If you’re a new content creator, a beginner in video editing, a producer, or in a digital marketing team, listen closely and listen carefully. One element of video editing needs to be evaluated and analyzed to help your content gain more value and increase its reach which is directly related to having more engagements.
Notice YouTube video posts and you will see at the lower right of the video is a button with a “CC” icon. This icon stands for closed captions. Closed captions are the text version of the audio you hear from the video. This feature is made majorly to aid the hearing-impaired community. Although, this feature’s usefulness grows beyond just its sole purpose. Thus, let’s see the importance of adding subtitles to your content.
The Power of Subtitles
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More People Have Access to your Content
Since subtitles are solely created for the deaf and the hearing-impaired community, the television shows and films we see are expected and are stated in law to produce content that aids the disabled. Although the video content we see on social media platforms is not included in that ruling, the efforts of these smaller production companies and individual content creators to do the same thing are visible. Other than being sensitive and considerate of the deaf community, incorporating subtitles into their videos help them reach a wider audience.
Because of these captions, their videos become accessible to viewers outside their country by putting subtitles that are understandable by the majority of the population. From maintaining this practice of attaching captions, people from the train can watch their videos just by reading the subtitles. The barriers of communication become lesser. If videos with no subtitles cannot be played in noisy or crowded places, videos with subtitles have the advantage of still being viewed even with the sound off.
The element of adding subtitles offer the audience with options. And as consumers and viewers, we want to be presented with different possibilities. Because of subtitles, the quality of the audiences’ viewing experience increases and gives them no reason not to watch your content.
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Your Content can Intellectually Help Viewers
Another significant reason to put subtitles to your content is for educational purposes. Adding captions boosts a child’s learning experience by reading. If you notice, even kid’s content on YouTube has subtitles and texts on the video itself. This allows the child to recognize the alphabet and help them read what they see.
Other than this, if we go and check higher education, college and high school students are aimed towards learning at least one foreign language. It’s important to remember that the content we produce online is not always geared towards entertainment. There are online videos that are meant for educational purposes. Thus, we must take into account that even if our objective is to entertain, there are people who can view our content and use it as an additional source for their knowledge.
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Your Content becomes Searchable
Once your videos have been uploaded with subtitles, the text they find in your closed captions makes your content searchable. This is because Google indexes the text they find in your videos. With this, if someone watching on YouTube uses the search bar to look for content, the text found in your videos becomes the keyword. Thus, if the viewer’s search matches your videos’ text then your post will reflect on their search results. With this, your videos are no longer just searched based on the title but the whole content.
Knowing that your video becomes searchable by using subtitles, you become more smart and strategic in writing your script for your content. Also, meaning to say that your content creation does not just revolve around the video but also how to make your subtitle rank in search engines where search results are high but low in volume.
In conclusion, if you go back to the three powers of subtitles, the first two reasons are highly concentrated or focused on your viewers and what you can do to make the life of others more productive and easier. But, you also reap some benefits from these: a.) have more quality content by adding subtitles b.) grow your audience and engagements.
So, if you need to grow your posts’ engagements, you need to lean towards having viewers that are satisfied with their experience. To satisfy your audience, you have to make your content more inclusive. One way to do this is by attaching subtitles. When your content becomes available to a wider audience then your views and engagements increase directly.
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