5 Reasons To Caption Your Video Content

Regardless of the industry you are in, video content is a likely part of your marketing strategy. And if it isn’t, it should be. As stated by a Cisco report, online videos will constitute over 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022, and 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by video.

However, videos are not a magic bean that will get you to the next level of marketing success and customer engagement. The online landscape is saturated, competitive, and fast paced. You not only need users to slow down while they scroll but you need them to engage with your content and the best way to do this when it comes to video: closed captioning.

Captioning or subtitling videos in English or in other languages greatly boosts the success of your online video content. Below we have outlined the reasons that will help you understand why this is:

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1. Search Engines cannot watch videos, but do crawl captions

Looking to improve SEO on your website or on your videos, adding captions is a quick and simple way of doing this. Search engines such as Google and Bing cannot watch video content, but they can crawl captions or transcripts and rank video content based on keywords they find. Albeit your video will be ranked for SEO by its main title, adding description, tags and captions to your content raises your keyword density and diversity ahead.

2. 

   Captions drive more social engagement 

Including subtitles and/or captions to video content almost assures to boost engagement, user interaction and conversion. Referring to a study by Instapage, call-to-action clicks rose by 25% after captions were added to their Facebook videos. Other studies found captions increased the time users spend watching a video by almost 40%. Captions likely make users watch videos to the end. Put simply, addition of captions and/or subtitling will increase clicks and time spent viewing.

3. Some people don’t (or can’t) turn on video sound

Many of us have woken up at 1am in the morning and can’t go back to sleep. You grab your phone and begin scrolling through your social media, be it Facebook or Instagram for mindless entertainment, while your significant other is fast asleep beside you. Or you are in public transport or sitting inside a coffee shop or even in a restaurant having a meal, playing videos out loud is not ideal

Over 85% of facebook videos are played on mute. This means, if your video has no captions, users will skip, which may include a significant number of your audience. If you would like to ensure that your audience can view your content at any time or place, start by including captions.

4. Captions boost comprehension, memory, and attention

Captions improve awareness, attention to, and memory of video content. Studies have shown that watching video content with captions improves memory, comprehension of the content and attention to what the message in the video.

5. Captions allow videos to be more inclusive and accessible

According to WHO,  over 5% of the world’s population, or about 466 million, have a hearing disability. About only 36% of companies caption their video content. Therefore, without captions, you are missing out on a large audience of people globally. However, keep in mind that it is not just about generating leads, but adding captions to your content is all about inclusivity, which is the moral thing to do.

Viewing your analytics will assist in figuring where your audience lives and consider creating subtitles in languages other than English in order to reach new markets. Make this a strategic decision. Quality translation and subtitling is an investment and you will want to ensure that you select the right language(s) to reach the audience you’re able to serve. 

Captioning and subtitling is a delicate and time consuming task. Captions need to be timed accurately and cued for them to be effective.

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