Do You Need Subtitles for Your Social Media Video Advertising?

Why use Subtitles for Social Media Videos?

If you’ve spent time and money putting together the best marketing video you can for your business, you’ll want to make the most of its potential. Posting the video on social media is certainly one great option. For a start, you should benefit from all those shares and positive comments while getting your brand message to a wider audience. 

One thing you might like to think about, however, is putting in some subtitles. 

Why? Actually, there are quite a lot of reasons. 

Better Accessibility

This may not be top of your list but it should be. There are millions of people who are either deaf or have hearing problems and, if you don’t have subtitles, they won’t be able to engage. That’s a huge audience you are dismissing just because you haven’t bothered to produce a few subtitles. Making your brand more accessible is also pretty good for your reputation. 

Mute Buttons

Go on Facebook and the default for timelines seems to be mute. That means videos don’t have any sound when they first appear. The same’s true nowadays of Twitter. In fact, on Facebook, the vast majority of videos are played without any sound at all. Putting in subtitles means you still grab the viewer’s attention and have more chance of turning them into a customer. 

Subtitled Videos Get More Shares

Research by Instapage on Facebook found that videos with captions were shared more often and had greater social reach. The company also found for their own videos that only 12% of viewers actually bothered to turn the sound on at all. 

The Language Barrier

Not everyone in the world speaks the same language. Subtitles can be produced for different countries which means you reach a wider audience. Even if someone does speak some English, they will benefit from having captions because dialogue is not always easy to comprehend. 

You Get Watched for Longer

There is some evidence to suggest that videos with subtitles are watched more often to completion than those without. While the research in this area is a little dated, if captioning is likely to get viewers to watch for longer, it shouldn’t be ignored. 

Subtitles May Improve SEO

The ranking of your video might be improved because people are spending longer watching. Time spent on a page is something that search engines such as Google quite like. Greater sharing can also give you better visibility and the subtitles themselves can also be indexed to boost the impact of keywords. 

It’s Easy to Do

Finally, adding subtitles to your video is neither laborious nor challenging. It’s actually quite easy to do. You can either add them in at the post-production stage or use specific software for subtitling. 

In today’s competitive world, giving yourself the edge any way you can makes sense. Adding subtitles to your social media video advertising is a simple way to boost shares and engagement. 

If you’d like to find out more about how video can boost your social media advertising, contact the team at Square Pixel Productions today.