How to Transcribe a Podcast Episode

Transcribing your podcast is one of the highest-ROI activities you can do as a creator. While audio is fantastic for building an intimate connection with your audience, it's terrible for search engines. Google can't listen to your 45-minute interview, but it can read the transcript.

Manually typing out a podcast transcript takes roughly four hours for every hour of audio. Fortunately, modern AI transcription tools can do the heavy lifting for you in minutes.

Export your final podcast episode as an MP3 or WAV file. If your transcription tool supports video, you can also use the MP4 file if you record a video podcast.

Upload your audio file to an AI transcription service like Talk2Memo. Talk2Memo supports files up to 1GB and can process a 1-hour podcast episode in about 5-10 minutes.

Good transcription software will automatically detect when different people are speaking (known as diarisation). Once the transcript is generated, you can easily rename "Speaker 1" to "Host" and "Speaker 2" to "Guest" so the transcript reads like a proper interview.

Instead of writing show notes from scratch, use AI to summarise the transcript. Talk2Memo automatically generates a headline, key points, and a summary of the entire episode as soon as transcription is complete. You can also use the AI Chat feature to ask specific questions like "What were the three main tips the guest shared about marketing?"

Export the final transcript as a text file, PDF, or Markdown document. You can publish the full transcript on your website on a dedicated episode page, or include the AI-generated summary in your podcast host's description field.