Image: https://pixabay.com/photos/student-woman-startup-business-849821/
With the recent rise in video marketing, it is surprising that there aren’t more conversations around the benefits of transcription services. If you watch many television shows and infomercials, there is a great chance you have come across captions or subtitles. Most people find it easy to watch and understand videos with subtitles but do not know how to turn video audio content into text.
Video transcription has been around for many years in various industries, including marketing, film and education. People consume media content in different formats and forms. While some individuals enjoy watching plain videos, others love captions to make the audio content clearer and more detailed. That is where video transcription comes in.
Enhanced Audience Comprehension
As we mentioned earlier, transcribing video to text helps make it easier for the audience to watch and understand the media content. This is, especially, important for videos meant for education purposes.
Most learning and tutoring activities today happen online. Students need captions as a cognitive reinforcer and learning aid when studying in an online learning environment. Whether the viewer is a native English speaker or not, having closed captions to read along can greatly enhance their learning experience.
For marketing videos, transcription services can help you reach out to a larger audience. Accents are one of the greatest barriers to effective video marketing campaigns. Luckily, transcribing video content to texts provides an alternative way for viewers to consume the information.
Improved SEO
Besides enhancing viewers’ comprehension, transcribing videos to text can increase SEO and views. Search engines usually use written text to index content on users’ searches. With that in mind, it is important to note that these search engines cannot watch videos to understand what they are about. So, introducing written content in the form of captions and subtitles allows search engines to crawl through the video content, making it easier to index them properly.
Search engine optimised content appears on more searches, thus attracting more new viewers. The content can be paginated and optimised for specific keywords to improve its SEO rank on viewers’ searches.
Enhanced Accessibility
Accessibility is arguably the most important benefit of transcribing video content to text. As you develop video content for any purpose, it is important to note that there are end-users with special needs, such as deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Without readable content, captions and subtitles, it can be a little challenging for these individuals to watch and understand the message on the videos.
If the videos are accompanied by time-synchronised text, you can accommodate all your viewers. It makes it easier for every video consumer to enjoy your content while increasing your audience.
Facilitates Translation
Transcribing videos to text is the first step toward creating subtitles in other languages. If you watch lots of movies, you have probably come across a video with audio content in a foreign language, but the captions are in a language you can understand. This is possible through the combination of transcription and translation.
Apart from the film industry, businesses can use transcription and translation services to convert their video content and reach out to non-English speaking countries. That is essential for companies looking to reach a wider audience and expand to overseas markets.
Adherence to Legal Requirements
Apart from facilitating translation, transcribing video to text is important in ensuring compliance with legal requirements. With a large percentage of people suffering from hearing loss problems in both work and education settings, most countries have enacted various anti-discrimination laws concerning closed captions on videos.
These laws are designed to protect the rights of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals by ensuring they get access to the same resources as the rest of the population. So, every video posted on public platforms must include closed captions to ensure full accessibility.
Bottom-line
Transcribing video to text is one of the easiest ways to improve the connection between media creators and their target audience. It helps improve SEO, enhance comprehension and increases accessibility. Additionally, it ensures you comply with the legal requirements of your state. If you wonder how to convert video to text, consider hiring competent transcription services.
