welcome to help me podcast a show
designed to help you launch and grow
your podcast I am your host Gino and
twice a week I will release a new
episode with different tips and tricks
for launching and growing your podcast
from audio engineering to planning
intentionally to growth tactics each
episode will be a bite-sized tip to help
you podcast
thank you
hey good morning everybody welcome back
to help me podcast today we're going to
talk about how to transcribe your
podcast for free
so transcribing your podcast is a great
way to repurpose your content and to
repurpose your podcast we all know that
your podcast is an audio file and a lot
of the places that you'd like to
repurpose your podcast are places on the
internet which would require text things
like reposting your podcast as a blog
post or adding your transcripts to your
podcast hosting site which can improve
your accessibility and your SEO of your
podcast transcribing your podcast is not
a new thing there's tons of services out
there that can help you transcribe your
podcast where basically you just upload
your audio file and you let it do its
processing and then you have the written
version of your podcast but most of
these Services cost money and today I
want to bring you a free way to
transcribe your podcast although it will
take a little bit more work and a little
bit more elbow grease it will help all
you Indie podcasters out there that
don't have a budget so the main idea is
that we're going to get our podcast onto
YouTube and then we're going to use
YouTube to give us our free
transcription because YouTube puts
subtitles on all the videos on YouTube
it's kind of already automatically
transcribing all of the content that's
on YouTube already so really all we need
to do is get our podcast onto YouTube so
how do we do that if you're thinking
it's going to be super complex to turn
your audio file into a YouTube video it
is not that complex and we're going to
bring back one of my favorite tools
canva to be able to do this we don't
need to learn any video editing software
or you know any sorts of different
programs like that we can simply use
canva and a canva template that's out
there to turn our audio file into a
YouTube video so this isn't going to be
anything fancy it's not going to be a
fancy video you know it's kind of just
going to be a graphic or a picture maybe
your cover art and we could you know
tune it up a little bit by putting like
a visual graphic that moves along with
the video but but it's basically just
going to be you know a static picture
sort of thing and the intent is to be
able to get the transcription from
YouTube so you know it's not that
important that we don't have a fancy
looking video or any cool graphics or
anything like that so let's uh let's
walk through how to do this on canva so
first thing we're going to do is we're
going to go to canva.com if you go to
the canvas homepage you can see there's
a little bit of bubbles under the search
bar one of them is documents one's
whiteboards one's presentation social
media and then one of those bubbles is
videos and this is you know it's right
in front of the page you can't miss it
and it just says videos so now it brings
up some easy to assemble templates for
you and if you just click on one of the
videos it's going to be framed as a
1920x1080 which is a high definition
video frame and you basically just click
that template and now you have a video
template that's going to be super easy
to create a video if that doesn't come
up for you you could literally just type
in into the search box video template
hit enter and then you will find the
same templates you want to make sure
that you just have the frame that looks
like a video now once you're into this
video editor if there's some preset
stuff in there because you picked a
template with something that's populated
already just go ahead and delete
everything and you're going to want to
start from scratch so once your canvas
is white upload your podcast cover art
to the upload section of canva and
hopefully you designed your podcast
cover within canva already so you
already have it in here right so once
you upload it you're gonna just drag
your cover art over and fit it inside of
the frame of the video now your podcast
cover art is going to be square so it's
not going to fit inside of this video
template but what we can do is once we
make our podcast cover art reach the top
and bottom you'll have some blank sides
on this now because again it's it's a
square and not a rectangle so we click
the background then we can go ahead and
click the color of the background and
what canva automatically does is they
pull all of your colors from whatever
image you already have on this template
so I put in my podcast cover art and
it's got orange and gray and tan and red
and it's already pulled those colors so
I could simply just pick one of those
colors that matches my cover art to
finish the sort of frames another thing
I can do to make it look a little bit
nicer is I can go to elements and I
could search for let's just say
microphone right
go to microphone and then we can go and
then you can add some graphics that have
some motion to them so you know you
could search through microphone or maybe
something that has to do with your
podcast and you can add it and it'll
kind of just like you know move a little
bit as the video plays and that's kind
of a little nice bonus to it because it
will give you the illusion that it's a
video and not just you know a static
image but you know like I said even if
it is a static image not the end of the
world because really we're doing this
for the transcription so once you make
the graphic look like you want it to the
next thing you're going to do is you're
going to go to the upload section of
canva so the left hand side you're going
to see something that says upload now
you're going to go grab your podcast
audio file and you're going to drag it
into this uploads section once it's done
uploading to canva you should be able to
find it under the audio of uploads and
now you have a piece of audio that you
you can drag into this video template so
you're going to want to take your audio
and literally just drag it over your
video template and once you do that
you'll see that it's now under the image
and if you hit that little play button
on the bottom it'll now play your
podcast as a video and you'll be able to
hear your podcast and see the image that
we've created so the last thing you want
to do is you just want to make sure that
the length of this video is as long as
your podcast and this is something easy
to do because once you upload your audio
and you can see it in the audio section
of your uploads it'll actually tell you
exactly how long it is so you know my
episode right here for episode 31 is 8
minutes and 19 seconds so all we need to
do is go up to the clock where it says
edit timing and then usually the
template will only be like five minutes
or something like that you just want to
go in there type in 8 19 and then hit
enter and and now this video is the same
length as your podcast audio now all we
need to do is export it as a video so
just like we export anything else in
canva you go up to share you go to
download and then it automatically picks
MP4 for you which is great and then you
hit download and now you have just
turned your audio podcast into a video
MP4 format that we can now upload to
Youtube so if you don't have a YouTube
channel set up for your podcasts you
might want to think about doing that to
have a dedicated channel to have all
your podcasts on YouTube and another new
feature of YouTube recently is that they
actually have a podcast section so you
can actually upload your video as either
just a normal video like you would any
other YouTube video or you can upload it
as a podcast and the difference being
that it kind of automatically creates a
playlist for you and it puts all of your
episodes into that one podcast section
which is a little bit nicer but what
it's also helpful for too is YouTube
also has its own music player now which
will Auto populate these videos into
their podcast part of their music player
so kind of just gives one additional way
to listen to your podcast so that's the
way that I did mine and I suggest that
you do it the same all you're going to
do is you're going to upload every
episode as its own video you know we're
not uploading this so that people can
stream your podcast from YouTube and
like not have a video to watch although
they now have the option to it's not
really the intent of doing this really
what the intent is is once your podcast
is published and it's a YouTube video we
can now go get our transcription so once
you got it all published and sent out
through YouTube You're gonna go to the
YouTube video itself and then you're
gonna go under the video and click on
those three little dots that are next to
the the thumbs up and thumbs down and
the share buttons there's a little three
dots and in the little three dots
there's a drop down and it says report
and then show transcript here in the
show transcript it now has transcribed
your podcast and it's literally all
right there for you to copy and paste
and the only thing that I would
recommend doing is once you got the
transcript pulled up there's another
three dots and you can hit toggle time
stamps so then it shuts the time stamps
off and you literally just have a full
transcription now all we're going to do
is we're going to highlight it and
scroll down scroll down scroll down
install the whole episode is highlighted
then you hit Ctrl C to copy it and then
go ahead and open up your word document
or Google Docs and hit paste and it's
really as simple as that and then you
have a full transcription of your
podcast now it's not going to be 100 you
know no transcription services are 100
accurate but it will be pretty close so
depending on what you're using it for
you can either go through it manually by
yourself to double check it and to make
sure that the transcription is 100
accurate or you can just leave it as is
depending on what your use for it is if
you're going to put it as a blog post
you're probably going to need to edit it
anyways to make it sound less podcasty
and and more blog sounding but really
this saves you so much time and so much
energy to transcribe your podcast
because you're not starting from scratch
and just typing the whole thing out that
would be an annoying and take forever
and you're not paying a service to do
this which is again also keep in mind
not 100 accurate so even the paid
Services you do have to review it's a
free way of doing it and it also gets
your podcast on YouTube for you know
potential listeners and maybe other
countries or people who don't listen to
podcasts on streaming sites maybe they
only listen to podcasts on YouTube this
is a good way to to kind of kill two
birds with one stone even though I hate
that analogy but it's a little bit of
effort and you can have your podcast
transcribed for free and you know now
with some of the other tools out there
too like having your podcast transcribed
could be helpful in using AI to then
maybe help you create show notes right
or create even a blog post for your
podcast because what you could do is
then you can copy and paste this
transcript in into something like chat
gbt and say chat gbt write me show notes
for this transcription of my podcast you
know that's one thing you can do to it
another thing you could do with the
transcription is you can upload it to
your podcast hosting site I use
transistor as my podcast hosting site
and within transistor when I go to
upload and episode there's a section for
episode transcripts which lets me just
click on it and add the transcript to
the episode and what this helps me do is
it'll help improve the SEO and the
accessibility of your podcast because
Google now has words to put to your
audio content and it helps your podcast
get found right so when people Google
search what the problems are if your
transcript has the keywords in there it
can be one of the things that that
people get pointed to because Google Now
knows what the audio is because you have
the transcription so it can be very
important for SEO another thing that
transistor specifically does is they
also put the transcript on the your
podcast website that transistor gives
you for free which is actually kind of
helpful because then people when they go
to your podcast website they can read
the whole episode there and maybe they
don't want to listen to it or they're in
a meeting or something and they kind of
just want to read about the episode they
can actually just read your episode so
it really helps in accessibility of your
episode and getting your episode out
there and again repurposing your content
I hope this was helpful for you again
just to run through the uh the steps
what we're going to want to do to
transcribe your episode for free is
we're going to need to make it into a
video to upload to Youtube so the first
step is going to canva and getting that
video template creating a template that
looks decent and has your cover art on
it and then uploading your audio to it
making sure the length of the video is
the same length as your audio and then
we're going to want to download it as an
mp4 then we're going to upload it to
YouTube as a podcast and then once it's
on YouTube we go to the YouTube video we
go to the transcription section and we
just copy and paste the transcription
right out of you YouTube into a Google
drive or Word document editor and now
you have your transcripts and you can do
what you like with it so I hope this was
helpful and just to help you out a
little bit even more I will leave a link
to a canva video template in the show
notes and inside this template I
actually left you a little microphone
that kind of bounces up and down through
the length of your video that I think
could be appropriate for a podcast and
it's the same one that I found and I use
for my podcast videos on YouTube and you
can do all this on canva with having the
free account you don't have to have a
paid account on canva again one of the
reasons why I love canva it's so
versatile and you can do so many
different things without having to pay
for it so again shout out to canva and
they're the ones that are allowing us to
be able to turn our podcast audio into a
video without having to use any
confusing video editor or learn a new
program that we don't really want to so
again canva coming in for the win to
help us create these videos very quickly
so I hope this helpful you can always
send me an email if you have a question
or maybe you got a different topic for
an episode that you want to hear me
cover my inbox is always open and I will
see you all on the next episode
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