Video content without captions is like a musician performing in front of a half-empty room. You worked hard to make an incredible video — but half your audience is waiting inside and can’t hear you.
In today’s hyper-connected society, not creating captioned content means you are ignoring half your audience. People all around the world are continuously engaging with content, and they all have diverse needs, lifestyles, and methods of accessing video and streaming. Captions help make your content accessible to them and ensure that, when you perform, you are performing for everyone.
Why Should You Caption Your Videos Before Publishing?
Here are our top arguments for why captioning videos is so important today.
1. Engage your audience without sound
We don’t always want to be playing sounds from our phones while we’re on the go. Captioning allows viewers to watch videos and streams wherever they are. Whether they are using public transit without earbuds, in a quiet place with no way to play the video audio, or if they just want to read along, captions make it simple for your audience to watch and engage with your content. In fact, according to new research, 83% of US media consumers watch videos without sound. Furthermore, 80% of viewers are more likely to watch the whole video when captions are available rather than just the beginning or the first few seconds.
2. Attract and retain audience attention
Research has shown that videos with captions are watched longer, indicating that captions help to grab and hold the audience's interest. These prolonged viewing periods not only aid in conveying your message but may also improve the performance of your content on various platforms.
According to several studies, captions also enhance reading abilities by giving beginning readers more exposure to the written word.
Additionally, captions let viewers whose first language is not English to follow along while listening, which helps them understand what is being said. This suggests that you may expand your audience to include foreign markets and those for whom English is a second language by simply using captions.
3. Make your content more accessible
The use of captions will make it easier for audiences who are hard of hearing or deaf to understand your material. More than 5% of people worldwide experience severe hearing loss. If you don’t use captions, you are excluding 460 million people from accessing your content. Creating precise and thorough captions ensures that everyone can watch your content.
4. Maximize your SEO and content with transcripts
Another reason to caption is a result of the captioning process: transcription. If professional captioning is used, transcripts are made available at the end of the process. However, they may also be simply converted into a transcript on their own.
One major benefit of having a transcript of your content is that it makes it possible for search engines like Google to find a video or stream through SEO.
Search engines can read transcripts but cannot view or listen to videos while indexing the information. To boost your ranking and gain more views and exposure for your material, always include a video transcript or highlights when captioning.
Additionally, you may use transcripts to convert your content into different formats, like a blog post or an email to your target audience. If you have transcripts for your videos, creating new material is as easy as copying and pasting.
5. Maintaining compliance with the law
Along with being in style with your captioned social media videos, the law mandates that companies adhere to specific regulations and guidelines. When it comes to video accessibility, there are three key regulatory agencies to be aware of in the US:
CVAA: The Twenty-First-Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act
FCC: The Federal Communications Commission, a government regulatory agency
ADA: The American Disabilities Act, a civil rights law
If your business doesn’t follow these laws and regulations, it might face expensive legal fees and fines. However, compliance may benefit your content. For instance, you will undoubtedly need to edit scripts for clarity, add more information, and use more descriptive phrases in order to fulfill the FCC’s requirements for quality.
Where to Add Captions?
Most of us are used to seeing captions on television; however, captions are becoming increasingly popular and useful across a variety of platforms.
Captions for social media
Most people will entirely ignore a video whose significance is lost without sound while reading through their social networks with their sound off (which 85 percent of users do).
Those who cannot hear it will not understand it, so why bother?
Facebook claims that “when feed-based mobile video advertisements play loudly when people aren’t expecting it, 80% of people respond badly, both toward the platform and the advertiser.”
However, viewers are more likely to be attracted to a video when captions are included. According to Facebook’s internal studies, captioned video advertisements improve video view time by an average of 13%. Any effort you make to hold a viewer’s interest, even for a few extra seconds, might add up.
Captions for business
Facebook video is effective, but video is also becoming more popular in education and the workplace. To further professional development, 77% of American businesses offered online corporate training in 2017.
Here, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and compliance issues come into play. How can those who are hard of hearing or deaf learn from your video if they can’t hear it? Consequently, captions can be a valuable tool for making sure employee onboarding and engagement is accessible.
So, video in particular — sound included or not — can be a potent weapon. Captions for higher education
The adoption of eLearning technologies is accelerating throughout all educational sectors, including universities, community colleges, and even K–12 schools. In fact, the eLearning sector has grown 900% since 2000. Additionally, many full-time faculty members are from colleges and universities intend to offer distant learning courses.
Captions can help make learning videos accessible and valuable for students, working against miscommunication and ensuring students understand every word their professor is speaking.
How To Automatically Add Captions/Subtitles to Video?
Now that we are aware of the importance of captions and the places where they are needed, the AI Engine from ioMoVo can help you easily take advantage of all the benefits captions can provide.
Thought leaders, trainers, consultants, and marketers can produce polished video clips in under five minutes with the help of the AI Engine at ioMoVo. It also contains a machine-learning-powered subtitle generator.
Here’s a step-by-step tutorial for using ioMoVo AI Engine to add subtitles to your videos.
Step 1. Record or Upload a Video
Create a free ioMoVo account if you don’t already have one. Simply finish the sign-up process or log in to access your ioMoVo Video Dashboard.
The first step is to include your video in the application. You have three options for uploading a video clip from your PC, such as:
Using an app, record your own webcam video.
Choose a file on your computer.
Import video from any cloud storage.
To upload a video clip from your computer, for instance, all you need to do is choose Upload from Computer. Next, choose the video file by navigating to it on your computer and click Open.
Step 2. Click Burn Caption Button, Select the Language and Send for Captioning
ioMoVo supports transcription in dozens of different languages. Once you upload your video, a window will appear asking you to select the language of your video.
You may either use the drop-down menu or begin entering the language you wish to search for.
Once you’ve selected your language, click send. Your video will instantly start to render.
Step 3. Download or Publish Your Video
Are you satisfied with your captions? The next step is to download or publish your video. That’s it. Simply place your pointer over the video clip you want to download and press the Download button. From there, you may save it to your computer or phone.
To share the video on social media, click the three dotted lines at the bottom of the screen. Then click Share and select your preferred social media site.
Conclusion
Adding subtitles to videos is one of the simplest and most underutilized strategies to boost your content marketing efforts.
Captioning your videos may help you accomplish many objectives in one go, whether you’re trying for greater search engine results to increase visibility or to connect more with your target audience and develop a devoted community.
If you’re unsure of how to add subtitles to your videos, ioMoVo can handle it all. The extensive editing options offered by ioMoVo make it simple to create beautiful videos and add the perfect captions. Try for free.
