As an independent creator producing Livestreams, Podcasts, or Vodcasts, your top priority is to connect and engage with as many people as possible in your niche.
However, your content’s accessibility can limit your reach.
In fact, 15% of American adults (37.5 million) aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing.
That’s where real-time captions come in. By providing captions, you not only make your content more widely accessible but you also improve engagement and viewer retention.
Real-time captions allow your audience to follow along more easily, providing a more immersive experience and allowing you to broaden your impact as a creator.
But captions don’t just benefit accessibility. With up to 80% of online video content consumed without sound, captions give you an edge for reaching the maximum number of viewers.
Let’s look at some surprising ways that real-time captions can benefit your streaming, podcasting, and vodcasting content.
Captions Help SEO
First, captions are great for search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines rely heavily on text to understand the content of a video or audio file. With captions, you can increase your visibility in organic searches and help viewers find your content more easily.
Also, once your potential new fan reaches your content, they’re more likely to find what they seek.
Perhaps, for example, they may be looking for your advice about something specific that you discussed in your podcast. With accurate and comprehensive captions, finding this information will be much simpler.
Enhanced Engagement
Captions also help to keep viewers engaged with your content by allowing them to follow along more easily as you discuss complicated topics or stories. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of a viewer watching all the way through to the end.
It’s also worth mentioning that captions can be an excellent catalyst for thoughtful conversations on social media (more on this later).
Viewers can pause or rewind to better understand your message by reading through the captions if they missed something or want to revisit a specific point.
Reach a Global Audience
Real-time captions are also multilingual, allowing you to reach an even wider audience by providing subtitles for viewers who may not be native English speakers.
With the right captioning service, your content will be understood by viewers worldwide, thus broadening your reach and bridging the gap between geographic and language barriers.
Save Time on Transcriptions and Show Notes
Real-time captions can save creators time and resources by eliminating the need for manual transcriptions or show notes. You can simply use your caption files to generate accurate text versions of audio or video content quickly.
This will enable you to easily integrate captions into other formats, such as blog posts, infographics, and more, to extend the reach of your content further.
With so much on your to-do list, adding a tool like Boomcaster with real-time transcriptions can help streamline the process and take your streaming, podcasting, or vodcasting content to new heights.
Easier Social Promotion
We’ve already mentioned that most digital video content is consumed without audio. At work, on the city bus, in a restaurant, or even on the couch next to your sleeping partner—viewers may find themselves in situations where it’s more convenient to watch without sound.
Having captions on your videos makes it easier for viewers to follow along and quickly share snippets with their social networks, helping you extend the reach of your content even further.
You can use the captions in your promo to help stop the scroll and assist viewers in understanding the content you are posting.
How to Leverage Captions
Now that you have a better understanding of the value of captions let’s dive into some specific ways to make the most of them!
Create Snippets for Social Promotion
Captions can be used as a powerful marketing tool. You can use your captions to create shareable snippets from your content that viewers can share across different social media platforms, increasing the reach of your content even further.
Add Captions to Your YouTube Videos
Adding captions to your videos not only helps viewers understand the content of your video but also increases the chances of ranking higher on search results.
Add Captions to Your Podcasts
Adding captions to your podcasts can make it easier for listeners to stay engaged and find what they want in a given episode. Additionally, if you find a platform that allows users to toggle the captions on and off, you’ll have all your bases covered.
Getting Started with Real-time Captions for Your Show
No matter the type of content you create, real-time captions can be a powerful tool to increase accessibility, engagement, and viewership. They provide an easy way to extend your content’s reach and save time for creating transcriptions or show notes.
So why wait? Get started with Boomcaster and start leveraging the power of real-time captions today.