Are you a music video creator/editor in need of new ideas to make your clients’ videos more interesting and thus accord them higher replay value? Or maybe, you’re a freelance video creator/ filmmaker looking for new ways to enhance social media audience engagement for the videos that you create for your corporate customers?

Well, why not spruce up your videos by adding some subtitles and captions. You may not believe it now, but lots of brands will attest to the fact that transcribing their videos has helped them drive up audience engagement and consequently leading to higher click-through rates on their Call-to-Action (CTA) links.

Therefore, if you want to create more discover-able multimedia content that will immensely benefit your clients- consequently allowing you more room to negotiate for higher pay- you might want to consider investing in transcription services.

Below, we’ve outlined everything you need to know about Mp3-to-text transcription as a video creator.

Transcripts Enhance your Videos’ Shareability

Adding subtitles and captions to your videos will make them more shareable, especially since most viewers usually wish to share just a certain section of a video file.

Say, for instance, that you’ve created a music video for one of your customers, with the subtitles of the lyrics to the song included. There are certain parts of the lyrics that viewers may find particularly interesting. They can easily pause the video at that point and take a screenshot that captures that particular lyric section, after which they can easily share the screenshot with their friends and family.

“Humans are incredibly visual and powerful, moving images help us find meaning… [and] video helps capture and contextualize the world around us.”

– Dan Patterson

Without such a transcript for the video’s lyrics, such viewers would have to transcribe the sections they’re interested in sharing by themselves. This is not only time-consuming but also increases the chances of viewers writing down and sharing the wrong lyrics.

Viewers don’t like having to go through so much hassle just to share a video and will be more unwilling to share one if it lacks subtitles/captions. This enhanced shareability aspect also applies to quotes within your fiction-based films, documentary movies, and even funny promotional videos.

 

Transcripts Enhance your Video Watch Time

With video captions and subtitles, viewers are more likely to take note of certain interesting parts that they might have missed out on had the video not been transcribed. Additionally, for video sections that lack dialogue, you can make use of creative close-captioning. This will improve the engagement for your videos across all digital platforms

More engagement means more watch time, as viewers will watch your videos for longer due to the captivating nature of the subtitles. This is especially crucial on video platforms like YouTube, where total video watch time is used to calculate how much account owners can earn, via their monetization program.

You can imagine how satisfied your client will be once they check their YouTube analytics and realize that your video captions have enabled them to achieve more watch time and- therefore- earn more monthly revenue.

Transcripts Increase your Videos’ Accessibility

Say – for instance – that you frequently create short, promotional video content for corporate clients, which they then post on their social media platforms. Currently, to even stay on a level playing field with the rest of the competition in the cutthroat world of digital video marketing, you’ll have to transcribe your clients’ promotional content; as this is becoming more of a bare-minimum.

Major social media brands are also keen to maintain their social reputations and are increasingly tweaking their apps’ features to facilitate current social concerns- like inclusion.

Facebook – for instance – introduced a captioning feature for video ads in 2016, with a view towards making videos on their platforms more inclusive and accessible for those with hearing disabilities; as well as users in settings that might limit normal hearing.

What’s more, video posts on the platform automatically play on mute as one scrolls down their home feed. This is – perhaps – the more reason why you should incorporate transcripts for your clients’ Facebook-bound videos.

By including a transcript file that your clients can add to their Facebook promotional videos, you’ll be putting them in a better position to engage this audience (the deaf, viewers in noisy places, and non-native speakers).

Transcripts are Great for Boosting your SEO

Search engines like Google and YouTube make use of multimedia file transcripts to facilitate proper indexing for your web pages.

Without video transcripts, the video posts on your blog and social media platforms won’t be appropriately indexed, thereby costing you the opportunity to have your pages appearing at/near the top of search results.

With such lower search rankings, you’ll be missing out on the opportunity to attract more visitors to your platforms. Appropriate indexing – on the other hand – will lead to higher page visitors due to the increased discoverability that it enables.

To fully optimize your rankings, ensure to incorporate certain specific keywords within your video transcripts that search engine crawl bots can take note of.

Transcripts Enable you to Reach out to Foreign Language Speakers

Take this scenario – you’re a freelance video creator and are looking to further market your services to potential clients; including indie filmmakers and corporate clients. You could mention the fact that you incorporate foreign language transcripts – in the customers’ preferred language(s) – as a complementary service for those who choose to contract you for their video editing needs.

Ensure to mention the fact that with foreign language video captions and subtitles, they’ll be able to reach out to more viewers in foreign countries, thereby enhancing their revenue prospects.

Boost Your Video Shareability and Accessibility

From boosting your videos shareability and accessibility to boosting your clients’ SEO and total video watch time; there are many upsides to creating subtitle/caption files for your videos. Remember- you’ll have to spend some money if you want quality, accurate transcripts; as free-to-use online automatic transcription tools are usually error-prone.

This should – however, not deter you if your aim is to include video captions and subtitles for your clients’ videos; as a customer service incentive to build your competitive advantage. The business prospects you’ll obtain from adding such an incentive will far outweigh the expenditure costs you’ll have to incur for your transcription needs.