5 reasons to subtitle (all) videos

Watching videos on the internet is becoming increasingly popular. Up to one third of all internet activity is related to watching videos, with 100 million users watching at least one video a day. And statistics say these numbers will grow. Logically, companies and marketing activities are adapting to this trend.

Subtitles: important and necessary

Of course, if you’re not Oprah Winfrey or Donald Trump, you can’t just upload a video and expect that it will miraculously top the search results and millions of people will view it. Thanks to subtitles – ideally multilingual – users can find your videos more easily.

Why, you might ask? Let’s have a closer look. (Skip ahead to read a detailed explanation.)

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Playing without the sound

Nowadays, videos on Facebook start playing immediately after they appear on your screen. However, they are muted. More than 80% of these videos are viewed without users manually turning the sound on. Given that half of all the videos viewed on the internet are watched via people’s smartphones, it’s obvious that there would be some problems with videos caused by the combination of smartphones and auto-play.

When silent mode is activated on a mobile device, other applications such as YouTube are also muted by default. If someone is watching your video in a public place or on public transport, it’s unlikely that they will turn on the sound and, therefore, they could miss the point of your video. Subtitles can solve this problem.

Even Facebook leans towards using subtitles. They had run internal tests, based on which they claim that captioned video ads increase video view time by an average of 12%, and that’s certainly not insignificant.

World without borders

In contrast to the real world, there are no borders in the internet world. That means users all over the world can easily watch your videos. However, if the user can’t speak the language in the video, they won’t understand it without the subtitles. It is therefore best to translate the subtitles into the languages spoken by your target audience.

It’s also worth mentioning this study which claims that almost three-quarters of users browse webpages primarily in their native tongue. Nine out of ten interviewed people said that if they are given a choice of language on a webpage, they always choose their native language, and more than half of them would pay more for a product or service, if they had information in their own language. Why not make use of it then?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Internet search engines can’t identify the sound in a video and understand its content without your assistance. This problem can be solved with subtitles. Thanks to them, search engines can tag and index your videos more precisely. Therefore, subtitles will help your video rank higher in search results, meaning that you will also receive more organic traffic.

You will appeal to more senses

Subtitles help to better understand information.  If you add subtitles to your video, you will engage two senses, and the general rule is: the more senses you engage, the stronger the experience. It means that when users simultaneously listen to speech and read the same text, they focus more and it’s more likely that they will remember the message.  And after all, that’s your goal.

Easy creation of additional content

If you add subtitles to your video, you actually have a transcript of the video, which you can use for other purposes. For example, you can publish a blog article, create an infographic, include the text in an e-book or share it on social networks. Whatever you need, you can do it.

Do you need to translate subtitles for a video? Contact us at info@lexika.sk or fill in this contact form.