An accurate speech to text tool is a must-have for any content creator’s tech stack. With AI-powered speech to text, you can turn existing audio into video captions, podcast show notes, blog posts, and more. It helps you repurpose content across channels to reach a wider audience.

Speech to text is also a significant time-saver for busy content creators. Manually transcribing every voiceover and podcast can take hours, but speech to text models get the job done in minutes so you can stay on top of your upload schedule.

In this article, we’ll explore how speech to text for content creators works, why it’s so effective, and how to incorporate it in your content creation workflows.

Summary

Content creators use speech to text models to generate video captions, create podcast show notes, and repurpose audio content in written formats.
AI-powered speech to text models provide more accurate transcription and formatting than automated social media captions.
By transcribing podcasts using speech to text, you can quickly create show notes or repurpose them as blogs and newsletters.
With keyterm prompting, you can clarify names and industry-specific terms for more accurate transcripts.
To translate your captions, dub the video in your language of choice, then use speech to text to transcribe the dubbed audio.

What are the main uses of speech to text for content creators?

Content creators use speech to text for a variety of tasks, including:

Captions: Speech to text generates accurate captions and subtitles for both short- and long-form video on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels.
Podcast show notes: Speech to text helps you turn raw episode audio into polished written show notes.
Blogs and newsletters: With speech to text, you can turn existing audio or video content into blogs, newsletters, and other written content.
Searchable content libraries: Automated speech to text tools transcribe your existing content library to make it searchable. You can use this to stay organized internally or create an external resource library for your audience.
Content translation: Speech to text translates your content into different languages to reach audiences around the globe.

Many social media platforms have automated caption generation features for video content. However, these tools can make mistakes and use limited punctuation, which makes the captions difficult to read.

Using a dedicated speech to text model helps you create clean, accurate captions for your videos. You can also download and repurpose the transcript across different platforms.

Turning a transcript into captions and subtitles

Captions and subtitles are no longer optional for social media videos. They make videos accessible for everyone, regardless of hearing level. They also allow viewers to watch your videos with the sound off.

Sound-off viewing has become the default for many social media users, especially when they’re in public places or don’t have headphones readily available. A 2026 study found that 87% of Americans use captions at least sometimes when watching video.

In fact, 42% of U.S. viewers prefer captions even when the audio of a video is already perfect, demonstrating the extent to which captioning every video makes your content more appealing.

Speech to text models transcribe your social media videos for caption and subtitle generation. ElevenLabs Caption Generator creates transcripts with word- and character-level timestamps, so they sync with the speech in your video. These timestamps remain even if you cut the original video into shorter clips for different platforms.

Captions are also exportable as SRT and VTT files, so you can upload them directly to social media or to your preferred video editing platform. When editing your video, be sure to adjust the line breaks so they read cleanly with the flow of the conversation.

SRT vs. VTT: Which caption file should you export?

SRT and VTT both carry the same timestamps and text.

Here’s when to choose each one:

Export SRT when you want a simple file that most social platforms and video editing software can accept.
Export VTT when you publish captions or transcripts to podcast apps, as it can add speaker labels and basic styling that improves readability.

If you’re working on social media captions, then SRT is likely the right option.

Clean vs. verbatim transcription for social media captions

When creating social media captions, you can choose between clean and verbatim transcription. Clean transcription removes repetitions and filler words like ‘um’ and 'uh,' while verbatim transcription captures everything exactly as it’s said.

While clean captions are easier to read on-screen, verbatim captions are better for total accessibility. The right choice for you depends on your audience and their unique needs.

ElevenLabs Scribe v2 model uses verbatim transcription as the default setting. However, you can switch to clean transcription by toggling on “Clean Transcript” in ElevenLabs Playground or using the no_verbatim parameter with ElevenAPI.

Choose clean for short-form video, where viewers are likely to read your content while skimming a video. Verbatim is best for longer interviews or research scenarios where it’s important to accurately transcribe if exact wording matters.

Transcribing podcasts for show notes and repurposing

Your podcast serves as the foundation for your entire content strategy. To reach a wider audience, take the ideas discussed in each episode and turn them into show notes, blogs, newsletters, and short-form social media content.

Speech to text tools help you transcribe your podcast episodes for easy repurposing. After creating the transcript, you can edit it into show notes your audience can reference at any time.

You can also turn sections of each transcript into blog and newsletter content, rather than writing articles from scratch. This helps you reach audiences who prefer to read rather than listen.

Written content libraries are easily searchable. If your audience wants to revisit an idea from a previous episode, all they have to do is search your show notes or blog. Written content is also more likely to show up in search results than audio content, so it boosts your online visibility.

The most efficient way to transcribe podcasts is to use a multichannel transcription setup. To do this, use a separate microphone for each speaker. The transcription model will transcribe each speaker separately, so you get accurate results even when speakers talk over each other.

Additionally, turn on audio event tagging when transcribing podcasts. This setting captures laughter, whispering, sighing, or applause, so readers get the full context. To do this with ElevenLabs Speech to Text, toggle on “Tag Audio Events” or use the tag_audio_events parameter with ElevenAPI.

Identifying speakers on a single recording

Multichannel transcription supports up to five channels. If you record every voice on one mixed track or have more voices than channels, turn on speaker diarization instead. Scribe v2 labels each speaker in the transcript and supports up to 32 speakers at once. After transcribing, you can rename speakers by clicking the edit button next to the speaker's label in the ElevenLabs dashboard.

Repurposing recordings into clips, blogs, and newsletters

Transcribe an interview once and reuse it across every channel you publish on.

The same transcript supplies the captions and the raw material for clips and written content. ElevenLabs STT is used by creators and businesses around the world to help expedite the podcast-to-written-content pipeline.

Every podcast, keynote and interview I do goes through speech to text. One transcript gives me accurate captions for the whole thing, the best moments to clip into short videos, and key quotes I turn into written content.

Every podcast, keynote and interview I do goes through speech to text. One transcript gives me accurate captions for the whole thing, the best moments to clip into short videos, and key quotes I turn into written content.

Isaac Peiris

Founder, Brand Chemistry

Here’s a simple repurposing workflow you can use:

Transcribe the full recording and add guest and brand names by adding them to your pronunciation dictionary.
Export the captions as SRT or VTT and use them on the full video.
Read through the transcript for the strongest moments. Click a word in the transcript to jump to that point in the audio, then use the word-level timestamps to cut each clip at the exact start and end.
Copy key quotes into social posts, and edit longer sections into a blog post or newsletter.

It only takes a few minutes to create long-form content from your STT podcast transcriptions.

Turning your videos into transcripts for LLM analysis

After turning your videos into text, you can bulk upload your content to an LLM for analysis. Identify new ideas, highlight talking points you can use for content repurposing, or simply identify what’s working about your content.

Everything I make starts with my voice, but most of my AI tools still work best with text. ElevenLabs Scribe is my translation layer: it turns my videos into transcripts, so any LLM can analyse what's working (and what isn't). In my opinion, that closes one of the biggest gaps in AI.

Everything I make starts with my voice, but most of my AI tools still work best with text. ElevenLabs Scribe is my translation layer: it turns my videos into transcripts, so any LLM can analyse what's working (and what isn't). In my opinion, that closes one of the biggest gaps in AI.

Charlie Hills

AI Educator

Here’s how to set up a similar workflow:

Upload your video files for transcription: ElevenLabs STT accepts video as well as audio, with files up to 3 GB and up to 10 hours long.
Turn on speaker diarization: If more than one person speaks, enable diarization so the LLM can tell who said what.
Upload to your LLM of choice: Add in analytics numbers or additional information to improve the insights you can derive.
Ask specific questions about your content: Asking, “Compare the first 20 seconds of my top-performing videos to see which hooks work best for my audience,” or “List every claim I’ve made about X topic and flag any contradictions," can help unearth new insights.

Dictating prompts and notes

Voice typing lets you give an AI tool the background and nuance that you might skip if you had to type it all out. Speech to text turns what you say into text you can paste straight into a prompt, a brief, or your notes. Some writers are even pivoting to using STT to help them write faster by transcribing speech instead of typing everything out.

I can’t imagine working without it, especially when it comes to prompting. There’s so much nuance that needs to go into every interaction with AI and I can’t be bothered to type all of that.

I can’t imagine working without it, especially when it comes to prompting. There’s so much nuance that needs to go into every interaction with AI and I can’t be bothered to type all of that.

Jamey Gannon

Brand Designer & AI Creative Director

There are two ways to dictate with ElevenLabs:

Record and upload: Record a voice note, upload it to the ElevenLabs Speech to Text page, and copy the transcript into your AI tool.
Stream in real time: If you are building your own tools, Scribe v2 Realtime transcribes speech as you talk over WebSockets, with low latency of about 150 ms according to the docs.

Make sure to turn on no verbatim mode, which removes filler words, false starts, and disfluencies, to make sure a rambling voice note arrives as readable text. Then add the product names and jargon you use often with keyterm prompting to ensure they’re transcribed correctly every time. Batch transcription accepts up to 1,000 keyterms, and realtime accepts up to 50.

Getting names, brands, and niche terms right with STT

Speech to text models won’t always recognize speaker names, brand names, or industry-specific terms. When transcribing your content, use keyterm prompting to clarify spelling and formatting.

Keyterm prompting allows you to provide the correct spelling for names or niche terms before transcription begins. For each video or podcast episode, add names of guests, channels, or brands you mention frequently. You may also need to add industry jargon or other niche terms.

Keyterm prompting makes your transcripts more accurate and easier for audiences to read. It also speeds up the editing process, since you won’t need to correct these terms manually.

Reaching audiences in other languages

Speech to text models go beyond transcription. As a content creator, you can also use them to localize your content and reach audiences who speak other languages.

ElevenLabs Scribe v2 transcribes content in over 90 languages. You can pair it with ElevenLabs Dubbing Studio to build a complete localization workflow.

To do this, upload the audio to the Dubbing Studio to dub content in your preferred language. Then, transcribe the dubbed audio to create localized captions, show notes, or other written content.

What speech to text doesn’t do for you

Speech to text is a powerful tool, but it has its limitations. While speech to text models transcribe audio with accurate timestamps, they aren’t video editors. You’ll need to use a separate video editing platform to create the final product.

When creating content, start by using speech to text to transcribe the audio. Then, export both the raw transcript and the captions to use across your content. Upload the captions to your video editor or directly to social media, and use the transcript as a basis for show notes, blog posts, and other written assets.

Be sure to review every transcript before you publish, especially names and passages where speakers are talking at the same time. The Transcript Editor lets you fix mistakes easily inside the app.

How to choose the best speech to text tool as a content creator

The right STT tool transforms your recording into clean, correctly spelled text with timestamps that make content repurposing as easy as possible.

When searching for the best speech to text platform, make sure it has these five things:

Accuracy in your language: STT performance can vary between languages, especially for languages with less available data. Look for published figures on accuracy. For example, ElevenLabs Scribe v2 has 98% accuracy (~2% WER) in languages such as English, French, Italian, Spanish, and others.
Handling of names and industry jargon: Your STT model needs to be able to understand the context of your conversations and transcribe them accurately. Look for STT platforms that offer keyterm prompting and pronunciation dictionaries.
Timestamps and export formats: You’ll need word-level timestamps and the option to export SRT or VTT captions.
Speaker handling: Especially if you’re working with audio that features more than one speaker, accurately identifying those voices as distinct will help keep transcripts clear.
File limits: For larger audio or video projects, like podcasts, you may have to deal with larger file sizes. ElevenLabs accepts files up to 3GB and, in standard mode, up to 10 hours.

Here’s how a dedicated STT model like Eleven Scribe v2 compares to the automated caption tools built into social platforms:

What you need

Automatic platform captions

Dedicated model such as Scribe v2

Correct spelling of names and brands

Can make mistakes

Keyterm prompting, up to 1,000 terms per batch request

Readable punctuation

Often limited

Clean output with no verbatim mode

Reusing the text elsewhere

Captions stay on the platform

Download the transcript and captions and use them anywhere

Timing

Tied to that platform’s player

Word-level timestamps you can carry into clips

Languages

Varies by platform

90+ languages

Two ways to get started: no-code upload or the API

With ElevenLabs, there are two ways to transcribe your video content using speech to text.

Your first option is to upload your audio file to the ElevenLabs Playground dashboard. Adjust your transcription settings, edit the output directly in the Transcript Editor, then export in the file format you need. The process is quick and easy, and there’s no coding required.

If you’re building your own content publishing workflow, you can also transcribe using ElevenAPI. Add the API directly to the tools you’re already building to get the same accurate transcriptions without switching tools.