As long as there have been videos on social media, a majority of users have been scrolling through them with the sound off to avoid audible distraction, whether they’re riding public transportation, sitting in a library, or not wanting to disturb a family member on the other side of the living room.
Statistics support this fact:
- According to one recent report, 85 percent of videos are watched on silent.
- In another study, it was shown that 80 percent of people have negative reactions to mobile ads that play out loud when they don’t expect it. So, in addition to distracting users, companies who publish this content run the risk of having people think less of their brand. Ouch.
But you still need to get your message across in both your short and long-form videos. The solution: closed captioning, which helps boost:
- Accessibility: for those with hearing impairments, as well as those who simply don’t want noise.
- Engagement: to keep people watching your content until the end, and
- Discoverability: By using keywords in your captions, you help to optimize videos for search engine optimization.
Master the art of the silent video.
By creating videos without sound and enhancing them with closed captions, you give users a choice about how they interact with them. This sends a positive message to everyone who views your videos, whether they actually hear them or not.
- Make closed captioning your default setting. In doing so, you’ll be looking out for segments of your viewership that may otherwise go ignored. At the same time, you may improve viewership overall: Internal testing done at Facebook has shown that captioned video ads are watched an average of 12 percent longer than un-captioned ads.
- You can often caption videos at no cost. There are a number of online options available, and both Facebook and YouTube provide auto-captioning options. Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat require captions be burned in or encoded in advance.
- On TikTok, auto captions automatically generate subtitled which allow views to either read or listen to content. You can select auto captions in the editing page after you’ve uploaded or recorded a video, so text is automatically transcribed and displayed. You can also edit the text of your captions once they’re generated. And if a viewer prefers to turn them off, they can simply open the share panel, tap on the captions button, and choose the “off” setting.
Closed captioning is one aspect of social recruiting – and both trends are the wave of the future, along with the other pillars of your successful recruitment marketing strategies: your career site, employer branding, and job ads and distribution. To optimize all of them, consider working with Haley Marketing. We’re the largest website development, social and content firm serving the temporary staffing and executive recruiting industries. Reach out to us today to learn more.
