5 Reasons To Transcribe Your Video Content
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Video is one of the most popular marketing tools today, and it’s easy to understand why. On social media, videos get 48% more views than other content. Over 85% of businesses have taken note and created videos of their own. You should, too.
What Are Video Captions?
Captions are written text that you add to videos so that viewers have the option to read along instead of just listening. Subtitles are almost the same, but they’re for individuals who don’t speak the language; some call captions “same-language subtitles.”
Leaving captions out might seem tempting; after all, who watches a video just to read the words instead?
The answer might surprise you. Here are five reasons every intelligent business owner should add captions to their videos.
1. Accessibility on Mobile Devices
Over 50% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices. In the United Kingdom, the percentage is 47% and rising.
Adding captions is the fastest way to increase mobile engagement and prevent mobile users from adding to your bounce rate.
When producing a video, you might imagine viewers watching it in an ideal environment: a relatively quiet area where it’s okay to turn on the sound.
Notice the word “ideal.” Reality isn’t ideal, so lots of people who find your video will be in crowded, noisy places. Others will be in situations where turning on the sound would be rude and annoying.
They’re not going to find a quiet place to watch your video. They’re not going to save it for later.
They’ll close the tab and forget about it forever.
Captions allow viewers to watch your video whenever and wherever they like.
2. General Accessibility
Hearing Difficulties
Hearing difficulties are usually the first thing people think of when you ask them why captions are important. Though most viewers aren’t hard of hearing, those who are shouldn’t be left out.
Besides, small percentages become big numbers when a population gets large enough. Around 5% of people have difficulty hearing—over 4.5 million worldwide.
Auditory Processing Disorders
Up to 4% of the population suffers from an auditory processing disorder despite being able to hear. ADHD and autism are just two things that can make auditory processing difficult.
Without captions, many individuals will feel your business doesn’t care about them. That’s an excellent way to make sure they ignore you.
Even people with perfect hearing might prefer closed captions; after all, not everyone is an auditory learner, and most video scripts include information that can’t be conveyed through imagery.
Accessibility for Non-native English Speakers
Almost 10% of the population in Great Britain speaks English as a second language. Many of them need a little help comprehending it.
Understandability
Did you know it’s possible to be fluent in one aspect of a language while not having competency in another?
Learning how to correctly hear a second language—how to automatically interpret words instead of getting lost in seemingly chaotic sounds—is one of the hardest parts of building fluency. It often trails far behind reading ability.
Viewers in that situation benefit from subtitles, which can turn a video’s script from incomprehensible babble into an easily understood message.
Non-native English speakers might also struggle with accents. Great Britain has incredible diversity in that area, and it can create comprehension gaps for some viewers. Captions fix that problem.
Translation
Translating words spoken in one language into words written in another is tricky. However, it’s a snap to translate written words into another language. Transcribing your video in English will save time if you decide to add subtitles in other languages.
3. Clarity and Reinforcement
Let’s say a viewer is in the perfect situation to watch a video: They can hear just fine, understand spoken English, and are in the right environment.
You still need captions.
Over 100 studies have proven that captions increase focus while improving retention, memory, and comprehension. University students without hearing difficulties report that they use captions almost as often as students who can’t hear.
4. SEO
Search engine algorithms rely on bots to crawl the web for content. Nowadays, those bots can read captions.
That means they can assess all the content in your video instead of using context clues to guess what it’s about. In the past, keywords in a script meant nothing to search engines. Now they actually count!
Google’s algorithms also consider accessibility when determining search rankings. If a search engine chooses between two similar videos, one with captions and the other without, it will reward the first and penalise the second.
5. Repurposing
Videos are great, but they’re not the only content you need. A transcript makes it easier to use a video’s content for other things later on.
For instance, you could whip up a blog post in no time by using your video transcript as inspiration. It might even be as simple as changing a few words here and there.
Quotes from videos are valuable, too. When you quote (and link to) a video elsewhere, it encourages potential customers to engage with your content even more.
Best Practices
Captions are common, but they’re not all good captions. There are a lot of ways captions can go wrong.
- Background—Captions against a bad background are like words in a noisy bar. Nobody understands them. Keep the background clear so that the captions are readable. Dark text is most readable with light backgrounds; light text is best for dark backgrounds.
- Pace—Most people aren’t speed-readers, so captions should follow a reasonable pace.
- Font—Skip fancy fonts. Sans-serif options are best because the letters don’t have distracting details. Helvetica, Futura, and Arial are good choices.
Conclusion
No video can reach its full potential without captions. They increase accessibility, boost engagement, create clarity, and improve SEO. Transcripts make it easy to repurpose video content—and efficiency is vital for any business. As a bonus, mobile users love them.
Add captions to get the best out of your videos.