Meet Ginger

 Welcome to intentional Reach

Hi! I'm Ginger Schell, the owner of Intentional Reach (formerly SermonScribe). My business specializes in sermon transcription, but we also transcribe podcasts, conferences, interviews, webinars, and such.

In the past, this has been primarily for pastors and church leaders, but working for clients such as Michael Hyatt has opened new doors so now we also work for multiple types of business leaders and online platform builders.

As the owner of Intentional Reach, I handle all direct contact with clients, and I personally review every transcript before it is sent to you or posted online.

What Makes Intentional Reach Different

There are two main things that make my sermon transcription service stand out from other transcription services:

1. Professional ready-to-share transcripts. When you receive our sermon transcripts, they're ready to be posted online or shared with others immediately. You don't have to edit them for grammar, spelling, punctuation, consistency, paragraph breaks, hyperlinks, formatting... We do it all. Transcription accuracy is our main goal. We'll use your template or make a custom template for you. We can send you Word and PDF copies. If you want, we will download your files from your website, and we can even post your transcripts on your website for you.

2. Responsiveness. Although I don't promise to stay by my phone/computer 24 hours a day, most of the time, when you contact me, I'll get back to you very quickly…usually within a couple of hours. My goal is to make you feel like you are the most important client at the top of my list.

Why You Should Post Transcripts On Your Website

Whenever you post audio or video on your website, you should include transcripts because it will help you reach up to three times as many people. How? Think of it this way:

Most people don't go online to find conferences or podcasts or interviews or webinars; they go online to find answers to their specific questions.

Search engines don't index audio or video files, but the average 30-minute file has at least 5,000 words that can be indexed in the form of a transcript. If you post fifty 30-minute sermon or podcast transcripts a year, that's about a quarter of a million words that will be indexed, which will have a significant effect on the number of people who find your website when doing online searches.

Why Your Website Visitors Want Transcripts

So, once they find and visit your website, who's to say they'll read the transcript rather than listen to the audio or video you have posted? The people who are already part of your audience probably will listen to your audio and video, but many other people won't. Many people will make a beeline for the transcript without even thinking about turning on your audio/video. Why? I'm so glad you asked that! Here are a few reasons:

1. People are busy, and it's faster to read a transcript than to listen to an audio file or watch a video. If they are in "research mode," and their only choice is to listen to a 30-minute file to get the answers they're seeking, there's a good chance they'll move on to another resource. But…once people realize you're a great source of the answers they're seeking, more than likely, they'll bookmark your page, tell their friends about you, and come back to your site for more.

2. They can print your transcripts and highlight the parts they want to study more.

3. Transcripts can be read by the hearing impaired.

4. The font can be enlarged for the sight impaired.

5. Transcripts can be translated into other languages using online text translators.

6. Transcripts are keyword searchable.

7. They can be used as study guides by small groups and classes.

8. Bits and pieces can be cut and pasted into blogs and emails to share with family and friends.

How You Can Use Transcripts

Besides reaching more people online, you can personally use transcripts in numerous ways.

1. You can use them as the basis of blogs, newsletters, magazine articles, and you can turn your sermons into books. (Your wheels are turning already, aren't they?)

2. They can have bold, italicized, and colored text to emphasize main points and numbered lists.

3. They can include hyperlinks to your affiliate links. (cha-ching!)

4. They are keyword searchable. (No more accidentally telling the same story you just told 6 months ago.)

5. They can be archived and cataloged electronically.

6. As already mentioned, they can be indexed by search engines.

7. They will be much smaller file sizes than audio/video.

8. They can be used for closed captioning of television broadcasts, web media, DVDs, video-sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo and more.

Something To Keep In Mind

Some people think it will save them money if they pay a $1.00 - $1.50 transcription company to transcribe their files and then hire someone else to clean them up or to attempt to clean them up themselves. Most of the time, this isn't a productive strategy. When a client sends me sermon transcripts that were transcribed by a cheap transcription company and asks me to "fix" them, I usually turn the work down. Why? Because it takes longer to correct the transcripts than it takes to start over and transcribe them from scratch.

How Can I Help You?

Sermon transcripts can be a key component of your online platform. My team would love to help you accomplish your goals. If you need any help getting started or have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

Ginger Schell
Owner, Intentional Reach
gschell@intentionalreach.com