Another Tuesday, another Video Marketing Minute podcast. This week’s question: When should I use closed captioning for my corporate video?
This question is really easy to answer. You should always try to included closed captioning on your videos! Their are two primary reasons for this – accessibility and SEO. Before we jump in though, lets go over the basics.
What does closed captioning mean?
Closed captioning is the process of displaying text over a video in a way that conveys audible cues like narrationg, dialouge, or music visually.
Now, let’s break down how closed captioning on your video marketing can help your business!
Closed Captioning is Great for Accessibility
Here’s a crazy statistic for you. Did you know that millions of people worldwide experience hearing loss as a part of how they experience the world? That’s crazy. If you don’t have the option for people with hearing loss to watch your videos, then you’re immediately giving up on a sizeable portion of your potential market.
That’s just bad for business!
Most governmental bodies are also required to reach a AAA level of accessibility compliance.
If you’re still doesn’t convince you, you’re also cutting out the tens and hundreds of millions of people that are smart enough to keep their computer speakers off when they’re at work, so they don’t interrupt everybody around them. They keep the sound off when they sneak a peek at their LinkedIn or social media or Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Closed Captioning Helps Your SEO
Okay, so closed captioning is excellent for accessibility! But how do they affect SEO? It turns out, closed captioning helps SEO in several ways.
First, putting transcriptions or subtitles on your video makes a huge difference in terms of engagement. Viewers are more likely to watch more of your video if it is more accessible in more than one location. In a search engine like YouTube, engagement is everything. The more engagement you get at the beginning, the further that video is gonna go.
Additionally, search engines are starting to get more intelligent and grab the verbiage from the transcription file on your video announcement blog or YouTube. Regardless of the implementation strategy, closed captioning improves your rankings in search results.
But let’s face it, the biggest reason is that it makes it easier for people to be sneaky at work.
What does Effective Closed Captioning Look Like?
One of our clients hired us to create a short informational video to help them explain their philanthropic efforts to new customers. We knew our final product could be shown in many different places – online, in and around Lucky the penguin’s enclosure, etc. In short, we couldn’t guarantee that sound would always be an option.
With this in mind, we built out captions and transcriptions for our client’s ‘Lucky the Penguin’ explainer video. Now, no matter what, our client’s customers can watch their live-action explainer video and enjoy learning about them! You can watch the explainer video we created for them below.
For more great answers to life’s and video marketing’s simple questions, visit us at www.ripmediagroup.com.