How to Use Captions to Grow Your YouTube Channel

Everybody wants to know: How can you reach the best performance on YouTube?

You’ve already uploaded a great video, but there’s just no traction! Aside from going viral, you can aim for consistent growth by optimizing several elements of metadata and other features.

Metadata is the information about your video and how it is presented. This includes the title, thumbnail, description, end screens, etc. Each of these elements works in concert together to help the performance of your video.

In a series of articles, I will explain how managing these elements can boost the performance of your YouTube channel.

What are Captions on YouTube?

Captions and subtitles provide a readable transcript for your YouTube video. “Subtitles” assume the viewer hears the audio and thus do not describe sounds and speaker changes. “Captions” are created for hearing-impaired viewers and describe background sounds and speaker changes.

Multiple caption files can be provided for a single video to feature different language or information options. Also, captions are often auto-generated by YouTube, which may give a hint at their value.

Overall, subtitles and captions are a simple concept. But don’t underestimate their utility in delivering a solid YouTube video.

How Can I Create or Edit Captions on YouTube?

Once you’ve uploaded your wonderful video, you’re taken to a screen where you can optimize much of the metadata while YouTube processes your video. In this window, you can upload a transcript if you have one or link to a transcript commissioned from a third party.

If you don’t want to add captions right away, you can leave this screen alone and add captions later. YouTube will often auto-generate captions, but its interpretations are not very accurate. At this point, you can go and edit the generated captions for accuracy.

Another option I mentioned is captioning from a third party. There are services online for which they will watch and write captions to your videos. They typically charge per minute of each video captioned. There is a creeping cost of constantly adding captions through a third party, though it is a method that can save tons of time and still provide the best experience for your viewers.

Here are more in-depth instructions on adding and editing captions. (LINK: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2734796)

Are Captions Important for My YouTube Video’s Performance?

Accurate subtitles and captions are an essential building block to the overall performance of your channel. Consider providing the best overall experience for any given viewer of your video. You’re off to a great start if they click to watch your video, but a viewer is likely to return if they enjoy the content and have a seamless interaction.

There are plenty of reasons a person may prefer to watch a video with captions. For instance, 5% of the global population is hearing impaired and needs captions to consume your content. (LINK: https://www.who.int/pbd/deafness/news/Millionslivewithhearingloss.pdf)

There are millions of potential viewers around the globe who speak different languages. They turn on captions to better understand your content.

Also, a person could watch a video at work, the gym, or anywhere they can’t hear or listen to the audio. They may turn on captions to read along with the video.

There are other nuanced reasons a person turns on captions. The demographics described above should mark the importance of accurate captions.

For certain people certain contexts, the sound of your video isn’t a priority (and may actually be undesirable), and reading accurate captions are essential for them to understand and enjoy your content. (LINK: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/updated-features-for-video-ads)

That covers the human element of performance, but accurate captions will also help your performance with the YouTube algorithm as well. YouTube bots will crawl the transcript of your video for keywords to better categorize your content for future suggestions. If the YouTube crawler reads an automated transcript, your video could be suggested in unrelated categories, and performance will suffer.

How Can I Enhance Captions on My YouTube Video?

To be frank, you want to be sure that the captions accurately and efficiently convey the information of your video.

Here are a few tips for cleaning up the presentation of captions on your videos:

Check spelling and grammar mistakes. This isn’t for a university grade, so you don’t have to be meticulous with your editing. The objective is to avoid confusion via misspelled words or absent punctuation. You won’t need an APA manual, just a quick read-through for clarity.

Edit spacing and timing with the appearance of the captions in mind. If a line of dialogue is too long, the caption box can look awkward or hold too much information to read quickly. A caption should accompany the video, not remove attention by making the viewer read more than they watch. You’ll want to use your best judgment for balancing sentence length with the timing of the captions. In general, keep the boxes as even as possible, and the captions on the screen should match the spoken words.

Clarify any branding. Stylize brand names appropriately in the captions. If the name is all uppercase, contains numbers, or some other stylization, don’t neglect that in the captions! This will help keep a consistent image of your brand in viewers’ minds.

Consider experimenting. Let’s say your video doesn’t contain any dialogue. You could still utilize captions to describe whatever is happening on the screen or to provide more information. You can also add multiple caption files so your viewers can choose what text they see. These options could include multiple languages, commentary, credits, and more.

Consider other languages. When looking into caption analytics, are viewers consistently turning on captions for a foreign language? If you have a large viewership in countries with a different native language, you may consider ordering captions for those languages. This isn’t a requirement, but if your channel has a significant presence in Mexico, it may be worth ordering Spanish translation captions for your videos.

Overall, the guiding principle for YouTube captions, and most optimizations for that matter, is to provide as much supplemental information as the viewer could want without distracting them from the video.

My Captions are Enhanced. Will I Get More Views?

Enhanced captions alone will not make or break your video, but it is an essential building block. If a person watches your video and doesn’t turn on captions, they’ll never know if you optimized them or not. No harm there.

But, if a person watches your video and needs captions to understand, suddenly accurate captions are a make-or-break feature for your channel from their perspective.

In YouTube Analytics, you can see data on how many people watch your content with subtitles, what language is most used, and plenty of other insights like watch time, engagement, and more. This information shows how viewers use captions with your content.

You may see increased analytics such as subscribers or watch time after optimizing captions but don’t expect drastic results. Meaningful growth on YouTube is grown through crafting an experience for your viewers. Accurate captions are a critical element of the experience.

Stay tuned for more articles describing optimizing your YouTube channel for consistent growth.