AP 0533: Where Can I Find a Good Transcriptionist?

03/2017 Update: Rev.com creates all the transcripts for AskPat Podcast posts.

AskPat 533 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 533 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online questions five days a week.

Alright, thanks so much and here's today's question from Lain.

Lain: Hey Pat, this is Lain Livingstone. I wanted to ask you about transcription services. I've been struggling to find a good service provider. Also, I'm really impressed with the way that your transcripts are available from your podcasts as PDFs on your website. I like the format layout of them and everything. I'm just curious as to, if that's something that you're doing in house or if you have a third party provider that you're using and if so, who? Appreciate any help. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey Lain, what's up? Thank you so much for the question and thank you for also complimenting the transcripts because a lot of people often ask me, “Hey, do those actually do anything for you?” They absolutely do. For one, a lot of people who listen to my show or watch SPI TV, who aren't able to listen or have audio, they can still consume that content on the go or while they're there. A lot of times people are at work and they don't want to bump up their speakers and have Pat Flynn be ringing throughout the office, so they'll read. People use it for that reason. I also know that I have a number of people in my audience who are hearing impaired. It's very important for me, just as a personal thing, to want to make sure that they get the content too. That's, hopefully, enough reason for you to consider transcriptions, for those of you who haven't.

But obviously, Lain, it seems like you're considering that which is great. I've been offering PDF transcripts since the beginning of Smart Passive Income. It hasn't always been the same, however. It has changed over time. For a while, the transcriptions were living on the actual show notes page. The reason for that was because a lot of people were like, “Hey Pat, if you have the transcriptions there, it's good for CEO.” Not CEO. SEO, not CEO. SEO. Search engine optimization. It's good for search engine optimization because you get those long tail keywords and all that stuff. Yes, maybe that's the case. But it adds a lot of data to your show note episodes. Which, a transcription for 45 minute episode can run 30 to 40 pages sometimes depending on what you're talking about and who you're talking with and how fast you talk, anyway. It's a lot of stuff. I found that it was actually more useful for me to have it in a PDF document.

Now, I actually don't do what a lot of other people do, which you could do, I just don't do it because I have a lot of other ways to collect email addresses. But a lot of people offer PDF versions of their transcripts packaged really nicely as a lead magnet. I think James Schramko does this from SuperFastBusiness. I believe the guys over at LeadPages do this too. It's a great thing you could do. You have that option as well. But whatever the case may be, having a PDF of the transcript just makes it seem more valuable to me. In my own eyes, it's another thing beyond the things that you're already doing. The fact that people get this thing delivered to them or can download it, and it's something they can open, and it's another touch point for your brand. It just becomes another way for you to provide value. That's why I like it over just putting that transcript on your website. So that's that.

Now in terms of how I get it done, when I first started it was through a third party company which was through Elance.com. That was done that way for a while. Elance is now Upwork.com. Then it was done in-house. We had hired this person named Rebecca to do the transcripts, and she would do them a month ahead of time. This was when I started to get really involved with getting ahead on my podcast content. For a while the transcripts were coming out, actually, no before that, excuse me, I'm kind of going out of order here . . . For a while, then, I would come out with the episode and then tell a person who was in-house to transcribe them. The transcriptions would often come a week or two later which wasn't always the best thing, because they'd have to wait a couple weeks before that transcript finally arrived which wasn't good.

Then we worked really hard to get ahead on podcast content specifically. Currently as I'm recording, this we're about a month and a half ahead of schedule and already those transcripts for those episodes that are coming out in the future are already done and ready to be deployed, just waiting for that publish date which is really nice. Again, the batch processing aspect of this, like I do with AskPat, is very beneficial, so keep that in mind as you move forward, even in relation to these transcripts. But then we got ahead so that was nice. In terms of how they're formatted, you could borrow that format if you want. That wasn't anything that was revolutionary. It was just a nice way for me to package that information and put the transcript in a way that was easily read and very much aligned with how the brand is. The logo and all that stuff. Again, take it. It's up to you.

In terms of outside services however, if you can't have somebody in-house, there are a number of outside services that you could use. One that I like is called Rev. I used Rev mainly for transcribing voice notes. What I would do, when I'm running a new book for example, I have a brainstorming session and I use Post-it notes to mind map everything that I can think of about that book. Then I take one specific Post-it note, and then I record myself talking about that note. Anything that comes to mind related to that thing. You can view this process in a whole bunch of stuff. Then using Rev, which is the app that I use to record this stuff, you can press a button to have a human, through Rev, transcribe that content for you. That's what I used it for, that's how I came up with a first draft of my book which was over a hundred thousand words in a month and a half. The trick was then how to take that hundred thousand plus word document and turn it into a book which was actually the hardest thing to do.

But anyway, you could use the same thing. You could use Rev. It doesn't have to be a transcription that you have, or it doesn't have to be an audio file through the recording of that app. It could be any audio file that you have. I also recently found out, Caleb, my video guy, just told me that you could hook up Rev to your YouTube channel and it can automatically put the transcript in that YouTube video. It has an API I think that YouTube talks to Rev. If you wanted to do transcripts for your videos, it can automatically put the transcript into that video because it has access to your account which is really, really handy. When my team found this out, it cut out a whole hour worth of steps involved with getting transcripts for our videos. But you could use Rev and that costs a dollar per minute. There's a few other ones out there. I'm sure a lot more have come about since I've gotten involved with looking at third party transcription services. Because podcasting has grown so big.

You can also hire somebody to be a little bit more regular for you if you want to work with the same person all the time through something like Upwork.com. Actually, to be honest, the person that we're working with now, because we've gone through a few transcriptionists over time, we actually hired through Fiverr. I actually don't know the name of this person off the top of my head because my team has found this person. But there's a lot of great gigs on Fiverr too. I would just make sure that if you're going to hook up with anybody on Fiverr, that's Fiverr.com, you make sure to look at the reviews, their ratings and just test them out first before you commit to them long term. Just to make sure that the quality of work is there and everything is the way it should be.

Lain, I hope that answers your question and gives you some things to think about. For everybody else out there, if you have the opportunity to do so, I know it does cost a few extra bucks to get transcription done, but if you have that available I would recommend doing it. Because it's very useful, not just for people who are hearing impaired, but for everybody who is just not able to play audio or video at the time that they're consuming your content. Also, it's a great way to provide a lead magnet for people into your subscription or your email list coming from a podcast or video.

So Lain, thank you so much for the question, I really appreciate it. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. I want to thank everybody else out there who has asked a question. So if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show and you want to get a chance to win an AskPat t-shirt free of charge wherever in the world you're at, we're going to send it to you at dollars on me. Also thanks to the sponsors of course. Just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page.

I also want to thank all of you who have purchased and have gotten your copy of Will It Fly? already. Thank you so much, the support for the book has been incredibly amazing, even since the pre-order started a couple weeks ago. Thank you so much for all the support. If you haven't gotten your copy yet, head on over to WillItFlyBook.com. If you have gotten your copy, I would love a review. Just head on over to Amazon and leave a review. That means so much to me and also obviously increases the rankings and helps anybody who is looking to potentially get the book. It convinces them to get it too. But obviously I want honest reviews too so keep that in mind.

Thanks so much, I appreciate you guys, and as always here's a quote to finish off the day. Today's quote is from Robert Rose who said, “Marketing is telling the world you're a rock star. Content Marketing is showing the world you are one.”

That's good, I like that. Cheers guys, thanks so much and I look forward to serving you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks guys, bye.