Videos are a strong way to market and easier than ever to put out these days. Rather than simply telling your customers and potential clients about your company and products, you can show them how they work, what benefits they offer, and why they’re better than the competition. Whether you run a local restaurant, are an up and coming marketing firm, or are an experienced attorney like Aaron Kelly, producing videos can help you raise awareness about issues, your brand, your products or services, and so much more.
There are a number of key elements to producing an effective marketing video. From having quality sound and picture to writing a professional script and ensuring the content captures the attention of your target audience, each element is extremely important. One aspect that is as important, but that you may not initially think of, is making sure that all of your videos are closed-captioned.
Whether you’re planning to closed caption your videos yourself or use closed captioning services, there are a number of reasons to do so, including making sure all of your videos are available for those who are hearing impaired and enabling people who aren’t able to use their phone’s sound in a certain situation to follow along.
Serve Clients and Potential Clients who are Deaf or Hearing Impaired
Closed captioning is a great tool that enables those who are deaf or hearing impaired to be able to enjoy the same programs, videos, etc. that those without the impairment can. Closed captioning your videos will make it possible for those with hearing disabilities to enjoy your videos as well, and will help you expand your audience. Additionally, it will help you avoid any discrimination accusations by making you compliant with certain laws that protect against disability discrimination.
Make it Easy for People in All Situations to Follow Along
If you’ve ever been browsing Facebook in a place where you couldn’t turn on the sound, then you know how frustrating it can be to come across a video you’re interested in watching that doesn’t offer closed captioning so you can know what’s going on. If you want to watch the video, you’ll have to step outside so you can turn on the sound or save it for later and hope you’ll remember that you’ve set it aside. Otherwise, you’ll have to scroll past it and put it out of your mind unless you get lucky enough to stumble across it a few days down the road.
Since 85 percent of Facebook videos are watched without sound, having closed captioning is important. When you close caption the videos your business puts out, even if your clients are stuck in a meeting or a place that requires silence, they can still watch your videos and follow along with your message and marketing.
Improved SEO
Search engines can’t crawl images and videos—they crawl text. That’s what makes including image titles and alternative titles so important. When you close caption videos and include a transcript of the production, whether publicly on the page or hidden on the back end, it makes it easier for search engines to crawl and document the scripts that they find. That means that closed captions can help improve your SEO and make sure that your videos show up in search results and could result in a better ROI.
A Better User Experience and Better Watch Times
User experience is important if you’re looking to gain and retain clients. If they have a poor user experience, they’ll be more likely to jump ship. Closed captioning can help improve your customers’ user experience by making it easier for them to follow along with the information given in the video and by making it easier to retain the information you give them. It can even help improve your video watch times.
The optimal runtime for a video on Facebook is about one minute long; however, if it does not have closed captioning, viewers may not watch that long. On the other hand, if it does have closed captioning, there’s the possibility they will be willing to watch even longer.
Easier Translation
If you conduct business internationally and frequently produce videos for foreign markets, closed captioning your videos can make translation much easier. With the words already written out, professional translators can transpose it from English to any other language in less time than if they had to listen to the video and translate from scratch. Then, you could produce your videos with captioning in another language sooner than producing them fully translated; however, you may want to translate them later down the road.
Final Thoughts
Closed captioning is a great tool that can not only help those with hearing disabilities but can improve your SEO, help you reach more customers, improve your watch times, etc. If you haven’t been close captioning your videos, it’s not too late to start. Will you use a closed captioning service or closed caption your videos yourself?
