With over 1 billion users worldwide, LinkedIn has come a long way from its modest roots in co-founder Reid Hoffman’s living room. The platform has taken a cue from the social media giants and now offers multimedia posts. Professionals worldwide can now leverage the attention-grabbing nature of videos, which can be further enhanced by adding captions. Now, all that’s left to know is how to add captions to your LinkedIn videos and which option to choose.
In this article, you’ll learn how:
- Like many social media platforms, LinkedIn allows users to post multimedia content on their profiles, including videos.
- LinkedIn has a feature that can automatically and natively generate captions for English audio. However, it’s not the best choice for accuracy.
- Ditto Transcripts offers captioning and transcription services that are more than 99% accurate all the time, making it the premier choice for professionals looking to engage a broader audience and link up with their peers using videos on LinkedIn.
How Do You Upload Videos On LinkedIn?
Uploading videos on LinkedIn is straightforward. Go to your feed, look for the Media button near the top, and select the video you want to upload from your computer.
Really, it is that simple.
How To Add Captions #1: LinkedIn Auto Captions
Like other social media and video hosting platforms, LinkedIn offers automatic captioning. This feature lets you upload your file, click through the prompts, and get AI-generated closed captions for your video post.
Here’s the step-by-step guide, starting when you upload your video file.
Editor Window
Once you upload your file, you will be directed to the Editor window, where you can see your video preview and add some aspects, like additional videos in one post or specify your video’s thumbnail.
In this instance, we’ll look at the CC button at the bottom of the window.
Once you click on that, you will be directed to a page that asks if you want to add auto-captions and if you want to review them before your viewers can see them. Simply move the slider to the option you prefer, then click apply.
After that, you’ll need to click on done, and the video will be processed as your captions are generated. You’ll receive a notification once the video is ready to view on your profile.
Review Auto Captions
If you choose to review auto-captions in the previous section for your video, you will receive a message that says auto-captions are ready for review. To do so, simply click on the Review button. Remember, no captions will show on your video until you complete the review.
Even if you didn’t choose to review captions, you will have a chance to edit them. Whether you edit them is up to you, but know that your video will immediately show captions without your approval, including any potential inaccuracies, if you don’t opt for reviewing them beforehand.
Captions for your video will be automatically time-stamped, and you can check and edit every line as you see fit. You can also remove captions if you want by hovering your cursor on the left side of the specific line and clicking on the garbage bin icon.
However—and this is very important—the Remove captions button at the bottom applies to all captions, not just a single line, meaning you’d need to reupload your video to get automatic captions again.
The Verdict
Adding closed captions automatically on LinkedIn is as easy, just like on YouTube and other social media platforms. However, that relative ease comes with the same accuracy issues with any automated captioning or transcription software. For context, most automatic speech recognition services and platforms are only 86% accurate at best, meaning there’s a 14% chance of errors in your highly professional LinkedIn video.
Additionally, auto-captions can only be generated in English. So, if your video is in another language, you’re all out of luck.
Well, not really all out of luck. You still have the option to add manual subtitles to LinkedIn videos.
How To Add Captions #2: Adding Closed Caption Or Subtitles As SRT Files Manually
You can add manual captions as SRT files to your LinkedIn videos. To do so, look for the Upload SRT button in the CC window.
As indicated, the subtitles or captions must be in SRT file format.
Automated SRT Files
Now, you can use automatic programs or platforms to generate an SRT file for your video. However, those platforms still use automatic speech recognition software, so they have the same issues as LinkedIn’s auto-caption feature. Using SRT from automated platforms is like adding unnecessary steps to your video captioning for the same results.
Manual SRT Files
Conversely, you can create your own SRT files using the text editor of your choice. Typically, SRT files are created per line, each indicating the spoken and captioned text’s hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds. Here’s a sample:
1
00:00:00,498 –> 00:00:02,827
– With over 14 years in the industry,
Ditto offers world-class transcription
I think everyone sees the problem with creating your own SRT file. Namely, it is going to be very, very time-consuming. Imagine having to do this for a fifteen-minute video packed with people talking.
Professionally Prepared SRT Files
Now, if you don’t want to get stuck behind your keyboard and transcribe your videos for hours, you can get your media professionally captioned.
Ditto Transcripts can provide accurate transcription and captioning services- far better than any automated platform.
Ditto offers:
- More than 99% accuracy on all LinkedIn transcription and captioning projects
- 100% US-based, human transcription
- Fast turnaround times
- Affordable rates to fit different budgets
- Stringent security measures that meet different regulatory requirements
- No long-term commitments or contracts (pay as you go)
- Industry-leading customer service
- Flexible features for varying requirements
- Professional translation services for Arabic, French, Spanish, German, and more
Why Add Subtitles And Captions To Your LinkedIn Videos?
So, why should professionals go to all that trouble just to add captions to their videos? Captioning has many benefits, some of which are massively important for career-centric individuals and those who want to build a bigger network on LinkedIn. Those benefits include:
Accessibility
Over 5% of the global population suffers from hearing disabilities that require medical attention and rehabilitation. That’s 430 million people. If we zoom out to people who suffer from hearing loss of various degrees that don’t need rehabilitation, that number balloons to 1.5 billion.
Without transcripts and captions, you’re leaving all of them out of your potential audience pool. Remember, LinkedIn is a place for professional connections, and everyone you can add to your network matters.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Transcription and captioning are the best ways to optimize audio and video content for SEO outside of metadata tuning. With transcripts and captions, web crawlers can access your content through written text, giving your content a fighting chance at getting ranked in search engine result pages (SERPs).
A Show Of Dedication
In a recently published study, Jiahui Li found that captions and transcripts can positively impact the audience’s perception of the creator, especially regarding dedication to their work. 73.46% of the study’s participants expressed that “the inclusion of subtitles in the production of the video reflects his or her [the creator’s] degree of effort.”
This perception can be invaluable to LinkedIn profiles. It makes you look more professional and allows your peers to gauge your dedication to your work positively.
Information Retention
In the same study, Li conducted a quantitative data analysis on how well audiences retain information with and without subtitles. She found that 62.28% of people who watched a video with subtitles could answer a core question about said video accurately.
In contrast, only 45.45% of the group that watched without subtitles could answer the question correctly.
By including video subtitles, people will remember what you say, making you stand out from the millions of others who make content on the internet.
Also, sponsored audio or video content contains information about products and services, and with better information comes better chances of a potential customer remembering the product you endorsed when they need it.
Wider Reach
Various sources indicate that 85% of short-form content on Facebook is watched without sound. I would assume that LinkedIn videos are similarly viewed. This makes sense, as everyone has their phone wherever they go, and not all of them bring headphones or earbuds for a quick scroll through their news feed.
So, an effective way to convert these social media viewers into engaged audiences is to provide captions and transcripts for your videos. Otherwise, your content would just be one of many that are being scrolled past.
Your content can also be translated into different languages for further reach. I mean, props to you for showing commitment, like finding ways to increase viewer engagement.
Increased Engagement
Captions and transcripts increase viewer engagement in two ways.
The first way is through attention retention, usually measured in watch time. 80% more people stay until the video is over when there are subtitles.
For watch time, audiences often click away from the video at about 66% of the length when it doesn’t have subtitles. Captioned videos, however, enjoy a 91% watch-through rate. That’s a huge benefit for people consuming your content, and it is an excellent reason to employ transcription in your content creation process.
The second way captions and transcripts improve engagement is through audience interaction. 71.78% of participants in Li’s study indicated they would be willing to comment, like, or share a meticulously crafted video (with subtitles) that shows the creator’s dedication to their content.
Staying Power
Transcribing audio and video content can help ensure your content remains relevant on LinkedIn for longer. Even if the trend passes, your video can serve as the entry point for latecomers—and they’re more likely to choose yours since you have captions and transcripts, as per the previous section.
Maximize Your LinkedIn Video’s Potential With Ditto’s Captioning Service
Stand out from the crowd by using Ditto’s transcription and captioning services. Enjoy all the benefits of captioning with our affordable, accurate, and accessible services.
Ditto Transcripts is a Denver, Colorado-based transcription services company that provides fast, accurate, and affordable transcripts for individuals and companies of all sizes. Call (720) 287-3710 today for a free quote, and ask about our free five-day trial.
