Turn your podcasts into blog posts with the Flixier MP3 to text converter

Podcasts have really taken off over the last couple of years and even more so during the COVID pandemic. If the idea of listening to a pre-recorded online radio show seemed new to people as recently as 5 years ago, nowadays they are by far one of the most popular types of long-form content online, with everyone from hobbyists to comedians, celebrities and even brands joining in on the hype! 

With that being said, you might find yourself wondering: if podcasts are so popular, why would I want to convert them into text? It’s no surprise that written content is declining in popularity and the idea of someone wanting to read something rather than listen to it can seem counterintuitive, especially when so many people like to multi-task and enjoy podcasts while driving, cooking or doing odd jobs around the house. 

Well, there are two big reasons why having a written version of your podcast available online is a good idea: 

Accessibility 

A big issue with podcasts is that they pose a lot of accessibility problems for hard of hearing or hearing disabled people. Not being able to read the show notes or not having access to the transcript of a podcast can make it downright impossible for a significant number of people to enjoy them! 

Just to give you an idea of how vast the number of people who won’t be able to enjoy your show is, the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders reported that approximately 15% of American adults (that’s 37.5 million people) of age 18 and over report some trouble hearing. 

37.5 million is a huge number, and that’s just US citizens. If you consider the fact that your audience can extend to English-speakers from all over the globe, then the number becomes even greater. 

While there are some third party applications and services out there to help people generate their own transcripts or captions, wouldn’t you agree that this responsibility shouldn’t fall on your audience? After all, you benefit from your show and your message reaching as many people as possible, so you might as well make it easier for them to enjoy it by providing them with a show transcript!

Search Engine Optimization

Most commonly referred to by the abbreviation SEO, Search Engine Optimization means making sure that people can easily discover your content online when searching for related topics and information. This ensures that your videos, blogs and website get a constant influx of new viewers so your community doesn’t stagnate. 

SEO is why YouTubers work hard to come up with clever, descriptive and eye-catching titles and descriptions and why blog and article writers often research keywords before writing a piece in order to ensure that their wording is consistent with the way their target audience writes when performing Google searches. 

For podcasts, however, doing proper SEO is a lot more difficult than it looks! Since podcasts are primarily an audio format, they’re usually not posted on YouTube, but rather on platforms like Spotify or distributed using RSS feeds to various podcasting apps. 

That’s why searching for something on Google will rarely return podcasts as a result, even if the answer to your question might have been discussed and explained in-depth during an episode. Unfortunately, Google isn’t yet able to index the conversations you have with your host during an episode, so if you want more people to discover your podcast, transcribing the MP3 and posting it on your website or blog is the way to go. 

If your episode is available in a written format, Google will be able to index it and show it to the people who are interested in the topic being discussed. In turn, this will lead to a greater number of people learning about your podcast and most likely following it on podcasting apps in order to learn more!

How do I turn my podcasts into blog posts? 

The easiest way to turn your podcast into a blogpost or written article is to use an online MP3 to text converter like Flixier. Despite being mainly an online video editor, our tool has a very powerful Subtitle Generator that you can use to create transcripts of your podcast episodes in a matter of minutes, all without having to download or install anything to your computer! 

To get started, you’ll need to create a free Flixier account.  

Then, log into Flixier and click on Create Project. 

Give your project a name and choose an Aspect Ratio. The latter doesn’t really matter for us though, since we only care about turning audio into text.

In your new project, open the Library tab and drag your audio file over to it. You can also click the blue Import button here to bring your podcast episode over from a variety of online sources including SoundCloud. 

After your audio file has been imported, drag it down to the Timeline and  click on Generate Subtitle. Flixier will take a few minutes to create your subtitle file. After the file is created, feel free to edit any lines manually in case you feel like our AI got it wrong, or download it by clicking the Download Subtitle button.