When you watch a video on Facebook or Instagram is the sound on or off by default?

The vast majority of videos in the Facebook news feed and Instagram feed are viewed with the sound off. So if you are not adding text prompts to your videos you are missing out on a huge number of views.

When a person on screen is speaking, or even with a voiceover, it is vital that you include subtitles / closed captions.

Facebook provides a tool for automatically adding subtitles to videos but it is not very accurate. However, they also allow you to upload a SubRip (SRT) file which is a much better option.

To create one, I recommend using temi.com. I have tried a number of similar tools and the accuracy of Temi is incredible by comparison.

You export an SRT file from Temi and upload it to Facebook, and that’s it – your video will now show subtitles when the sound is off.

Note, however, these subtitles will be placed on the video by Facebook and not embedded on the video so they will not always display, as it depends on user settings and device.

A better option is to embed the subtitles in the video so that they always display and that is also how you add subtitles to Instagram videos.

In next week’s video, I will tell you a very easy way to achieve this.

 

Video Transcription:

Hey everyone! This week I want to continue talking about creating video ads, but this time I want to talk about videos with someone on camera just like I am now.

Of course there are a number of things you need to consider when you’re creating a video like this, but one of the most important things you must include is subtitles, as you can see I have down here. It has been reported that 85% of videos in the Facebook news feed are watched with the sound off.

So think about that for a second. You can create a perfect video, get your message across so clearly, but then people just aren’t going to pay attention if there are no text prompts. So, Facebook have a way to automatically add them, but it’s really not that good.

So I recommend you use Temi. That’s T-E-M-I, temi.com. Upload your video there, it will automatically transcribe what you’re saying in the video, and you can export an SRT file, which you can add to Facebook.

So that’s my tip for this week. All the best and see you again next week.