Right now, it seems like people are keen on using audio or video formats rather than reading. This is the case because they find such formats to be more mobile-friendly and more stimulating. However, transcribing and captioning any audio and video content you produce is still a good idea. And if you’re wondering why, here are 5 advantages of transcribing and captioning your content.
Assistance to deaf and hard of hearing people
One of the biggest advantages of transcribing and captioning your content is that it allows deaf and hard of hearing people to consume your videos. Chances are, a large portion of your target audience has these disabilities and relying on audio format won’t help you reach them. This is especially the case if your target audience are baby boomers, since one-third of people aged 65 to 74 have difficulties hearing. So, in order to reach such audiences, you simply have to think about including time-synced text into your videos. Also, some of your team members may be deaf or hard of hearing and you need to make sure they understand your company’s content as well.
Improved SEO
No matter what kind of work your company does, you simply have to invest in SEO. Studies have shown that websites that show up in the first page of Google search results tend to get much more traffic than those who don’t. Both transcripts and captions have great SEO value, since they make the content you’ve produced more search-friendly and increase its visibility. And there’s no need to say that more visibility means more traffic. On top of this, transcribing and captioning your content increases its SEO value, as it optimizes them for keyword searches. If you plan to use a lot of audio and video content and you want it to give your SEO efforts a boost, using an AI engine that can transcribe your content automatically may be a good idea.
More accurate information
If you’re in the legal industry, it’s critical that you transform audio and video formats into something that’s easier to understand. The original format can be pretty lengthy and difficult to go through, and therefore, it doesn’t have much use for you and your team members. This is especially the case when you simply don’t have enough time to process all audio and video material you have. Luckily, there are companies that offer legal transcription services and can transcribe all of your audio and video material. They do this by using both technology and human factor, which ensures you that you will get your transcription or caption quickly and accurately.
Better comprehension
When producing audio or video content for your company, you want your audience to be able to fully understand it. If you’ve ever seen a movie with English subtitles, you probably missed much less than you do when watching a movie without one. This is because transcripts can improve material comprehension. And this doesn’t only apply to movies, but business as well. If you transcribe and caption your content, you rest assured that all of your viewers will get your message.
More free space
A big issue with audio and video files is that they’re quite large in size. So, if you have a lot of files in any of these formats, chances are you’re lacking free space on your company’s hard drives. Even if you’re using cloud storage, you probably can’t spare so much space for your audio and video files. You can always try to reduce file quality, but this can leave all of your data useless. Just think of it this way – what’s the point of an audio file if your customer or team member can’t understand most of the words uttered in the file? On the other hand, saving transcripts won’t take up a lot of space and you won’t have to worry about reducing the quality of your data.
With these 5 advantages in mind, transcribing and captioning your content makes a lot of sense. And since you never know when you’ll need to review your audio or video material, you’d probably want to think about doing this straight away.