Social media and video content have gradually become the ultimate marketing combo. On popular social media platforms like Twitter, video posts are now more popular than photo posts. Facebook – meanwhile – boasts about 100 million hours of total video watch time per day.
With video content consumption at an all time high, it makes sense- then- that social media video marketing is such a hot trend right now. To stand out from the crowd and widen your brand’s reach, you’ll- therefore- have to make your social media videos more captivating.
What better way to achieve this than with video transcriptions and captions?
Close-captioned videos make for more engaging video content, while also enhancing your audience’s information retention levels.
Below, we’ve elaborated upon seven advantages of leveraging video transcription services for your business’ social media video posts.
Contents
Increasing Your Audience Reach
According to online statistics, there exist over 350 million people suffering from hearing disabilities globally.
Close captioning your Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook videos will definitely accord your brand more visibility within this demographic, as they’ll be able to read through the captions and understand whatever information is being relayed in your video posts.
In addition, if you have video content in one language (say, English) but you wish to reach a certain social media audience niche that speaks a foreign language (say, French), hiring a foreign language transcriber to create subtitle files for your videos would make them more accessible to this audience group.
Facilitating Legal Compliance
Across the globe, there are a number of government regulatory bodies that necessitate the inclusion of transcripts for social media video posts. In the U.S. – for instance- the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has the mandate to enforce industry compliance with certain acts that touch on online visual content captioning, as discussed below:
- The Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA)- outlines closed captioning requirements for online video streaming platforms. Say- for instance- that you run a movie streaming site and intend to promote your platform via Instagram and Facebook ads; you’ll have to comply with CVAA’s close captioning statutes
- The American Disabilities Act (ADA)- outlines social media content close-captioning compliance requirements, with an aim to weed off disability discrimination in such settings of public accommodation.
Optimizing Search Engine Rankings
Google’s ranking algorithm tends to accord higher priority to informative visual content. Therefore- by having your videos transcribed, Google can scan through your transcripts for certain keywords that indicate what each video is about and rank your social media pages accordingly.
Experienced transcription service providers possess the know-how to weave in certain specific keywords into your video transcripts at your request, without making them seem out of place/forced.
Most businesses that have so far implemented video transcription for their social media promotional videos will attest to the definite SEO boost that comes with it, as well as the consequently higher revenue returns.
Leveling the Playing Field
Presenting your brand’s online audience with transcribed videos has almost become a bare minimum in online business marketing these days; with many viewers much more likely to skip a video post with no closed captions, than they were a few years back.
If you’re posting promotional visual content that lacks close-captioning, you’re already at a disadvantage and your would-be customers are probably on your competitor’s page already, swooning over their well-captioned promotional videos
Facebook has also reported that up to 85% of daily video content on their platform is viewed ‘on mute’- reiterating the need for social media video transcription.
Improving Viewer Experience
You’ll be surprised to find out that social media users with normal hearing capabilities- too- are gravitating more and more towards video posts with transcripts; as it helps with their information retention and comprehension of technical topics.
Moreover, a majority of social media users access their accounts via mobile gadgets, going online even in noisy, crowded places. Now, picture this! You’re on the bus heading home and are bored to death, so you decide to scroll through your Facebook timeline.
You scroll through some possibly interesting videos, but since the inside of the bus is so noisy and you forgot your earphones at home, you decide only watch those that feature subtitles and closed captions.
The above scenario perfectly exemplifies how some businesses miss the opportunity to improve the viewer experience and thus facilitate higher viewer engagement.
The fact that on certain platforms like Facebook, videos automatically play on mute, is perhaps the more reason for you to consider adding subtitles and closed captions to your videos.
Say- for instance- that you post promotional videos on Instagram and Facebook to market products that are available on your online sales website.
By incorporating video captions and widening your audience reach, you’ll be consequently boosting your visual content’s shareability.
This will then result in increased website traffic, via more clicks on your posts call-to-action links.
Think of it this way, when a deaf person watches a product ad video with close-captions that helped them understand the benefits of the product better, they’re much more likely to share the video with other friends and acquaintances who they think might love to try out the same product.
The same goes for a foreign language speaker, or that student riding the noisy train on her way to school.
Improving Audience Interaction
The best way to create value for your clients is by tailoring your products and services, as well as marketing processes to their tastes.
The situation is no different for the social media scene.
You can use closed captions at the end of your promotional videos to engage your viewers, with textual requests like, ‘Would you like to see more videos like this one? Leave a comment below!’.
Such interactive captions encourage audience feedback, which you can then leverage to identify what works and what doesn’t.
Wrap-Up
From enhancing the audience engagement levels to helping improve the viewer experience, the significance of video transcriptions and captions on social media marketing videos can’t be emphasized enough.
However, before you decide to invest in transcription services for, make sure to settle for a transcription company that guarantees quality transcripts that are free of inaccuracy errors.
