Stop Copy-Pasting Your Podcast Transcript and Calling it a Blog Post—Here’s Why 

I’ll be the first to admit that turning your podcast episodes into blog posts is tempting—very tempting. You’ve already created the content (your episode), all that’s left is to put it into written-word-form, put it on your website, and call it a day, right?

Except, not really. 

A transcript is a word-for-word version of your podcast episode and while your podcast episode is amazing to listen to, it doesn’t quite translate via transcript. You have to admit a big chunk of text on a page is confusing to read if it’s not broken up, structured, and edited a bit (we podcasters love our sidebars and stories).

So, no matter how tempting it is…

Don’t Copy and Paste Your Transcript to Your Blog

And yes, I have a whole list of reasons why this isn’t a great strategy—and most of it lies in the assumption that you want your readers to want to either A, be intrigued and listen to the episode, or B, find your information so valuable and/or connecting that they buy/book/subscribe to you.

Copy and paste your transcript does none of the above. Why? Let’s break it down (and yes, I’m dancing right now—so what):

Problem #1: They Can’t Read it (and if They Can, There’s Zero Comprehension)

As I said, a big block of text isn’t going to get anyone very far. Even if you break it down into paragraphs, you’re still making it extremely difficult for readers to, well, read.

The human brain doesn’t like long paragraphs or chunks of text, it finds them overwhelming and confusing on the best of days—unreadable on the worst.

Remember, people listen differently than they read—and adults learn differently too (and yes, this is considered learning).

Problem #2: It’s Not Skimmable or Structured

It’s not skimmable and there’s no structure—you need headers, subheadings, and paragraphs to make a good blog post. Online readers are skimmers and these little additions (H1, H2s, H3s) allow your readers to gather the most information in the text (and make it easier for Google to crawl it, too).

Headers give your readers an idea of what your content is about before they’re actually committed to reading it. Good headers can make the difference between someone clicking on the blog post and sticking around—or leaving ASAP.

Let’s also not forget about accessibility. Headers make it easier for screen readers to navigate your page.

Problem #3: The Errors, Oh The ERRORS

Y’all, transcripts love to be wrong—like, really wrong and they’ll be wrong over and over again. Transcripts are automatically generated by using whatever tool you’re using (I love Descript, but we can talk about that another day) and created based on what they THINK you’re saying.

For example, when I record a podcast and introduce myself, it spells my name wrong. And no, it’s not just Descript—every transcription program does and will misspell it differently every time.

But this happens A LOT and not just for names, it misspells words, replaces words with similar sounding words, and will forget to finish sentences because it can’t hear you clearly. When you copy/paste your transcription, you’re just carrying those errors over and making it even harder for a reader.

Problem #4: It’s a Waste of Energy

What’s the point? Like for realsies, what’s the purpose of publishing your transcript? Is it to put more content on your website? Is it to improve SEO? Is it because you heard it would help? Is it just to provide the transcript? Here’s the deal:

1. It might be putting more content on your website, but it’s not helpful content and will likely backfire. If it’s hard to read, people won’t read it to begin with—so it’s not overly helpful, if at all (ily and I mean it, today is some tough love, though)
2. It won’t help your SEO—it might actually hurt it. Google (and other search engines) are becoming more and more intuitive in what they rank and while this might have worked 3 or 4 years ago, it’s not gonna get you to rank now.
3. Who did you hear this from and did they specifically recommend copying/pasting your transcript? If you answered yes, unfollow immediately, please. Even just for accessibility, it deserves some structure and edits.
4. You can do this, but you can also just link a Google doc in your Show Notes or let the platforms generate it themselves—but if you’re putting in the energy to provide a transcript, you might as well go all the way and do the dang thing.

TL;DR If you’re not putting it in a format that’s useable/consumable/readable for people, it’s not helping anyone—and a waste of the energy and time you spent waiting on the transcription to generate and publish on your website.

Okay, So…. What Can You Do Instead?

Thanks for asking, I’ve been ready to share 😉 essentially, commit to the blog post (or the blurb). You can still upload a transcript, but make it secondary and add it with a “toggle” so it’s not overwhelming readers (I do this with my interviews, you can check out one of them here).

It will be more time-consuming in the beginning—but everything is when you’re learning! Once you have a good workflow, the process of repurposing your podcast into an SEO blog post should only take you 20-40 minutes and last you YEARS (because SEO is amazing).

If you’re ready to get started, join the Pod to Blog Challenge, a three-day challenge and private podcast that’ll teach you how to start, research, and optimize your first pod-to-blog post. Click here to join! 🎉