but it deserves its own point and this really is something every brand needs to take responsibility for. Neglecting user needs because you’ve failed to consider what kind of internet connection they’re using is one thing, but neglecting them because you’ve failed to consider disabilities and impairments is something else entirely.
At the very least, you should provide transcripts for hard-of-hearing audiences so they can engage with your content in the same way as everyone else. In the same way text transcripts can be crawled by search engines, they’re also accessible to screen readers for sight impaired users. Of course, sight impaired users can listen to videos and podcasts but transcripts also make your content accessible to them at times when watching or listening isn’t appropriate.
#3: Transcribing interviews and comments
Whether you’re publishing blog posts, adding testimonials to your website or creating case studies for a proposal on your next big project, there are times when you need to quote sources to reinforce your points – or even make them on your behalf. In most cases, these come from lengthy interviews where you’re asking a series of questions and you extract the most important points for the piece of content you’re creating.
Either way, you need transcription services to convert that dialogue into text so you can quickly use, edit and store this content for future use.
#4: Hosting or covering events
From industry conferences to webinars, live lectures and product launches, the list of corporate events modern brands need to host and attend is constantly growing. Whether you’re holding the event yourself or simply covering it as a point of interest for your audience, you need a summary of the key points covered and quotes from each event in question.
Once again, this means recording and transcribing events so you can summarise the key points and create additional content like blog posts, eBooks and other material that turns these events into lead generation tools.
#5: Transcribing business meetings
This might not be the most important example but it remains one of the most important use cases for transcription services. Important business meetings need to be documented and participants need to be accountable for their comments. It could be a negotiation and you want to make sure parties stay true to their word or a disciplinary meeting and the conduct of everyone involved needs to be documented.
When you need to prove that certain things were said and essential business processes were followed, transcription is an essential element for any important meeting.
Transcription isn’t a specialist service reserved for niche industries like law and journalism. Yes, it’s important to these sectors but it’s equally as important to businesses in every industry, especially in the digital age where producing content at every step of the consumer journey is so important.