Your daily social media scroll is probably filled with video after video. But you probably don’t know what a lot of these videos are talking about half the time. The reason for this is simple. Most of us scroll social media when we’re bored, killing time or are waiting for something or someone – many times in a public place. You don’t want to be rude and turn the volume up to hear the video, so you just keep scrolling. But, if the video has captions, well that changes the whole game! You’ll stop the scroll, read along with the captions and actually learn what the video is about. That’s the power of captions in your animated videos!
Why Closed Captions are Crucial for Your Animated Videos
There are a lot of reasons to be using closed captions in your videos, but let’s look at some of the data first.
Closed caption videos create greater reach and more views than those without.
Yep – adding captions to your video will actually increase engagement and reach with that video. In a study conducted by Instapage, they found that:
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The average reach of their captioned video was 16% higher than that of the non-captioned video.
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The average shares of a video dropped by 15% when captions were removed from one of their videos.
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CTA clicks dropped by 26% when they removed captions from the video.
This data clearly speaks for itself, but what are the other reasons to be using captions in your animated videos?
They create greater accessibility for those with hearing impairments.
By adding captions to your videos on social media, you’re opening up the content to an entire sect of people that otherwise wouldn’t be able to engage with your video or content. This will help in maximizing your reach. There is always value in creating opportunities for more people to be able to connect with your message.
They give access to those who speak other languages.
Similarly to hearing accessibility, create greater language accessibility so that even if someone doesn’t speak your organization’s native language, they can still understand what is being communicated. Consider creating a few different versions with different language captions and retargeting your ads with these. Talk about expanding your videos reach!
They allow someone to understand the content, even in a quiet environment.
Like we talked about in the intro, many people are watching, scrolling and watching social media videos in quiet or public environments where they don’t want to turn the sound up. Captions allow them to read the content and still be engaged with the visual elements without having to find a pair of headphones or just not watching the video at all. Keep them from scrolling by your video and keep them engaged with captions.
At JumpStart, we can help you create great animated videos, add captions to them for you and help you create greater engagement on your social media platforms. Get started here.
