Apple Podcasts transcripts - explained and made easy! (Visual episode - find video in description)

Welcome to this emergency

podcast of the Podmaster, where

we're talking about a massive

development in Apple Podcasts app.

Stick with me.

I'm going to tell you everything that

you need to know

Are you creating transcripts for your

podcast episodes?

I know, I know you've heard all

about this for ages and ages.

Now, of course, the way that

doing transcripts have been sold to

you in the past have been the

benefits for your podcast SEO.

Well, I'm here to tell you, there

are shady parts of the podcasting

space, including these transcription

companies, who actually are lying

to you about the benefits of SEO.

There is no such benefit

from creating a transcript for your

podcast.

In terms of the SEO, it just

doesn't exist.

Never, ever has a podcast.

transcript ever ranked on Google,

and it won't do yet.

Feel free to correct me if you've seen

evidence of that in the wild, but I

can tell you right now, it's simply

not the case.

The only way that a transcript benefits

your podcast.

SEO is if you repurpose that

by copying the transcript,

changing it into something else,

like an article.

Or a blog post or any other kind

of content, then it might help

your podcast SEO.

In fact, it will help your

podcast, SEO, but no transcripts.

Their biggest benefit is

accessibility.

It's so that people that are hard of

hearing can still enjoy your content,

even if they can't fully listen to it.

So, the great thing about this,

Spotify, obviously, a few months ago,

they introduced transcripts on

their platform.

So a lot of episodes now are getting

automatically transcribed.

In fact, you can't add your

own transcript in Spotify, it does

it all for you.

Now, let's not get into an argument

of why that's not such a great

thing, and why what Apple Podcasts are

doing is a great thing, later.

For now, what you need to

know is this.

Apple Podcasts has your back.

Now, I would definitely encourage

you to create your own transcripts, but

if you forget, or maybe you don't have

the ability to get transcripts at the

moment, budgetary reasons, time,

whatever it is, then Apple Podcasts

will automatically generate a

transcript of your newest

episode for you.

Now, here's an important point

about why you should make the effort

to create your own transcripts.

Not to mention, of course, the blog

posts, the site, the website that you

have for your podcast,

and how great it is to offer that

as an option on your website.

But on top of that, specifically for

Apple Podcasts, I mentioned a

few episodes ago.

On, the episode where I talked

about podcast SEO, a lot of people

didn't believe me.

They thought I was talking pie in the

sky at the time.

But I told you, Apple podcasts

have been running AI transcription

behind the scenes for over a year.

And bigger shows have been

benefiting from it.

In fact, Apple podcasts have

been using their own transcription

service as a better way to gauge What

your content is about, so it knows

whether to surface it in search

results or not.

So why wouldn't you want to do

a better job of giving them a more

accurate transcript for your episodes?

That way, if you want to rank for

certain keywords, you can make

sure that they're spelled correctly,

or that they're sharp at all.

You know, these tools are not 100

percent effective, certainly when

they're using AI.

So my suggestion to you is to take

that extra time, even though Apple

Podcasts offer to create the

transcript for you, do it yourself as

part of your normal workflow, hopefully

you've been doing that up until now

for accessibility reasons anyway,

but then add the transcript manually

to your RSS feed.

Now, there are a few hosting companies

that offer the transcripts tag

in the namespace, Captivate, who I'm

a subscriber to and I use for all of!

my client podcasts.

You've also got RSS.

com.

They allow you to add transcripts in

the transcript tag and Buzzsprout.

As far as I'm concerned, they

also do it.

One company which, sadly, bad timing,

has actually said that they are

not supporting transcripts at

the moment because fewer than 1

percent of apps actually support

them, Libsyn, who have very publicly

said they're not doing it yet.

I have a feeling they'll change

their minds on this very quickly,

but for now If you're hosting with

Libsyn, you cannot take advantage of

this feature yet.

All right, enough talking about why

you'd want to do it.

Let's show you how you actually do it.

I'm going to share with you.

My Apple Podcast Connect screen.

Well, there you go.

As you can see, it's all pretty

much the same.

Show information, availability,

subscription, rating, and reviews.

Nothing new there whatsoever.

But, if you go to availability,

you will see now that they have

added a section, Transcripts.

That's what's new.

And you got two options,

only display auto generated

transcripts, or display

auto generated transcripts if I

don't provide any.

You want it selected on that, if you

are adding your own transcripts.

Now, how does this work?

Well, if you go into episodes, and you

click on the latest one, you'll see,

down here, audio and transcripts,

and at the moment it doesn't show it.

And I'll get to that in a moment, but if

you click on that, it gives you the

option to either auto generate or use

the provided one.

You want to use the provided one, click

edit, make sure that

you're using a custom setting

for this episode, display transcripts

I provide.

The other option is only display

auto generated transcripts and

don't display transcripts.

I have no idea why you'd want to

choose don't display transcripts, that

would be insane.

Display transcripts I provide is

what you want to have selected.

Okay.

Now how this will look in the

wild is let's go to the podcast

hosting platform.

And have a look at where this

comes from.

Okay, so, I'm going to now

share with you my hosting provider

Captivate's screen.

And as

you can see, the latest episode.

So if you're with Captivate,

this is obviously relevant to you.

If you're not, if you're with RSS.

com, consult with the user guides

on how to add transcripts in

that platform.

And the same with Buzzsprout.

As I mentioned, Libsyn doesn't

currently offer this, so No

dice there.

We

want to scroll down to where it says

transcription and discover ability.

And as you can see, you could

edit that and

you can add your own transcript in

whichever format.

You can either do it in notepad form,

copy and paste into the window, or you

can add it as an S.

R.

T.

Attachment file.

Okay, now, so that is how That.

works.

Here's the caveat.

Okay?

This is not yet available to us.

You will see a lot of people

talking about this and sharing

screens and videos mostly journalists

in the space.

The reason for that is they have paid

for a developer account And they

have access, early access, to a lot

of the tools and features that people

like Apple Podcasts roll out in their

latest updates.

I'm told we've got to wait until

probably either the end of February

or the very beginning of March

to see this in our podcasting apps.

To see this in Apple Podcasts

when we're playing our shows in app.

So you've got to be a little

bit patient.

But what I'd say to you is this.

Make sure that you include

transcripts in your podcast publishing

workflow now.

The reason being, once it finally

does roll out, they're going to

take your back catalogue episodes

and they're going to

pull from any transcripts that

you've already uploaded as you've

deemed them.

to.

As in, Not also generated exactly

as you wanted them displayed.

So it's well worth making sure you

take the extra time and add those

transcripts manually into Apple Podcast

Connect through the episode.

Hope that helps.

Let me know how you get on.

If you get

any problems with

this part of the publishing workflow,

reach out to me.

You can see me on LinkedIn, DM

me there, or go to podmastery.

co and click contact.

Until next episode