140 - How to Prevent 85% of Viewers From Scrolling Past Your Videos

Your most engaging, professional looking video may be turning people away, without you even knowing it. 

In this episode, I share why captions are essential, and why you should hard code them into your videos, even if you're posting on a platform, like LinkedIn, with closed captions. And in case you didn't know it already, captioning videos is the law. 

Top Takeaways

→ Captions are now legally required for web content and mobile apps.
→ Adding captions can significantly increase your video's reach and engagement.
→ 48 million Americans experience some hearing loss, making captions essential.
→ Hard coding captions into videos ensures they travel with the content.
→ Caption formatting and placement can enhance or hinder viewer experience.

CHAPTERS

00:00 The Importance of Video Captions
01:02 Legal Requirements for Accessibility
02:58 Impact on Viewership and Engagement
04:42 Best Practices for Adding Captions

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For additional insights, connect with Annette Richmond and Black Dog Marketing Strategies on social media.
Substack: https://substack.com/@annetterichmond
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Transcript

Annette Richmond 
Hi, I'm Annette Richmond. Thanks so much for joining me here today. Now, I just want to take a few minutes to talk to you about how essential it is to make sure that your videos are captioned because it's more important than you may actually realize.

Making sure your videos have captions has become, as I said, essential over the past few years for a few reasons, and all of them affect who watches your video and who is able to watch your video content. 

Annette Richmond 
The first thing is that digital accessibility is the law. The ADA's latest rule on web content accessibility that was published in April twenty twenty four includes specific requirements for video captions so that web content and mobile apps are accessible to people with disabilities.

Annette Richmond 
Now, I don't have an inside track on what goes on at LinkedIn, so I can't confirm this, but I believe that's around the same time that LinkedIn started adding closed captions to videos uploaded or embedded on their platform.

Annette Richmond 
Other platforms that I'm less familiar with may have done s may have started doing this around the same time.

Annette Richmond 
And adding captions isn't just about compliance, it's about losing viewers too. Because forty eight million Americans, that's fifty.

Annette Richmond 
Adding captions isn't just about compliance either. It's about losing viewers. Forty-eight million Americans, that's 15% of the population, report having some hearing loss. And that's the most recent number from the National Institute on Deafness.

Annette Richmond 
Breaking that down, eleven million people say they have difficulty hearing. Six point four to seven million people report that they use sign language. Four million people report severe hearing loss, and two million are deaf. 

Annette Richmond 
And with the size and capability of hearing aids today, you may be working alongside someone with severe hearing loss and not even be aware of it.

Annette Richmond 
And if you're not worried about compliance or people who are hard of hearing not being able to watch your videos, studies show that about eighty-five percent of people watch videos with the sound off.

Annette Richmond 
Now why would they be doing that? Well maybe they don't want to wake up their partner, or maybe they don't want to disturb other people who are watching TV. And it's just as likely that they're at the office scrolling the socials when they're supposed to be working.


And even if you're not sharing video as a link, but you're embedding or uploading it onto a platform like LinkedIn that provides captions, I still recommend adding captions to your videos always. And here's why.

I always hard code mine, meaning the text is burned right into the video. And that way they travel with the video whether or not the platform you post them on has closed captions.

Annette Richmond 
And adding your own captions gives you a few other advantages as well. You control the formatting, the size, and the placement.

And when it comes to placement, think about the times when you're creating videos and maybe you want viewers to be able to see something on the bottom of the screen. If you're not controlling the placement, the captions may run right over what you want people to see.


Annette Richmond 
When you add videos yourself, they also become part of the viewing experience. Now karaoke style captions, which are my favorite for social media videos, also add a little bit of viewing interest and engagement.

Annette Richmond 
Another thing is that if you share videos across platforms or share them with others, you keep visual control. 

Annette Richmond 
If you skip adding captions, you run the risk of losing a lot of people, not just the ones with hearing disabilities, but the majority of viewers who are watching video with their sound off. Captions help more people watch your video content and boost watch time. And that's the point of it for all of us. So thanks again for joining me today. I hope you found this episode relevant and helpful.

And if you did, please share it with a friend. I bet they'll thank you. And I'll see you next time.