Over the last decade, video content creation has evolved from some guy screaming into a microphone to a multi-billion-dollar industry. Content creators are some of the most influential and well-paid personalities on the internet, with a single social media post earning them anywhere between $100 and $10,000. With that kind of money on the table, some content creators need to leverage technology to its maximum—and video and audio transcription offers some of the best benefits for them.
In this article, you’ll learn how:
- Content creation can greatly benefit from transcription services through increased audience retention, engagement, accessibility, and more.
- There are three ways for content creators to get transcripts and captions: doing it themselves, having AI do it, or getting professional transcribers to do it for them. The latter is the best option almost 100% of the time.
- Ditto Transcripts offers the most comprehensive transcription service in the industry, providing accurate and high-quality transcripts to content creators.
Audio And Video Content Creation For Social Media
There’s a certain allure of being famous on social media these days. However, the potential benefits don’t end with popularity (or notoriety, for some). Content creation and influencer marketing are more lucrative than ever. That’s no surprise, considering the number of people active on social media. Let’s take a quick look.
| Platform | Year Established | Description | Users As Of 2024 |
| YouTube | 2005 | Video sharing | 2.7 billion |
| TikTok | 2016 | Short-form videos | 2 billion |
| 2010 | Photos & videos | 1.4 billion | |
| 2004 | Social networking | 3.07 billion | |
| 2006 | Microblogging | 336 million | |
| Snapchat | 2011 | Short-term content | 513 million |
For further context, over 500 million people watch Facebook videos daily. YouTube, meanwhile, has about 122 million active daily users. We can see why content creators flock to these sites—and why advertisers throw money at influencers to get a slice of their audience base.
Video Transcription / Audio Transcription For Social Media
Transcription is the process of converting video or audio recordings into written or digital text. It’s fairly straightforward: You take a video file and transcribe the audio to text.
Easy as breathing.
Or, so other people think.
Converting audio into text can be an arduous process. Typical estimates show that it takes three to four hours to convert one hour of audio. To be clear, it takes professionals that long to transcribe video productions into text versions. It takes someone with little or no experience 10 times the length of the video to do their own transcriptions. So a one hour file will take them 10 hours to transcribe.
Transcribers also deal with a lot of issues, including:
- Audio quality
- Accents and dialects
- Technical terminology
- Speakers talking over each other
- Inconsistent pacing
- Foreign languages
- Homophones and similar-sounding words
- Non-verbal communication
- Speaker identification
- Formatting and style
- Time constraints
- Fatigue and concentration
- Legal and ethical considerations
- Quality control
The bottom line is that video or audio content transcription is hard, and you’ll need professional help to produce accurate, high-quality transcripts and captions (more on that later).
Importance Of Video And Audio Transcription And Captioning
Despite the obvious difficulty, the various benefits of video transcription make it absolutely worth the trouble. Let’s take a look at the most important advantages:
Accessibility
You often see accessibility as one of the first reasons to employ transcription in your content, and there’s a good reason for that.
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. Think of the video views, likes, comments, and money you’ll get from them!
Then, think of what transcription can offer beyond improved metrics and personal gain.
Inclusivity and accessibility are core concepts in the digital world. Acceptance and accommodation of differences are some of the many good things about the internet (God knows the internet can be a cesspool at times), and it is your job as a content creator to uphold it.
In other words, don’t create and make your content more inclusive and accessible solely for the numbers. Do it so that nobody gets left out.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Standard SEO practices say injecting relevant keywords into your scripts is an excellent way to get noticed by Google Search. It’s also obvious if you think about it since it’ll be easy to use keywords when discussing a particular topic extensively.
There is only one problem: Search can’t crawl audio or video content.
Transcripts can help. In fact, transcription is the best way to optimize audio and video content for SEO, outside of metadata tuning (which doesn’t offer much space).
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
It’s so easy to turn on your phone camera, misarticulate your way through a topic, and immediately plaster the result all over your social media pages with the same amount of effort as sorting your mail.
Or, for Brownie Points, you could turn on automatic captioning, let some AI service misunderstand your words, and make it seem like you put some effort into your podcast or video production.
It takes work to transcribe content accurately and with high quality. Audiences instinctively understand that; they can see the difference between professional captioning and an automated service, even if they don’t consciously consider it—and there’s proof.
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.”
Information Retention
Making videos memorable and engaging doesn’t have to involve bombastic production values, controversial takes, or giveaways predicated on likes, shares, or whatever metric you need to meet.
Sometimes, straightforward methods are best.
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.
This is important in two ways. 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.
Second, 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. 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.
Aside from that, 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 can 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 lot of benefits 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
It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, at least regarding social media trends. Any popular, mega-hit video can disappear from public perception as fast as it came, and content creators need all the tools and strategies they can get to stay relevant.
Transcribing audio and video content can help ensure your content remains relevant for longer, regardless of whether it’s on a website or a video-sharing platform. 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.
Getting Captions And Transcripts: DIY, AI, Or Get An Audio Transcription Service?
Look, we all understand that keeping expenses low and profits high is the essence of running a business, and content creation and online videos are businesses. Transcription can present an additional expense, so creators might want to shop around for the most affordable way to get it.
And, of course, the very first thing that comes to people’s mind when trying to save money on something is doing it themselves.
I wouldn’t advise it, though. Remember, manually transcribing audio can take us three to four times longer. It will likely take you longer. Plus, you might not have the training, expertise, or equipment to handle transcription.
Then, there’s automatic transcription with real-time results and cheap (or even free) services. Video-sharing platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube have their own automatic captioning and transcription features.
However, they’re only 86% accurate, so there’s a big chance that an awkwardly transcribed line can rip away your audience’s attention and immersion. Not exactly the best way to keep them watching.
The best option to make your content more accessible without settling for silly errors is to have a professional transcription service do it for you. It’s easier, faster, and involves less work. However, you don’t just get the first one on your Google Search. There are many considerations, and I can take the time to list them all.
Or, even better, I can tell you how Ditto Transcripts meets and exceeds all considerations.
Need Audio Transcription For Social Media? Ditto Can Transcribe Your Content
With over 14 years in the industry, Ditto offers world-class transcription services that no other provider can match. Our services include:
- More than 99% accuracy on all social media content transcription
- 100% US-based, human transcription
- Fast turnaround times
- Different and 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
So what are you waiting for? Maximize your reach and retention with Ditto’s professional translation services and see the difference.
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.
