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5 Sizable Reasons You Should Be Closed Captioning Videos

By September 13, 2017September 4th, 2021No Comments

closed captioning

Billions upon billions of people online every day are watching videos across YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and other popular video hosting and social media websites. With huge potential for such a wide audience, it’s no wonder why businesses are jumping to contribute as a part of their overall marketing strategy.

According to Cisco, online video content will account for 74% of all consumer internet traffic in 2017. Additionally, WordStream reports that 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos during any given week and that 44% of SMB owners and marketers plan to put money behind video content on Facebook this year. So, what does this mean for businesses and marketers? Your video strategy is critical to digital success and ROI.

Closed captioning videos is one of the simplest, most effective ways to get your content in front of more eyes more often. Different, and yet equally as important as video transcripts, closed captioning provides text on (and within) an existing video, rather than adding a transcript of the video in the description. Here’s why they’re so important for your video strategy:

1. Silence is underrated.

Auto-play is amazing, especially for getting the most out of Facebook videos. But, for the most part, viewers are watching these videos on mute via mobile. By adding closed captioning to your videos, people (and potential customers!) can watch your video content anywhere, even in situations where audio isn’t ideal, like standing on a busy street or commuting on the train. Wherever sound is obscured, closed captions are able to share the speech that is happening.

2. Video SEO can always use a boost.

YouTube and Google both read closed captioning with SEO in mind, so adding them in along with a complete video transcript will help your videos be indexed more accurately and rank even higher within search engine results. And, as you probably recognize, higher search rankings leads to more viewers finding your business (and its video content) overall. Remember: search engines index text by reading your closed captions carefully, so it’s important to use optimized keywords to achieve the best ROI.

3. Comprehension takes more than just visuals.

Not everyone is a completely visual learner — video transcriptions and closed captions are incredibly helpful for online learning and information retention. Closed captions are proven to result in a greater depth of understanding and focus of attention, as they reinforce the actions being performed in the video itself; viewers can derive the meaning from the words as they are shown, by listening to the attached audio, or through a combination of the two.

4. Videos created for more than one language.

Getting quality closed captioning or video transcripts is the first step toward translating your video content for greater international reach. With 80% of YouTube views coming from outside of the United States and over 67% of views coming from non-English speaking countries, translated closed captions and video transcripts are becoming more and more in-demand. Is your business growing globally? You should consider translating video closed captions sooner, rather than later.

5. Spinoff content made more simple.

Disseminating content in a strategic way can often mean repurposing the most high-traffic, SEO-friendly pieces of video into other marketing content and collateral. By getting an accurate transcript of your videos, as well as complete closed captioning, creating new content becomes as simple as cut-copy-paste-edit! Closed captioning and text-based video transcriptions make it quick and easy to scan and search for specific phrases and topics, so you can pull quotes and key areas of information to spread around within your other marketing materials.


Ready to get started with closed captioning videos? Get a free quote for your next video project, or log in / sign up to get started right away!

This article was originally published on April 26, 2017.