Recently, I have been testing voice transcription solutions to speed up my writing. Between a day job, freelance side work, and writing a book, and spoiling my future wife, I really haven’t had time to sit down and type out blog posts.
So the question is this: is there a better way? Is there a way I can blurred out 500 words without sitting in front of the keyboard banging away until my fingertips are sore?
I have tried to use Google’s voice transcription. I wanted to try Windows’ transcription, but it was the unfathomably bad — my patience didn’t even extend past a paragraph.. And seeing as I regularly text using my iPhone’s voice transcription keyboard, I figured it was the next place to start.
Does it work?
Absolutely, at least when it comes to accurately transcribing my speech. When it comes to voice commands, such as backspace or delete, so far it is tedious and unintelligent. But perhaps I just need to train myself better.
Ask and you shall receive: here is a list of Siri voice commands. Curiously, there is not a backspace or delete command. I don’t know what the hell one needs to do when they make a mistake, which is likely when you were voice transcribing post. Stream of consciousness rarely comes out clearly. I find myself turning off dictation and then using the backspace key, or selecting and deleting text using the touch screen on my phone, which kills my flow.
But writing on a phone is weird.
The other big adjustment is going to be talking into my phone to write documents instead of using a laptop. Perhaps, had my idiot 45 pound Chow Chow puppy not destroyed my iPad, it would be a little less awkward dictating to an electronic device, but as it stands now, I am talking to my iPhone like I am on the speakerphone. And it is not as natural as it sounds like it would be. Fortunately, I hear I can also use Siri’s dictation on my Macbook — I’m downloading the enhanced dictation feature as I edit this post. If it works as well as the iPhone does, my work-anywhere-workflow will be on a whole nother level.
So, is this ready for prime time? I think so. The accuracy is unparalleled in comparison to google and Microsoft’s offerings. And this may be the first time I’ve actually been impressed with Siri. I hate that damn unintelligent personal assistant. She makes me miss “OK Google” more and more every single day. However, the speech recognition here is really truly amazing. Which raise one big question: is it the device or the software? Previously, I have tested android/google transcription using lower quality devices or a desktop computer with a mediocre microphone talked into a WebCam. The multiple microphones on an iPhone are known for being absolutely spectacular, and perhaps it is the quality of those microphones that are leading to painless transcription.
In any case, it doesn’t really matter, does it? This really does work.
The point is: for an incredibly busy individual, who doesn’t have time to sit down and type out a blog post, an iPhone using voice transcription is a perfectly feasible alternative that can keep the blog on track. For lawyers on the go, especially ones who have trouble typing or spelling, which is sadly a large percentage of the ones I have worked with, this really could be the solution to keeping their sites full of fresh content.
The biggest problem for most legal marketing endeavors is the lack of quality content. Content rules everything around Internet marketing. And those who know most about law, the lawyers who practice it, are too damn busy to actually contribute to the content on their website. Instead, they end up with some underpaid hacks, or worse, a Third World typist hired to spin content from other sites, filling the pages of their websites.
Give me a decently experienced lawyer who can at least voice transcribe a blog post a week, and I will get you a lawyer with a quality website full of intelligent content that probably ranks well, even without any additional effort such as “optimizing” the post or building a link profile through the many link strategies that are passed around amongst us SEOs as a so-called secret recipe for success.
