30-second summary:
- Video marketing is more than a trend; it’s a must. But most companies are leaving out a key ingredient to ensure customers engage with their videos: captions and subtitles.
- Captioning videos in English or subtitling them in other languages has been proven to greatly boost the success and accessibility of online video content.
- Adding captions, subtitles or a transcript to videos allows Google to index the entirety of video content, rather than just indexing the video title.
- Captions and subtitles ensure videos are accessible by all: those who don’t have their volume on and the 37.5 million Americans who are deaf or hearing impaired.
No matter what industry you’re in, video content is likely part of your marketing strategy. And if it’s not, it should be. According to a report by Cisco[1], online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022. And 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by video[2]. Even still, videos aren’t some magic token that’ll get you to the next realm of marketing success and customer engagement. The online landscape is crowded, competitive, and moving at lightning speed. You don’t just need users to slow their scroll, you need them to engage. And when it comes to video content, the solution is quite simple, but often overlooked: closed captions.
Captioning your videos in English or subtitling them in other languages will greatly boost the success of your online video content. As a professional captioner and subtitler, I’m here to help you understand why:
1. Google can’t watch videos, but it can crawl captions
If you’re looking to improve your video’s SEO, adding captions is a quick and easy way to do it. Search engines