5 reasons your clips and videos should have captions

The old reason is because ~85% of people watch videos on social media without the sound turned on. I’m not going to give another backlink to that story, because it was released by Digiday in May of 2016. And since then, every content marketer and their brother has spun it up to justify whatever they’re selling to make videos WAY MORE ENGAGING. But hey, I’m calling bullshit on it now. Because you know what else happened in 2016, just before Christmas? This little tech co called Apple released those lovely balls of noise we now have stuck in our ears 24/7 called AirPods. So I think Digiday and the rest of us who write articles like these need to update our references. Music and sound in your clips is still important — but we can’t ignore the other reasons captions improve your reels, clips and shows. Let’s go. 🔥 Captions simplify your message Another thing we love to say — write like you speak! But if you’ve ever worked with a podcast transcript, you know that this advice is not very accurate. With a few exceptions for fantastic orators, when we speak and discuss in non-scripted conversations we tend to ramble, digress, umm and ahh, and generally make noises that are not core to the point. All that extra stuff doesn’t need to go into your captions. Especially with short-form video, and more especially in the first 3-5 second hook of your short clips — your captions have the unique opportunity to show-not-tell your core message. So while you or whoever is speaking in your video may give detailed, or colorful, or extensive reasons for whatever you’re showing in the clip — your captions can shorten and sharpen the message. The real beauty of working captions-first to crop and craft your video is that it makes you as the creator really inspect and refine that message — what you really want the audience to hear. 🔥 Put the value first Creators like you and me have been dumping more and more buckets of time into video every year. Which means there’s more on every channel than ever before — and the stack of tools to make easy, good-looking videos gets taller & taller. So use your captions to nail the Most Valuable Portion of your clip or episode right to the front of the edit. You have to stop the scroll and the old-school informative intro just won’t cut it anymore. Your first caption plus an on-screen title or question or hook is the one-two punch to get somebody to watch more. Honestly, I think this changes depending on your audience size and platform of choice. If you’ve got 5-6-7 digit follower counts, you have a lot less pressure to nail a viral hook. Those followers already buy in to whatever your content is selling and they’ll probably watch it no matter what lazy hook you throw out there. 🔥 Use captions to be different Okay, a lot of creators use captions — so just doing that is not going to cut it. And anyone who’s online a lot will spot the same default caption formats with word highlights across creator accounts large and small. But you can still stand out with a few creative caption hacks: 1. Drop some emojis in the mix. Videos are all about capturing and conveying emotions. So add to the emotions of the speaker or visuals with emojis in the captions. 2. Push the interactions. Every algorithm rewards any form of viewer interaction — comments, likes, questions, even angry call-outs can make your next clip reach a wider audience. So think about how you can use creative prompts in your captions to get viewers to do something, anything more than just scroll by. 3. Get animated. Use the caption formatting settings to customize captions to fit your style whether it’s just for your show or personal brand or for the business you work for. Highlighting, font selection, text zooming can all be adjusted to animate and hold on to those viewers. 4. Tap into viewer curiosity. Throw a puzzle or riddle or question into your captions near the beginning of the clip that will make them watch through to find the answer. Okay, don’t do this every time or it’ll get old but it is a trick to have in your quiver and use on occasion. 🔥 Add more context with captions So this may contradict reason number one, but once you make a few videos you can pick and choose the right strategy at the right time. There are moments when the script or speaker does not say quite enough to show the message. In these moments, you can drop extra info into the captions or other text call-outs. This doesn’t have to be boring or simply factual. In fact, it’s a great way to add unusual statistics or references that support the main point(s) of your clip. To put a little more fun and personality into your videos, you can use captions to drop behind-the-scenes insights or funny stuff that happened during the recording that didn’t make the cut in the video or audio. 💭Final thoughts on captions This post wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging that there are millions of viewers who rely on captions to understand video content because of a disability or loss of hearing. As creators, we play a big role in making more digital content accessible and enjoyable for them. And search engines like subtitles as well. Adding subtitles in SRT or VTT format gives Google all of that content to rank for keywords and can bump your video traffic by ~7% according to some sources. For long shows, the transcript is an easy way to set timestamps for topics of the show in YouTube, supporting further semantic relevance info for Google and viewers to quickly understand your content.