Why your video needs captionsStand by, shock statistic on the way. Over 85% of people using social media are browsing without sound. That's bonkers right? But when you think about it, this makes a lot of sense.

Think about all the places you casually dip into your Facebook or Instagram feeds. You might be standing in line at the supermarket or waiting for a coffee, you could be at home in the living room while your other half watches something boring on TV, you might even be sitting on the loo! Go on, own up, you do that right?

What do all these places have in common? You're way ahead of me. These are all places where you really don't want everyone else knowing what videos you're watching.

You may have seen some videos that use one caption right at the start, 'turn your sound on'. Well that's a pretty useless tactic because most of the time we really can't or don't want to turn the sound on.

So, while 85% might seem like a super high number it really isn't.

So what does that all mean for your own videos?  If they make no sense without sound that's 85% of your potential audience lost.

Oh! They're even more important on YouTube

This is because YouTube is owned by the biggest search engine in the known galaxy, Google.

When you type something in Mr Google's search bar, you get lots of different options. These options include links, photos and videos. If you want some of these videos to be your ones you need to add captions.

Here's an example.

Let's say someone asks Google 'how do I change the oil on my car' and you've made a video that demonstrates just that. How does Google know your video exists?

Well, if you've uploaded your video on YouTube, Google can find it by searching for the title of your video and the description but that's pretty much it. Google can only understand text, not dialogue. Google is clever, but not that clever.

So if you have a version of everything you've said that Google can understand you have a better chance of popping up as an answer when someone searches for 'how do I change the oil on my car'. Google can understand captions.

Captions or subtitles

There's a subtle difference between them and you're perfectly okay to use either. Subtitles contain all the dialogue in text form and captions contain all the dialogue plus audio effects, sounds or other noises represented as text (dog barking for example).

Now we have that cleared up let's deal with the big question.

How do you add captions?

There are lots of ways to add captions to your videos and it really depends where you post them. Be warned though, some options are better than others.

Facebook and YouTube

When you upload a video to Facebook or YouTube you will be given the option to add captions. If you choose this option, little robots get to work, listen to your video and make a best guess at everything you've said.

It really is a best guess too. Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) is better on some platforms than others. They normally don't play well with strong accents, background noise and have no clue what grammar is all about. So after they have done their best, you will need to go through the text they have generated and correct all of their mistakes. That's where your problems start.

As I said, some ASR bots are better than others so be prepared to make a lot of corrections. Also the software for making these corrections can be pretty pants. In my experience editing captions on Facebook for example is an experience that can lead to severe emotional trauma and many lost hours of your life.

A little word about LinkedIn

Sadly, LinkedIn is behind the curve with captions. They do give you the ability to add them but only (at present) via an srt file which you have to upload along with your video. An sr what now? Exactly! Put a pin in that - I'll explain.

Good news on the LinkedIn front is ASR captions are coming. How they'll work and if they'll be any good is, as yet, uncertain. So for now you'll have to find a work around. thankfully there is one.

YouTube to the rescue

YouTube have a great bit of software for generating captions. It will use US spelling but it generally does a pretty good job at working out what you said and the editing process afterwards is relatively stress free.

What's even better is once you have edited your captions you can download a special file (called an .srt or .sbv file) which contains all of your nicely edited captions. You can then add this file to your video when publishing it on Facebook and LinkedIn.  I often find myself uploading a video to YouTube just so I can create this captions file.

Click here to learn more about adding captions on YouTube.

Instagram.

Instagram caught up in October 2021, as part of their big push towards more video content, they now have a sticker which kicks their own caption generator into gear. Again, the results are hit and miss though. So better than LinkedIn but still not great. Personally I wouldn't use it. I don't want my Instagram thinking I'm saying one thing when I'm clearly not. By the way, AI caption generators know what swear words are and they also think innocent words said with an accent can be swear words. So watch out!

Third party apps and other options

There are some third party apps that will add captions to your video before you post it. Some are free, some are not. Some are okay, some are not. To be honest I've yet to find a solution better than the YouTube one I described above. Yeah, I know it's not the best but alarmingly it's the best there is.

The other options is to pay someone to transcribe it manually. There are services that do this and they will send you a nice shiny caption file you can use as you wish. However, expect to part with some cash here.

The bottom line

Really the bottom line is that the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram so really need to pull their fingers out of their butts. We really need a user friendly option for adding captions because it's an essential part of any video you post.

That said, the work around I've talked through here is very much worth all the effort involved and things are changing all the time. Hopefully I'll be back to update this blog with some gladder tidings very soon.

Want more advice to help you towards video success?

I post tips like these ones all the time on my own social media channels. If you’re not part of my little social world already come and say hi.

I'm also on hand if you want to ask me a question or book some Zoom time with me so we can get hands on and really make your videos fly.