Transcribing Audio - Essential Tools for Creative Business Owners

Do you know who your ideal customer is? If that conjures up a very definite image and description in your mind then congratulations! That definitely wasn't the case for me until a few weeks ago.

I have been doing a series of interviews with the ideal customers for the Quilt n Learn events, having come to terms with the idea that it is not eight thousand people just like me. In a recent newsletter I offered $50 for an hour's interview with members of my mailing list and sure enough a handful of people stepped up. I knew taking notes during the interviews would slow things down and stop the natural flow developing so I decided to record and take notes later. 

I have seen a few people recently using AI that integrates with Zoom to make a recording of a meeting and then afterwards the software provides a summary of what was discussed and the resulting actions. Zoom seems to have a version of this available as an add on but one I have used before is Otter.ai. This is a useful tool that has evolved a lot since I first used it about 5 years ago purely for transcription of a recording. The free version is definitely worth a look but meetings are limited to 30 minutes so it wasn't going to work for me in this case, plus I didn't actually need a summary. I wanted ALL the words. 

Photo of cuddly otters by Jim on Unsplash

A year or so ago I came across Aiko which is free and it has become my go-to tool for audio transcription. My flow is that I have the app on my phone. When I want to record something I use the Voice Memos app on my iPhone (or Android has something similar). Once the recording is complete I can "share" it using the 3 dots to the right of the recording. I find Aiko in the app list and click on it and then it automatically starts transcribing. I have found that if the recording is longer than an hour, Aiko will crash when I share it. I rarely have to transcribe things longer than that though so when I occasionally do I just split the original file and do it in pieces. I can copy and paste Aiko's transcript straight into a google doc or note and can then edit as desired. 

Aiko Icon

Pros of Using Aiko

• Free

• No ads

• Works in 100 languages

• IPhone and Android

Cons of Using Aiko

• Will crash if your recording is more than an hour long
• Does make your iPhone hot - there is an explanation for why this happens on his website.

Overall I really like it and would recommend you give it a try. When checking the link for the app I discovered the creater's webpage has a number of useful tips to improve the output including FAQs. The tip on dividing the transcript into paragraphs is going to be very useful.

If you have a different app you recommend please let me know in the comments - thanks!