Do you create videos on YouTube, Vimeo, Marco Polo, Facebook video or Facebook Lives? If so, are you creating a text file of your videos? The benefit of transcribing your videos is that then you can use it for your blog posts, video descriptions and captions. That way, you get several pieces of content for your work.

Another reason you might need transcription services is to transcribe any audio recording such as a meeting, interview, etc. They could be turned into a press release, social media updates, or meeting notes for attendees. You could even record a phone conversation through an app and have it transcribed.

A business partner of mine communicates with me almost entirely through videos on the Marco Polo app. Thankfully Marco Polo just added a feature in which you can save a video. Several times I haven't wanted to rewind and try to write down what she says that I want to save, word for word.

I have been getting videos transcribed since 2015. My only complaint? That I haven't done it for every video I've created in which I haven't written out a script…here's my process below.

How to Convert a Video to Text

Here are the steps I take to convert a video to text.

Step 1: Get your video or audio transcribed using Rev.com

Transcription converts your audio to an editable text document that you can use in a variety of ways.

Rev.com is an online service that will transcribe your videos, create text for closed captions and for subtitles. You can get a highly accurate timestamped transcript of your video or audio content. They hire people to do this from home so it's not done by machine, but by actual people.

Captions are timed text shown on screen (ie: on TV, YouTube, Vimeo, etc) used to communicate spoken content and sound effects as the video plays. It's good for SEO and you can also use some of that text as your video description.

How it works
Just upload your file or if the video is live, the URL. You get the turnaround time and price before you pay. They email you the file when it's finished.

There's always a secure copy if you lose a file or need to download it again. They accept most common audio/video formats such as mp3, mp4, mov, wav, avi, aif, ogg, flv, wma, and m4a.

Note: you can also get your content translated in up to 24 languages!

COST

Rev.com is $1 per recorded minute, to convert the audio of your video into captions or text. So, for a 20-minute video, it's only $20! Timestamping is an additional 25 cents per minute.

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FAST
Files under 30 minutes (30 minute long videos or less) are typically delivered within 6 hours or sooner. So same or next day. Mine are sometimes within an hour after I put in my order! They assign it to their network of freelancers. I like it much better than other services that I choose someone and take a risk. It can take days to get back.

Quality

The quality is always so good (99% accuracy) but once or twice they've given me a discount because they weren't happy with the work! Mine doesn't need to be perfect but it's nice to know they stand behind their work.

Here are some of my orders. I use Rev.com a lot more frequently now than I did then…

TIP: Get other people's videos transcribed too.

For my own videos so I can make them into blog posts. To get content for videos by transcribing other people's high ranking videos. Note that I never copy anyone's videos as a future blog post or YouTube video. I simply pull out the key facts and points or let it inspire me. I use a teleprompter sometimes and it takes a long time to find all of the info on my own to put together a script with key points of a review. It does need to be recent and/or verified first.

I do product reviews so the video I choose will have the warranty, return policies and other info I need but that takes time to dig and find. This speeds up the process a lot, because it's easy to add my insights and experience once I have some key details.

TIP: Use the Rev.com app with their call recorder feature to transcribe conversations.

2. Create a blog and social media posts from the transcription

Now you want to paste the text into your blog editor and organize it into paragraphs. Add headlines, subheadings and formatting (or pay a virtual assistant to). Use stills from the video to illustrate your post. I even reuse my thumbnail if it works.

Be sure to add keywords (I use SEMRush to do keyword research) to your title, headlines and text. This helps your SEO rankings so you can be found in search engines. I especially like the magic question tool. Each question asked about topics your business addresses is a chance for a video or blog post.

Last of all, embed your video into the post. To do that on YouTube, simply click the share button under the video, then find the embed button, grab the code and paste it into your post (the code part not the visual editor).

I also use a WordPress plugin called Shortcodes Ultimate and for that all you need is the video URL.

Lift out exact quotes from the text that you can use for a tweet, Facebook post or other social media share.

3. Use the transcription for your video description, captions and subtitles

Next I use the text in my video description. Normally I just put a few key points and summarize but it's a lot easier to cut/paste in the info than to write it from scratch.

You can also get a .SRT format to do captions for either Facebook or YouTube.Your .SRT file will note time frames and the text that falls into each one

You upload the .SRT file to Facebook/Facebook Live or YouTube video. YouTube is pretty easy, it's under where you add captions.

This is how on Facebook:

Select the Facebook video you want to add captions to
Click on the date posted and go to the video (in theater mode)
Click the … and find “Edit this video”
Under “Captions” (below “Description”), select “Choose File”
Upload your .SRT file

Example: I'm on the video itself, clicked on the … and then got a submenu that has a link to edit my video…

YouTube automatically creates subtitles for you but they aren't very good. You can manually fix them or just upload the file you get from Rev. This helps your SEO/ranking and is a better experience for viewers.

Why use Rev?

Rev works with a network of over 30,000 professional transcriptionists under NDA
Make quick edits and customize timestamps in Rev’s transcription editor
No extra charges for specialized content, multiple speakers or heavy accents
They can transcribe your files 24/7, no lead time required.

Go to Rev.com

Who Can Use Rev.com

Podcasters
Marketers (record client meetings so you can get info for press releases, stories, blog posts, etc).
Businesses, to get verbal or video information to use in different ways internally. Captioned videos get much longer watch time online because people (especially when they're at work) watch video online with sound turned off.
Journalists
Vloggers/YouTubers/Bloggers so you can reuse your content in different ways and get more exposure. You can turn quotes into graphics, get info for social media and turn audio content into more posts.
Anyone who has audio or video content they want to save, share or repurpose.

Sign up for the Rev.com Affiliate Program

If you've made it this far you're likely interested in Rev. and may be a good fit for their affiliate program. I'm a happy customer that hasn't ever shared about Rev because honestly, I never thought to.

The Rev.com affiliate programs offers good information, high payout, discount code for your readers and a first sale bonus.