Role of Transcription in Online Marketing

Role of Transcription in Online Marketing
Role of Transcription in Online Marketing

Video combines many of the best opportunities for Internet marketing and has become a steady upward trend in recent years. This is a powerful tool that allows brands to sell, train, attract, inspire, show, prove, entertain and convince. Do you see how many possibilities there are in one tool? Want to make your video even more influential and engaging for users? Then it’s worth adding video transcription to it. Below we have collected a lot of reasons why transcription is important for online marketing and improves its effectiveness. Below in this article, we will cover the Role of Transcription in Online Marketing.

Video Transcriptions Enhance Search Engine Visibility

In this case, search engines are able to “read and index the content” of the video and show to those users whose search query matches the information in the video as much as possible.

This makes video content more attractive to search engines, which by itself will make them appear as high as possible and more often in search results.

Most importantly, the process of optimizing video and its transcription is very similar to the process of optimizing text on your web pages. And in general, no one forbids you to add keywords or keyword phrases of your topic placing them strategically in the video transcript. Make sure you don’t overdo it though, as it will be keyword stuffing and will move you down the search engine results page. You can add them as subheadings and not make it look out of whack or like you are trying to manipulate the results. Video transcriptions actually improve the user experience with the site, helping those with different learning styles get access to your information in text format as well as video format.

When transcribing video material, follow two important rules.

  • Do a complete, word-for-word verbatim transcription.
  • Highlighting the main subtopics as headings.

Individual users (whose number is growing rapidly) use the word “video with transcription” together with a search query or look for it in the corresponding tab. Placing videos on the page can stimulate promotion. Since not all companies use media files, it is possible to beat out most competitors, including those who currently have higher positions in the search engine results for the terms you are targeting.

It Improves Engagement

Videos alone improve page engagement and traffic, and videos that contain transcription improve engagement even better. The ability to choose between reading and listening is good for user experience. 

In addition, YouTube also evaluates the quality of the video not only by the number of views, and also by depth. Meaning, if one hundred users watched the first three seconds of a video and then clicked back to the results page, it is a much worse signal than if the video was watched by twenty-five users all the way to the very end.

Thus, it becomes apparent that watch time is by far the most important engagement metric on YouTube. And transcription is just the assistant that will help you increase the time of watching a video because people can read along with the video, or jump to the transcript and read it without the video giving them an option to read it and not have to watch and listen to the video at the same time. They could be on a train, subway, or plane and not want to interrupt their fellow passengers, and having a transcript available will allow them to be polite.

Complete video transcripts attract more people and provide more opportunities to make your video visible in search engine results, and will increase the duration time of those watching. Highlighting the main topics is good for long videos and can attract more views, attracting readers with interesting content made better with the help of transcribed video content. Therefore, look for and apply what your audience expects from you. You can even conduct a survey among them or conduct A / B testing to see which approaches to implementing content bring more involvement.

Transcriptions Attract Readers

Not all users have the ability or desire to watch the video with sound, and transcription gives them the opportunity to access your marketing message, regardless of external circumstances. 

In addition, there is an opinion that the power of video content will only increase, and text articles will gradually become part of the past and will be applied only in those rare cases when it is technically impossible to make a video. However, what does this mean in the context of transcribing your video? This means even more room for efficiency.

  • Firstly, the consumption of video content requires certain conditions: sufficient Internet speed, no restrictions on the volume of traffic, the ability to turn on sound, or at least the use headphones.
  • Secondly, in most cases, watching a video takes more time: most people can read faster than the video plays.
  • Thirdly, it is impossible to quickly scan or search a video without a transcript and see whether it contains the necessary information you want. And, unfortunately, you can’t press Ctrl + F to search within the video like you can a text document.

When you upload a high-quality, 99%+ accurate transcription, with your video, everything changes. The user can now “view” your video (transcript) regardless of external factors. The user can save his time by jumping from one moment to another, and quickly reading the transcription to stop and hear in detail only the most important information for them. As you know you can’t press Ctrl + F and search the video, with video transcripts though it allows you to take quick notes of the main points, and then return to them easily later on.

Thus, the value of the video itself increases several times. It can be viewed, listened and read as many times as this user needs. If the speaker speaks too fast, transcription allows the user not to lose the thread of his reasoning because they can slow down and reread things if necessary.

Video Transcripts Can Be Used to Help Learn a New Language or to Engage Foreign-Speaking Audiences

There are two types of foreign-speaking audiences that may access your videos – those who are looking for the information/products/services you are offering and those who are looking to learn your language. In both cases, transcriptions serve a valuable purpose.

1. Foreign Audiences Looking for Products/Services

We live in a global society now. And we make purchases from companies that are located all over the planet. In fact, consumers often do not realize that when they are presented with advertisements, or access a retail website, that those companies are located somewhere else. This is how good English is. Those ads and websites have been translated and localized for foreign audiences, usually by professional translation agencies. In fact, the product an American consumer orders may very well be manufactured and sold by a Chinese firm, without his even knowing this.

If you are producing videos for specific foreign audiences, then there are plenty of tools available, including professional agencies or even writing services for students of any type., that will allow you to produce those videos with transcriptions in foreign languages – as many as you want. The user needs to only select his language and then watch the video while reading (or listening to) the transcription that appears. This demonstrates that you care about your foreign-speaking audiences and have taken the steps necessary to honor them. 

2. Foreign Audiences Looking to Learn Your Language

Many users are looking for authentic videos that were recorded by native speakers to help learn a new language in its most real form. Being able to listen and read at the same time is the perfect combination to practice listening and pronunciation for new language learners.

Let’s take a look at some of the research that supports learning a foreign language in this way.

  • Alan Pease, an expert on auditory and visual communication states this: Words alone make up about 7-10% of perceived information. 30% of information is processed by hearing the words actually spoken – timber, intonation, speed, etc. And about 60% of perceived information is gleaned from non-verbal communication – the physical gestures and facial expressions that are made during the oral presentation. If this is the case, then, watching a video in the language, as well as being able to practice reading the transcription at the same time, provides a much more comprehensive method of learning a language.
  • Warren Edgar, adult ESL specialist and retired university instructor, created a program called Successful English, based upon his own research and that of others. What he has to say is this: We learn a language in a manner that he calls, “comprehensive input.” This is defined as a combination of what we hear, see, and read – all three ultimately result in mastery of a language. The implications for creating videos are clear. They need to be in clear English, with all of the intonation and non-verbal gestures that go along with what the video is trying to say. The transcription is then clearly visible so that the viewer can read along as the video plays. 

And so, as a business that wants to market a product or service to a foreign audience via video, you have a couple of options here. First and foremost, however, you must craft an amazing video that markets the value of your product and service, and do it in your native language. In reaching a foreign audience, then, you can do the following:

  • You can provide a transcription that allows your foreign audience to read the content of your video in their native language. This has the value of showing those foreign audiences that you understand their need to receive information in the easiest way for them to understand.
  • You can also maintain your native language, along with a transcription in that same language so that those in your foreign audiences who want to increase their language proficiency can do so, by watching your video and reading along that native language transcription.
  • You can actually do both, and allow a foreign audience to choose which transcription it would like. Perhaps they would like to read a transcription in their own language first and then move to the same video in your native language. This gives them the best of both worlds – to receive your marketing message in their own language and then to receive that same presentation in your language so that they can improve their own proficiency in your language. 

Allowing these options provides the opportunity for you to establish better relationships and greater trust with your audiences, native or foreign. And the more trustful your relationships are with your audiences, the greater the chances are they will opt to make purchases from you.

Video Transcription Makes a Brand More Socially-Oriented

Brands do need to promote their commitment to broader social missions. While videos themselves can speak to these missions (their environmental sustainability efforts, for example), transcriptions can reinforce these missions for a number of individuals – those foreign audiences who want to understand a brand’s legitimate activities in this arena, and for those who may be hearing-impaired and for whom social responsibility is important. 

In the video itself, you can comment on the fact that you have included transcription so that viewers who prefer to read can still get your social messages. The point is you want to make your social message available via all possible venues of communication and ensure that viewers AND readers:

  • Learn about your socially responsible activities
  • Have the choice to listen or to read
  • Show your respect for all of your potential audiences

The Most Important Factor in Engaging Your Video Viewers? It’s Quality

Video content is no different from text, in terms of indexing and ranking by Google. Those bots want to see rich and relevant content in your videos. If you want potential customers to find your videos, then they must be pretty amazing. 

If you try to optimize mundane and boring videos, you are wasting your time and energy. Those who access your videos will bounce quite quickly, and your ranking will certainly go down – search engines will see them as irrelevant or without value.

Your video does not have to involve huge production costs. It does, though, have to involve a script that engages your visitors, that demonstrates that value of the product or service you offer, and that solves a consumer problem. 

And when you have that quality script, providing a transcription of it for the viewer to read along, according to his own preference, you have provided one additional piece of value. Viewers can listen, then replay while reading the transcription, and then even listen again. This is a lot of time spent, and search engines love that.

Conclusion

Consider this: Why would you not want to include transcription with your videos? Can you of any reasons why not? Now consider why you would want to add transcription. The reasons are outlined above – you provide for preferences of consumers in terms of how they want to access and absorb your message. You honor those preferences for people who want to both listen and read, for those foreign audiences who want to read n their own languages or improve their proficiency in yours, and for those for whom reading may be their sole means of gaining information.

Author Biography

AnnaAnna is a specialist in different types of writing. She graduated from the Interpreters Department, but creative writing became her favorite type of work. Now she improves her skills while working as a freelance writer for Online Writers Rating to assist a lot of students all over the world and has free time for another work, as well. Always she does her best in the posts and articles.