As the digital age progresses, content creation continues to be vitally important. In particular, video production continues to grow in importance– both for individuals striving to rise as influencers in a world that revolves around social media and for the 63% of businesses now leveraging video and, of that slice, the 82% finding it to be an important part of their strategy. Meanwhile, podcasting is booming and expected to continue.

But simply producing this audio and/or visual content isn’t enough. The job of content marketing extends to helping people find what you create.

Beyond leveraging social media, this is where SEO (search engine optimization) plays an important role, i.e. serving up keywords and using other best practices that help search engines like Google discover your content.

Why Transcription Matters

A good transcription tool can make a major difference in boosting SEO and your overall volume of content. By leveraging one that either automates the transcription process or provides an advanced platform on which you can manually transcribe audio, you can instantly increase your web presence with more rich content – in this case, content that is directly related to the audio or video content you want people to discover – with little effort.

Of course, there could be other reasons for which you use a transcription tool, such as transcribing recorded conversations you’ve had for the purpose of writing articles with accurate quotes and storylines.

Or, perhaps you’ve recorded conversations with loved ones who have since passed and want to preserve those moments in a format you and others can go back to and read.

Regardless of your reasoning for producing audio-based content, transcribing it can be a smart move. If that sounds like something worthwhile to you, there is a plethora of available transcription tools ranging from free to subscription-based for you to choose from.

Here are three that offer unique advantages and, therefore, are worth investigating right away

Type: Automatic TranscriptionUser: Businesses; Developers; MarketersCost: Pay-as-you-go

ASR for App

Developers

Again, this would also come in handy for marketers who are trying to increase rich content volume and need a way to take existing audio content and transform it into text, which can then be used to create keyword-rich blog posts, articles, etc.

Automate Everything

Therefore, it’s likely to become the standout tool for businesses, developers and marketers.

The Truth: What Users Say

  • Reddit user u/guihou

oTranscribe

Type: Manual TranscriptionUser: Journalists; Marketers; Nonprofessionals Cost: Free

Just because you can automate something doesn’t mean you always should. At times, this is the case with transcription.

Get Personal

The benefits of manual transcription tool are many, from improved accuracy of word recognition to better discernment of speakers and audio overlap. Not only that, but manually transcribing audio enables a person to become much more familiar with the content.

This can come in handy if, for instance, you’re a journalist transcribing a recorded interview and need to understand a deep level what it is you’re writing about and how your subject’s insight, or lack thereof, will contribute to the story.

Control Playback Speed

Of course, the biggest challenge to manual transcription is keeping pace with the audio track as you type it out while also maintaining accuracy with regard to words and sentences as well as the actual structure of the conversation.

For example, understanding when dialogue belongs together in one paragraph or when the subject matter of the conversation shifts and requires a new section. All of this plays into the efficiency with which you can read and edit the transcript later.

An important feature of oTranscribe is its audio speed adjuster, either by clicking and dragging or using the transcription tool’s indicated function keys, you can move the adjuster’s toggle left to slow down or right to speed up the audio.

This flexibility makes it easier to keep pace with audio as you transcribe, but it also makes it possible to achieve more clarity in cases where words or phrases may come through better at a slower or faster speed.

Transcription + Editing + Storage

A great benefit of oTranscription is that you can do everything within the app, never having to leave until you’re ready to export your results. Once you upload your audio and set the playback speed, you can start leveraging other standard text-editor functions to enhance the quality of your transcription right away.

From bolding and italicizing text to including timestamps to seeing how many words your transcript currently is, oTranscribe gives you the basics you need in a transcription tool.

As you’re transcribing, oTranscribe automatically saves your work to your browser’s storage every second. It also provides a transcript history where you can view previous versions that are saved every five minutes, with the transcription tool saving up to 100 of these at all times.

When you’re ready to export, you can download the file as markdown, text or an oTranscribe file, or you can upload it as a file to Google Drive, making the transition from the transcription tool to another platform fairly seamless.

“I use oTranscribe. I leave out ‘ums’ and fix any syntax errors that won’t make sense when being read.”

  • Reddit user KingLouisIXofFrance

“+1 for oTranscribe, that service is gold.”

  • Reddit user audacias

Choosing a Tool

When transcribing a podcast episode, it would make sense to use a transcription tool that automates the process. But when it comes to writing an article, where you’re piecing together a story and looking for standout quotes, you might benefit more from manually transcribing the audio.

As for which tools you use to accomplish those tasks, personal preference, technical aptitude and cost are probably the biggest factors.