Here's some truth served for you right here. Cold hard stats: 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. YES, everybody and their grandma are making videos, because they need to stay in the game.
Since we KNOW you are one smart cookie, we know you've been doing everything in your power to stay on top of this video marketing thing. You make your videos, right? Right.
BUT.
Be honest - do your videos have subtitles? Do you know how to transcribe video? Do you know how important that is?
We'll get to it in a minute. The main takeaway here is that you should be doing it. Don't worry, it doesn't mean you'll suddenly have hours and hours of work on your hands. There are quick and easy ways to transcribe video and audio.
Also, don’t forget about your old videos, as well. If you have old, evergreen videos that still aren’t transcribed, you’re actually sitting on a GOLDMINE of content just waiting to be repurposed!
Why Do You Need to Transcribe Your Videos?
Transcribing videos is absolutely essential in this day and age. You need your message in all sorts of formats because you want to spread it to all sorts of platforms, right? Right!
Here are just some of the reasons you should dive in and transcribe video to text every time you record something interesting.
1. Inclusivity Is Not The Exception, It’s The Norm
Not to be Captain Obvious, but it’s not okay to assume everyone is able to hear the sound, watch with the audio on, or understand what is being said.
According to WHO, around 5 percent of the world population (or around 430 million people) suffers from disabling hearing loss. By 2050, that number is expected to grow to 700 million, while around 2.5 billion people will have some percent of hearing loss.
Yes. You read that right. 2.5 billion. Add to that the people who struggle with auditory processing, and the number rises even more.
And sometimes, the problem might just be circumstantial. Sometimes the surroundings are too loud, and sometimes people forget to charge their earbuds, and sometimes they just want to watch on the train or in a waiting room, or in any number of places where it would be rude to turn the sound on.
When you add up all of this, that’s a whole lot of people. And how many of these people do you think enjoy watching videos? Probably the majority.
If you want your videos to reach as wide an audience as possible, and to be inclusive and accessible to everyone, then transcribing them is a must.
2. Work Smart, Not Hard
Okay, you should definitely work hard too, if you want to succeed. But there’s nothing wrong with being smart about it. You have some excellent content in your videos? Then use it.
Videos are a great format – they’re easy to follow and can even be watched while multitasking. But their one disadvantage? They’re not very searchable. The title and the description can hardly cover all of the excellent info you’ve put into them.
So, how can you rectify that?
Well, one simple way is to repurpose them as blog posts. It can never hurt to have your content presented in as many formats as you can think of. It will make you more visible to your audience as well as the search engines. And BAM, just like that - you doubled your content.
Some people prefer reading. Also, sometimes they just need to find info quickly and don’t have time to watch an entire video hoping they will find what they’re looking for.
Rewriting your videos in the form of blogs covers these bases. And while it’s possible to just watch a video and write from there, it’s much easier to convert it into text if you have a transcript as a starting point.
3. Stand Out On Social Media
How does that old philosophical dilemma go? If a video gets posted to social media, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Something like that.
The fact is, if you don’t have a strong social media presence nowadays, you might as well not be on the internet at all.
Having a transcription of your video content might be helpful for social media too. When you transcribe video, it will help you identify the catchiest and most interesting parts.
It will also make it easier to summarise your content for descriptions or captions that you can use on your social media posts to make them more attractive to your followers.
4. Improve Your SEO Game
SEO and video content don’t really mesh as well as SEO does with text posts, at least for now. It’s only a matter of time before AI changes that fundamentally, but for now, there’s only so much you can do to stand out.
However, the one thing you definitely can do to optimise your video SEO services, is to upload the captions for your video in the form of an SRT file. Because, while search engine crawlers don’t quite know what’s going on in your video, they can definitely read a text file. Do it and watch your videos soar in the rankings.
How to Transcribe a Video?
Now that we’ve covered the why, let’s tackle the how. Here are some methods you can use to transcribe your videos.
1. Use Subly
If you want an accurate transcription, the simplest and fastest way is to use your best subtltle app - Subly. When you upload your video to Subly, it will do your job for you, and it will be much quicker about it than you could ever hope to be.
Once Subly transcribes the video, you can edit the text, upload it to your video in the form of captions, or export it so you have a handy transcription any time you need it. The sky is the limit.
2. Hire a Pro
If you can afford it, you can always pay someone for transcription services. Bear in mind that this process might be costly if you want a good transcription that you can rely on. Be especially careful if you are paying by the hour, because manually transcribing videos can be a lengthy process.
Don’t forget to include the time needed for instructions, editing requests, and revisions in your calculations.
If you decide to go this route, the best option is to hire a trusted person whose work you’ve been happy with in the past. Even though transcription seems straightforward from the outside, it can be quite challenging and, in most cases, you can’t be sure you will get the quality you are looking for.
Always make sure to go over the transcription and check it for mistakes before uploading it anywhere or repurposing it. You’ve worked hard on your videos, the last thing you’d want is to have them compromised by faulty captions.
3. Do It Yourself
If you are determined to transcribe video to text free of charge, you can take the DIY approach. You know – play the video, pause, type, then do it all over again until you’re done.
The advantage is that no one knows your videos as well as you do, so you are sure to get completely accurate results.
The disadvantage? Unless it’s a very short video (and there are not many of them), you are looking at an extremely time-consuming task.
What you save in money, you will most likely pay for in time. And time is money, so we’re back to square one.
Transcriptions of your videos are an extremely useful tool. There’s no question about whether you need them. The only thing you need to do is decide what video to text method works best for you, and then, once you have the transcripts, brainstorm all of the ways you can put them to good use.
