With over 2.5 billion people watching video on YouTube each month, these three tips on growing your business with captions and subtitles can help your video (and your business) go further!
Let’s start by defining the terms:
Captions are same language subtitles, meaning the same language spoken in the video.
Subtitles are translated captions into other languages than the one spoken in the video.
Here are three ways captions and subtitles help you get the most from your content:
Tip 1: Video is powerful: extend its reach!
The stats on YouTube’s global reach make a pretty compelling case for translating videos with subtitles. Combine these with what we know about the power of video as a tool for audience engagement and/or sales, the case becomes even stronger. If you are staring down the limitations of an existing market, it’s worth considering where you might go next. Translation can be a way to extend the reach of one of your most powerful tools – video – and open up new horizons.
Tip 2: Create an emotional connection
The value of inclusion – of someone feeling like they are valued – can be hard to quantify.
Researchers at the University of Chicago tapped into this in an interesting way: they asked a moral question and found that, “when faced with moral choices in a foreign language, people are more likely to respond with a utilitarian approach that is less emotional.” In other words, study participants experienced less emotional resonance when the material presented was not in their native language.
In later studies, some of these same researchers uncovered more of the reasons behind this phenomena, “Your native language is acquired from your family, from your friends, from television,’ [the lead researcher] said. ‘It becomes infused with all these emotions.” Non-native languages, on the other hand, lack these connections. They are often acquired in classrooms, or other less intimate settings, and don’t trigger the same kinds of deep emotions.
If you are seeking an emotional connection with an audience or potential client, it might be helpful to use their native language. Note: it may also be helpful to think about where non-dominant languages are spoken (example: in New York City) and how you can best make an emotional appeal to these groups.
Tip 3: Skip the line: increase your search ranking
If you’re creating content solely in English, you are competing in a crowded search market. By adding additional languages and combining best-practices for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), localization SEO, and video SEO , you can gain access to less crowded search spaces. According to Sitepoint, “It’s worth being aware that keyword saturation on non-English language web sites is nowhere near what it is on English language web sites. So it’s quite possible for your business to attain lucratively high positions for key search terms on non-English search engines quicker than those of your native tongue.” In other words, translation and subtitles can be part of an effective strategy to ‘skip the line’ and head to the top of the search rankings.
Conclusion
Using these tips in planning a video translation and subtitling strategy might improve the overall business growth. If you would like a hand navigating this space, learning more about the impact of adopting captions and subtitles for your marketing plan, or if you want to share your experiences and let us know how your strategy is working, please reach out to us at client-services@amara.org.
Amara.org is a project of the Participatory Culture Foundation, a nonprofit focused on audiovisual media accessibility.
