Transcripts

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:00:06

First, they make podcasts more accessible for people who are hard of hearing or just people who prefer to follow along with something textual while they listen. With transcripts, every word becomes searchable.

So this means episodes are more likely to show up in search results and bring more organic traffic for creators, thus helping them get a bigger reach. It gives more control to the creator over their own content, which I think is super important these days.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:00:40

Welcome back to Podcasting 2.0 in Practice. I'm here today with Ellie Rubinstein. Hello, Ellie, how are you?

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:00:49

Hi. I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:00:52

You're very welcome, Ellie. Start, please, by introducing yourself and letting us know about your podcast credentials.

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:01:02

Sure thing. So my name is Ellie Rubinstein, and I'm the head of Pocket Casts at Automattic. My background is in software engineering and product management.

I've been in tech industry for 17 years. 12 years of those were working in various tech companies, and four years managing and leading product teams.

Pocket Casts in the summer of: 2021

I joined the team a year later When Russell, the CEO and co founder of Pocket Casts, decided to move on and I stepped in to replace him. Today I oversee the engineering, product business, sometimes even marketing functions at pocketcast.

And since I joined the team, I really immersed myself in anything podcasting, really learning about the industry and the ecosystem and understanding how everything works. So that's my background.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:02:13

Pocket Castss fairly recently started supporting transcripts. I would say that of all the Podcasting 2.0 features, it's probably one of the most well known.

But that said, could you just explain to us what transcripts are?

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:02:30

Yeah, sure thing. So transcripts are a written, written version of spoken audio, like word by word script of a podcast episode, for example.

And they really capture everything in the episode.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:02:45

Okay, yeah, so when you. You can view a transcript along with listening to the audio. But why do we want transcripts on our podcasts? How is that useful to the listener?

Why do we think that this is a good thing that we should have?

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:03:06

Yeah, so good question. I think that transcripts have two main key benefits.

First, they make podcasts more accessible for people who are hard of hearing, or just people who prefer to follow along with something textual while they listen to audio. It allows them to engage with podcasts in a way that wasn't really possible before. And then second, transcripts enhance content discoverability.

So on our platform, when we have the text version of an episode. When we have the transcripts, we can then edit to our search engine and index on that text.

So when someone searches for keywords or topics, episodes with that content can show up in our search results. In the same way, transcripts also help with SEO. So search engines like Google and Bing can't index on audio content directly.

But with transcripts, every word becomes searchable.

So this means episodes are more likely to show up in search results and bring more organic traffic for creators, thus helping them get a bigger reach. Right?

And I think today, with all the advancements that we're seeing with AI, transcripts now also enable semantic search, which is a big step forward. So instead of just matching on keywords, semantic search looks for the meaning and context of the queries of what people are searching for.

So to make that work for podcasts, the spoken word, the audio needs to be turned into text first, and then the text becomes the foundation for a smarter and more accurate searches. Speaking of AI, it's doing a lot today. It's generating transcripts, it's generating summaries, it's even generating content.

But I think that there is a real advantage for creators in using the Podcasting 2.0 tag, something like transcripts. And that's the reason why we adopted support for the transcript tag before we implemented generating transcripts.

So these tags give creators a way to connect with their audience more authentically. So for example, a creator can use tags to share their Buy me Coffee link, right?

In the same way with transcripts, they can really own the content of the transcripts. They have full control over it. They can remove ad breaks, they can modify the speaker labels.

They can do a lot that the transcript generated by AI is not providing. And I think that that authentic connection between the creator and the audience can really come through the tags.

So that's another benefit of using the transcripts with the Podcasting 2.0 tag.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:06:07

You can get your transcript made by AI, but you can then correct it within the Podcasting 2.0 feature that is supported by hosting companies, which I've been explaining in this show as we go along the episodes, you can actually get your transcript made by AI, but you can then go in and change it and correct it.

Make sure the names of the people are spelled correctly, whatever it may be, and make sure there's no odd things that are heard wrongly, and you don't really want them appearing on your transcript.

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:06:41

And sometimes that happens.

You know, I just, I think it was one of the recent episodes on the Podnews Weekly Review one of my favorite favorite shows by our friends Sam Sethi and James Cridland. I think one of the last transcripts that they generated included a word or a phrase that didn't sound good. So they decided not to use the transcript.

And that happens. And they're using the transcript tag. It just shows you that it gives more control to the.

To the creator over their own content, which I think is super important these days.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:07:17

Yeah. And we've already spoken in this series with Daniel J. Lewis about chapters and about how the chapters being with the 2.0 cloud chapters, as they're called, you can change them afterwards as well. So you may put a transcript out and then somebody may come to you and say, did you know that your transcript says this?

You can then go and change it and from the future it will be corrected.

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:07:42

Exactly.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:07:43

There's that flexibility and control that you're talking about. So just going back to the SEO you were talking about from the point the podcast, we're talking a lot about discovery in this show.

So having a transcript and putting in the effort of putting a transcript on their show not only is polite and nice for listeners, but that is then going to help them to be found both inside podcasting apps and outside generally on the Internet. Is that what you mean?

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:08:15

Yes, that's correct. So we have our own search engine, and when we get a transcript from a podcaster, we input it into our search engine and we index on it.

We tokenize the content. We make it searchable.

So when you go on our search function and search for specific keywords or topics that were mentioned in that episode, that episode would surface up in the search results. In the same way, for outside search engines like Google and Bing, they can't index on audio currently. It's just not possible.

So when they have the text version of the spoken audio, they can index on that content.

And then when you search for something on Google, when you search for a specific word, like a track in Argentina or like a cooking pot, then that that episode will surface up in the results on Google. So from the creator side, it can broaden their reach, their audience reach.

And I think that that's also very important because there's so much content out there.

And again, AI back to AI generating AI content, it's adding a lot of noise and it's masking the original content from creators who have worked really hard to. To create that content. So taking advantage of things like this can help surface their content and help them reach more people.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:09:41

Yeah. Oh, that's fabulous. That's just those extra reasons to to think to do it. And it's so easy to do.

I'm going to explain in the next episode how to make a transcript and how to put it on your hosting company. And it is really easy to do. So there's no excuses.

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:09:58

Exactly. And hosting companies today, they really help their creators with those things. So they're is no. No reason why you shouldn't have transcripts on your.

Shouldn't provide transcripts on your episodes.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:10:14

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to explain how easy that is on some of those hosting companies. Thank you.

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:10:20

Excellent.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:10:21

Brilliant. Is there anything else?

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:10:23

I just want to say that we, we are not finished with supporting Podcasting 2.0 tags. We have chapters, we have transcripts, we have podping.

All of those were really released them or really celebrated in the community and the industry. But we have plans to adopt tags like funding and Podroll.

And we're really, really excited about that and excited to foster more of the connection between the creator and the audience.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:10:56

Brilliant. That's really exciting. Podroll is one of my absolute favourites.

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:11:01

Yes.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:11:02

I just think that's a lovely one.

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:11:03

I agree.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:11:04

Thanks so much, Ellie. How can people connect with you?

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:11:08

They can always reach out to me on LinkedIn. It's Ellie Rubinstein. I'm pretty easy to find. Always happy to hear from creators, audience, hosts, anything.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:11:20

Oh, brilliant. Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Ellie.

Ellie Rubinstein: 00:11:23

Thank you so much, Claire. Thanks for taking the time.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:11:26

You're welcome. Visit creativityfound.co.uk/podcasting to find out more about my guests and access lots of useful podcast resources.

If you'd like to get in touch, you can send a boost, but if you haven't got to that lesson yet, feel free to reach out to me on my Instagram account, @podcasting2.0inpractice.