According to a report released by the World Health Organization, there are approximately 466 million people in the whole world with hearing loss. Therefore, having captions in your videos is important for your audience especially people with hearing challenges. Captions are quite handy to deaf and hard of hearing people and those who have miscommunication problems. In this article, you will find out six reasons why you need captioning services for your video content.
Texts and videos are quite a powerful duo because they play a crucial role in either making or breaking the experience of your audience. Here are the reasons why you need to caption your video content.
1) Captioning increases the accessibility of your content
Organizations are greatly interested in making their content accessible to anyone who wants to view it. Captioning your video opens up your viewers to myriads of people, including the over 450 million people who are suffering from hearing problems and non-native English speakers.
A good portion of the hearing population has been demanding captions in recent years. They’re either watching videos while at work or scrolling through their smartphones looking at social feeds. Furthermore, captioning helps your audience to retain and recall complex topics, facts, or improve their vocabulary.
Captioning your videos is the simplest way to increase your video’s accessibility. Once you do it, even people who couldn’t enjoy your video content now can!
2) Captioning also helps in adhering to laws and regulations
Besides increasing accessibility, the law also requires businesses to meet particular accessibility standards. Failing to comply with these rules could put your company at risk of fines and lawsuits. But compliance will be advantageous for your organization. For instance, by adhering to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, you will be coerced into editing your scripts better for clarity, offering complete information, and employing descriptive vocabulary.
3) Captioning helps to improve your search engine optimization (SEO)
Video content with no captions is like a concert pianist performing in an empty hall. Without an audience, all the time and effort spent on editing and producing a video is more or less for nothing. Captioning improves your SEO and makes it more convenient for people to view your videos online. Since the majority of online videos are not captioned, captioning your videos offers great potential for growth through keyword strategy.
SEO is essential because Google tends to display informative video content at the top of its results pages. Search engines cannot watch a video. Instead, the search bots crawl through your website and read the code and text in your pages to find indicators of what they’re about. Therefore, search engines such as Google will display the most relevant information to the search queries.
4) Captioning helps you to keep up with the industry trends
Social media has played a huge part in making captioning videos an industry standard. Even if you’re not captioning your content at the moment, there is a high likelihood that you’ll do so in the near future. Many people watch videos without sound and rely on captions instead. Users who scroll endlessly through social media feeds tend to skim over auto-playing videos and pictures. In this case, captions can help to make your video noticed.
For instance, you may not be so interested in watching videos of babies and dogs playing together, but the overlaying text can help you know what the video is all about before you spent your time watching it.
Content creators are using captions to reach an even wider audience. If you want to compete with the video content out there, you will have to view captions as your best friend. Even if platforms will evolve, videos are here to stay. Investing in captioning now will not only benefit your business now but also in the future.
5) Captioning helps non-native English speakers to view your content
The internet is filled with audiences from around the world. Thus, a considerable portion of your audience could be non-native English speakers. When formulating your marketing strategies, make sure to accommodate non-native English speakers to avoid anyone missing out.
By using professional captioning services, you can swiftly and effectively include captions in your content. Not only will this assist your brand in accessing more customers and markets, but it will also help people who use English as their second language to enhance their skills.
6) Captioning increases the average watch time of your content
The main benefit of captioning is capturing the attention of your audience. Content marketers and producers have to make sure that their audience is hooked on that content. Captions can increase the average watch time and make sure that the audience is engaged with your video. At first, flashy visuals can catch the interest of your audience, but captions detailing the content provide more depth and context to keep them on board.
With captions, chances are high that you will sway your audience to click on the video, increase the volume, and watch it all through. For example, when the silent auto-play starts on YouTube, captions will fill in the viewers on what they’re missing out on from the video. Once their interest has been captured, they will be more likely to proceed with the video to the end. As such, chances are high that you might turn a viewer into your client.
Final Thoughts
And there you have it. There are several reasons why you should caption your content. They include increasing your content’s accessibility, complying with established laws, increasing your SEO, keeping up with the competition, and increasing the average watch time of your content. So, what are you waiting for?
