One of my favourite tools that I love to use in calls with clients or when I'm having a meeting on Zoom is Otter.ai. Otter.ai is a tool that helps to record and transcribe meetings automatically through video or audio meetings, voice notes or files. It can automatically join your Zoom calls or Google Meet calls and transcribes the audio and what people are saying, automatically.

The real power in the tool is then the ability to dissect and make smaller clips, or highlights from the meeting itself. The software is smart enough to distinguish between speakers, so if multiple people are present on the call, the nuances in the tone and the voice are then picked up and transcribed differently. Otter.ai also allows me to transcribe these videos, and then produce a closed caption for YouTube and other video formats.

The team at Otter.ai have spent alot of marketing dollars to make themselves known on popular platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. If you're a coach, consultant or content creator and you would like a tool to help with managing your meetings, I believe Otter.ai is a fantastic tool to utilise. You can join for free and for a free extra 100 minutes, I have a sign up link here: https://ryandrake.com/otter.

SOME OF THE BENEFITS I LOVE

• Real time transcription so you never miss a word, and can access, annotate and share the notes later on
• Supports different file types (e.g. Mp3, Mp4)
• You can set up integrations with Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams
• It learns over time and gets smarter by picking up your voice – if you have regular calls with different clients, it'll be able to distinguish who is actually speaking.

NAVIGATING YOUR ACTIVITY FEED

Otter.ai can do a whole bunch of things for you. Once you have created an account and logged in, your main activity feed will show a list of all the transcriptions that Otter.ai has done automatically. One key feature that I love is when you click on the “record” button, and then “new recording”, the software is going to start recording the sounds around you. This is incredibly beneficial if you are watching/listening to videos or training in the background, as Otter.ai ensures that you capture all of the notes and transcribes them for you to utilise later. Once the recording is completed and the note transcribed, you can then go ahead and make any necessary edits. The software then navigates you back to the activity feed, with your newest note at the top.

You can always upload pre-recorded files such as Zoom meetings or voice memos into Otter and it'll transcribe and process. Once uploaded, the file will indicate that it is processing, and then you'll receive an email once the transcription has completed. You can then choose to move the transcription into a particular folder, which I find really helpful to reference.

Lastly, the only other thing I believe is super useful, is the smart assistant. You can get Otter to automatically join the meetings that you have scheduled in your calendar. How this works, is that if you have a bunch of meetings for the day, Otter will join the meeting by being a participant in the meeting itself, and will transcribe the call as it's happening. Afterwards, you can then receive a notification to say the call has been transcribed. A bonus of the paid feature is also that you can edit the notes in real time as they are being transcribed.

I find Otter.ai an incredibly useful tool to maximise shared information. It's of a huge benefit to me and my clients to be able to send them a transcription at the end of our calls together. It is far easier to reference back to find key remarks, rather than watching the whole video call again, or trying to listen through to it, they can just skim the transcription and then find and identify what it is that's important for them. As I mentioned previously, if you would like to try Otter.ai, please follow this link that will gift you a couple of extra minutes in the platform. Click that sign up, give it a try, and then come back to this post and comment below if you found Otter.ai to be helpful for your circumstance.