What if there is a simple way to drive more web traffic to your site? What if you can gain 13% more than your usual web traffic? What if that 13% translates to roughly 11 million people who access your site but don’t stay to watch the videos? What if the videos you post on social media can reach more people of different ages, lifestyles, and cultures?
If you’re wondering why the video production for your company isn’t getting enough views and engagement, it’s time to take a look at what you’re missing rather than what you’re doing. You’ve optimized the videos. You’ve used the keywords in the titles, descriptions, and file names. You have shared these videos on social media. You also have promoted them on online communities. Still, the results are underwhelming.
The question you need to answer is what you could possibly be doing wrong. You’re on the right track of creating a video and optimizing it for the web. Still, you may be falling short in reaching out to other groups of people.
Some People Can’t Hear Your Audio
You cannot expect everyone to have the same ability to understand and comprehend your videos. Over 28 million Americans are deaf or hard of hearing. If you do not have subtitles or captions on your videos, you are alienating this population of disabled Americans.
Many People Can’t Turn on the Audio
What happens if people can’t turn on the audio on the videos because they are at work or in public places? Many people are fond of browsing through their news feeds while they’re on the bus or train. They won’t turn on the volume, though, because it will cause a distraction for other passengers.
During break time (and even when not), employees check their social media pages. More than 85% of Facebook users watch videos without turning the volumes on. On Snapchat, only two out of three users watch with the audio turned on.
People Comprehend Videos More with Subtitles
Even people, who are native speakers of the language used in the video, like to turn on the subtitle option because they understand the video better with it. That’s why streaming giant Netflix has painstakingly subtitled all the movies and TV shows in its library. A vast majority of people prefer watching videos with subtitles.
Some People Don’t Understand Your Language
You are shortchanging your videos if you don’t reach other people who speak a different language. Remember that in the world, 25.5% speak English, 19.9% Chinese, 8.1% Spanish, 4.9% Arabic, and 41.6% other languages. If you don’t put subtitles on your videos, you will be alienating people who don’t speak the original language used. You can reach as much of your audience as you can by adding captions to your videos.
Other benefits of captioning videos involve engaging more viewers, improving SEO, and increasing social reach. These reasons should be enough for you to invest time adding subtitles to your videos. You can go back to older videos in your library to update them with captions, too.
