Where you can and cannot caption videos all depends on the platform you wish to use. The most commonly used purpose of captioned videos is for social media. Consider every platform you can share videos on – Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube, all of these can be captioned for beneficial purposes.
Those who cannot hear or choose not to listen have access, you are immediately broadening your audience. The reach can be relied on more organically which increases SEO automatically. Although you would be using it for visual intention, the text produced from your content can be used above and beyond this purpose. Here are the main reasons why every business and content creator needs to start using captions for video:
For the Deaf or Hard of Hearing
Out of the whole world’s population, over 5% (360 million people) have a loss of hearing, and although there’s no evidence as to how many people watch videos online, it’s easy to suggest that those who do – need captions. Without these, you are eliminating 360 million people worldwide from your customer reach.
Not forgetting the other types of disorders that will benefit from captioned videos: Autism challenges human emotions and engaging with others, and many have said when muting the sound and using captions they have been empowered to truly enjoy videos for the first time.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) makes those suffer inattention (or easy distractibility) also combined with impulsivity. With these manifestations, watching videos require focus which can be better achieved to a higher extent with captions.
For the Immediate SEO Increase
A well-optimized video gives search engines the necessary indicators to find your content – nothing will go viral if Google can’t understand what it is saying. YouTube and Google read captions and add them in along with a transcript to help your ranking. The good thing is, it doesn’t have to be approved or loaded into some sort of safe cabinet before Google allows the video to be published. Giving your audience the opportunity to automatically search whatever’s in your script, the more immediate you start seeing benefits.
Tip: You can also use Google Trends and Google Adwords Keyword Planner to get a sense of what phrases are more or less popular in search queries.
For the Vast Improvement of Content
A full document of written content which supports your video can be used in many ways. By hiring an expert to backlog across all video content, you are re-optimizing and revamping your uncaptioned dated content. Also by offering an option of viewing a video through text allows the viewers who aren’t necessarily visual types to enjoy. Videos are, however, helpful for online resources of learning, and with 2018 forecasted as being the year of video, being the future for videos, information is being retained this way more so than ever before.
With captioned videos being the more accessible option, your platform would immediately be more helpful to viewers with a sense of understanding and focus.
Immediate benefits are gained through three channels and very easily too. However, only when done properly will you start to reap these benefits, as unprofessional usage clearly shows through mistakes and could cost you more money over time. For example, YouTube introduced an automatic captioning feature as the default closed caption option. Sadly, the auto-captions are mostly riddled with errors.
When targeting a larger audience, especially people with disabilities, the immediate benefit is when they find the option between your captioned video and the competitors’ uncaptioned video. As we found, errors can occur even in the most popular videos, through the most trustworthy websites – Taylor Swift & YouTube.
We specialize in captioned videos, as well as services across all types of transcriptions. If you want to improve your video content today, get in touch to see how we can help you.
