In today’s digital world, online video content plays a key role within company advertising and video has become an extremely powerful marketing tool.
But have you ever stopped to think if your video is fully reaching your target audience? Have you ever wondered why you’re not getting the views you were hoping for?
While great video content is always the first step, there’s another one you may have missed- adding subtitles. Captioning your videos (training content, social media videos, TV shows or movies) proves to have a huge impact on how successful they are.
Some Meaningful Facts about Subtitles:
· They are written transcriptions that are synchronized to media files so that they play at the same time as the spoken world;
· They are designed for hearing users, as they only cover spoken text;
· They translate or transcribe the dialogue or narrative;
· Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH) are the subtitles designed for those who are deaf, Deaf, or hard of hearing. They have additional information, such as speaker tags, sound effects and other elements outside of speech;
· If you choose the subtitle option on a traditional TV, you would find Close captions, required by law on all public broadcasts, as per FCC regulations. Although geared toward the same audience as SDH, they are not as common in streaming internet videos and they don’t usually come with the option to turn the subtitles on or off.
6 Reasons why Subtitles are so Important:
1. People Prefer Watching Subtitled Videos
Subtitles improve comprehension of, attention to, and memory for the video. In fact, a quick research reveals that many people turn on captions on when they’re watching TV shows, movies or other videos even if they’re native speakers of the original language. They just understand it better.
2. They Act as A Resource for Non-Native Speakers
Subtitle translation can really open up your global potential and is extremely useful if you have videos that you intend to distribute to foreign audiences. Taking your target audience’s language into account is key if you’re hoping to make the next leap to international clients.
3. Many Videos are Watched on Mute
It is widely understood that over 80% of Facebook videos are viewed without the sound on. By adding subtitles to your videos, you can increase engagement by as much as 15%. After all, what good is it if all your hard work producing the video is lost to the viewers because they are watching it without sound?
4. Viewers are More Engaged
It was recently found that videos without subtitles were watched, on average, 66% to completion compared to 91% with subtitles. Besides, higher video engagement online can be well recognized by search engines. The more clicks your videos get, the longer users browse your site, the more brownie points for your SEO.
5. Subtitle Translation Boost Global Reach Online
Adding subtitles and/or subtitle translation to online videos means that Google and other search engines can pick up on both English and foreign subtitles and utilize your key words for international audiences and global SEO, which should enhance your rankings and boost SEO for the source language site.
6. They Impact Accessibility
The biggest benefit to including subtitles lies in increasing accessibility to multimedia content. Subtitling allows viewers who cannot access the auditory component of a media file to still enjoy video in the fullest way possible without missing out the supplementary sounds. Reaching new audiences is a cornerstone of business success!