The Benefits of Transcription (and Why Now is the Time to Implement it)

92% of marketing professionals expect to continue using video as part of their digital marketing strategy given its value. But guess what? 69% of your viewers might watch your video on mute. How do you get your message across without sound? That’s why your video needs transcription.

10 ways transcription can help your business

It’s probable that you’re familiar with the word ‘transcription’. But do you know how if it can help your business grow? Chances are that you don’t, since transcription services aren’t that popular.

Transcription makes it easier for you to store, share, translate and follow your audio or video content.

There are multiple ways transcription can benefit your business. But before we get to that, let’s break down the definition of transcription first.

What is transcription?

Transcription involves listening to a recorded audio/video, or live speech and translating it into written text. It helps in capturing audio or video in written form, helping you build stable connections with your customers.

Transcription isn’t a new concept; it has been around for over 500 years. Transcription could either be done manually through a transcriber or it can be automated.

The benefits of transcription for businesses

Transcription helps businesses create more inclusive content, save time and increase ROI.

If you’re considering transcription, here are all the ways it can add value to your business.

1. Increases the value of your content

Businesses can use transcription for their audio/video content to increase their searchability. Since search engines can’t watch videos or listen to audio, transcribing your content’s voice to text helps Google bots read and understand your content.

Your video might contain useful information on a variety of topics. Transcriptions of the video can provide natural breaking points, helping differentiate different topics. Each distinct topic could be broken into several pages or blogs on your website. 

2. Makes your content more accessible

Transcription and captioning help make your content more accessible to roughly 30 million individuals in the US and 430 million individuals globally. The subtitles in your video make your video more accessible to such individuals and increase your customer base.

3. Diversified dissemination of information

Although video and picture content are highly engaging and the most popular forms of content consumption, audio content isn’t that well-received. Audio content makes it challenging to take in all the information at once.

But if your audio is transcribed, it’s laid out in a digital format that’s more convenient, making it more digestible for your audience. Transcribed audio is also extremely easy to share across multiple platforms, including your website and social media.

4. Provides backup

Transcriptions make for an excellent backup of the original content. It serves as your backup plan in case something goes awry. It also makes knowledge easily available.

5. Market research

Transcription isn’t just beneficial for your audience - it’s beneficial for your employees too. For instance, imagine you’ve collected customer feedback from focus groups for a new product you’re launching.

Now, you might have recorded all the interviews. This will help you access the required information when needed. But it also means that you or your employees will have to sift through thousands of audio files to glean vital market research data.

However, if a transcription of the interviews from your focus groups is made available, it’ll make it easier for you and your team to skim through the recordings, track specific keywords or phrases and obtain the piece of information needed.

If you’ve video files of your market research, transcription can help you save time and resources in this scenario as well. Transcribed video content makes it easier for video editors to mark sections where revisions are complete. The editors can easily return to editing and not have to constantly switch between watching the video and editing it.

This would not only save their time but also improve employee experience.

6. Flexible viewing options

If your video content comes with closed captions, it will give your viewers the option to consume your content in places where turning audio on is inconvenient. This might also work in noisy places where sound is obscured.

For instance, if somebody is watching your video in a crowded place, such as a subway or bar, captions will help them relate to the video.

Subtitles also let viewers watch their videos in environments where turning audio on might not be an option, such as a library or office.

Most social media platforms autoplay videos on mute by default, making captions critical for your audience to understand your content.

7. Enhances viewer cognizance

If your business’s aim is to make its video content available to individuals on a global scale, transcriptions could be your way in.

Transcriptions help people understand the spoken text much better, especially for ESLviewers. The improved understandability through transcription can help increase your view time by 12%.

8. Aids video experience and user search

Transcriptions assist your customers in searching for the videos they’re looking for.

If your transcript is interactive, it can help your viewers in looking for a particular keyword within the video. This also helps the viewer jump to the spot in the video they'd like to watch.

9. Easy translation to foreign languages

Transcribed videos are the stepping stone in translating your content into foreign languages. This will help you reach a wider audience and improve your SEO.

YouTube is the second-most popular search engine platform after Google. It has over 2.5 million active users each month. It’s not only available to users globally, but also localized in over 100 countries.

The majority of videos (around two-thirds) aren’t even in English. Hence, transcribed videos are in high demand.

10. Improves employee training process

Transcribed texts of training sessions serve as a cornerstone for training new joiners. These texts can be used for reference by new employees, and are also helpful in case of online training sessions.

Now that we’ve listed down the benefits of transcription, let’s find out who benefits the most from it.

What types of businesses require transcription services?

All types of businesses need transcription services. A few examples include:

• Legal: Competition is cut-throat in the legal sector. How do you make your firm stand out? Traditional marketing can only help your firm get so far, employing digital marketing to truly capture your targeted audience’s attention. Add closed captions to your digital marketing videos for better reach and engagement.
• Education: If you’re in the education industry, it’s the right time for you to make the most out of your digital marketing strategy. But since your target demographic mostly consists of millennials and Gen Z, ensure that your video content conforms to their demands. Add captions for your videos to truly make an impact.
• Market research: Researchers need a transcription of discussions, interviews, and feedback. Transcription also helps them organize their data.
• Video production: Businesses solely in the video production industry, such as Netflix and Hulu, or businesses producing a video to better communicate their business proposition need closed captions. Since the majority of their viewers use subtitles while consuming their content.
• Media and journalism: Information is paramount in the journalism industry. A journalist often captures data in audio formats. With the help of transcription, they can deliver the gathered information quickly and easily. But what if your content is unable to connect with your desired audience? Or what if you want to increase the reach of your news? Transcribing your news content would go a long way in helping you secure not only your audience’s attention but also connect with individuals globally. Transcription also assists in creating an archive of reports for future reference.

Today, transcription has multiple use cases. No matter the nature of your business or your target audience, you need transcription services to stay in the game. Quite possibly gaining an edge over your competitors.

Why is now the best time to implement transcription?

Given the benefits and usage of transcription across business sectors, it’s a no-brainer that transcription can’t be overlooked by a business.

Transcribed transcripts save you time, effort and make it simpler for you to share information across multiple channels, with multiple shareholders. It also gives you the flexibility to repurpose your existing digital content into text format.

You can hire someone in-house to take care of your business’s transcription needs. But it would be difficult for them to match the speed, efficiency and accuracy of a professional transcription service.

A professional transcription service is also cost-effective since you can hire them on a contractual, hourly or part-time basis, given your business needs.

A professional transcription service also ensures a quicker turnaround time. They can handle a broad range of input file formats, produce output in various file formats, and enable you to focus on more important tasks to scale your business.

Transcription adds tangible value to videos

Transcription has multiple use cases across industries and can help you grow your business, reach more customers, build better client relationships and make your employee’s life easier. They’re the building blocks for a company to effectively put its point across.

Depending on your budget and business requirements, you can hire an AI transcription service that is fast, GDPR-compliant and integrates with your existing API.