We can all agree that one of the main reasons to post to social media is to get more exposure for your business and brand, and we all understand that videos are a great way to do this. They’re interactive, easy to consume, and highly-shareable. However, if you’re not using closed captioning on your videos, there’s a chance you’re missing out on a huge chunk of your audience.
Here’s a bit more about why it’s important to have closed captioning on your social media videos as well as a quick tutorial on how to do it:
Don’t Leave Out Those with Hearing Problems
Posting a video that relies on sound to make sense is effectively excluding those who have hearing problems. Not only is this not fair, but it also closes you off to what could be an important segment of your market. Including closed captioning ensures every person who comes across your video has the chance to watch it and fully understand its message.
Access New Language Groups
If you’ve ever gone through the process of learning a new language, you know that listening without subtitles is much harder than having something to guide you through the video. Fortunately for us, English is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world, but if you don’t use subtitles, then you run the risk of turning off the millions of people who could understand your message if you just gave them a bit more help.
If possible, and if you think it will help you reach new audiences, considering including subtitles in other languages to make your content even more accessible to those who speak another tongue.
Phones on Silent
People use social media pretty much everywhere. On the train, at work, at the gym, etc. And if they don’t have headphones on, there’s a good chance they have the sound turned off on their phones so as to not bother anyone nearby. As a result, if you don’t have closed captioning, there’s a pretty good chance someone who is scrolling through their feed in one of these settings is simply going to skip right over your video.
However, if you have subtitles on, this could be just enough to get them to stick around and watch the video. Preliminary A/B testing has shown this to be a rather effective way of increasing the number of views and also the number of shares of video content on social media.
How to Add Captions
Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube all allow you to add captions and subtitles directly into the file you load up. You can do it either by typing in the captions line by line, or you can load up an .srt, file, although most find this to be a rather cumbersome and annoying process.
The best option is to add them using your video editing software. This puts the subtitles in the right spot and ensures everything runs smoothly, although it might take some time to learn how to do this the right way. If needed, you can hire out a video production expert to help you get things the way you want OR chat to our team today and we can provide you with captions for your videos.