The photo sharing app Instagram has diverse set of features and an integrated approach towards marketing. With over 1 billion active monthly users, this staunch competition rates are on a soaring rise and people are continuing to get engaged on the platform due to the rising popularity. It has become obvious for marketers around the world, to utilize this platform for the growing needs of the digital marketing game of a business. The empowerment of visuals and the continuously dynamic evolution of the platform with the ability to upload photos and videos have made it highly conducive for business too engage in the kind of storytelling they wish to influence their target audience with. The feature of Instagram stories allows users to publish short video clips giving insights to the viewers about the activities of the brand thereby, building a strong personal connection and boosting engagement and traffic to your profile. Speaking of videos, it brings light to an important aspect related to it which is adding captions for your videos.

Why is adding captions important for your Instagram videos?

Just like any other OTT platform, adding captions forms an integral part of videos on Instagram too. The prime factor behind the importance of a video is that it promotes the accessibility of a video. They essentially provide more meaning and value to someone with a hearing impairment but it is not just limited to someone with a hearing issue, rather provides some extra benefits too. Empirical evidences suggest that 92% of people watch videos on Instagram keeping the sound off which clearly implies that people do not essentially turn on the sound while watching videos or probably the reason why the default configurations of a video is muted. Supposedly you are watching a video in a public place, in a busy room or in a place of silence, Subtitles are the only way to derive meaning and substance from the context of the video. Most importantly, subtitles in a video help to improve the search engine optimisation results. The texts in your subtitles make your videos more crawlable and pose an advantage over search engine ranking results. It will also increase the visibility of your videos both inside and outside the platform which implies an overall improvement.

Now that you have realised why inserting subtitles in your Instagram videos is so important, it is important to learn how to do it also. Here is a quick guide which includes three different ways that will help you in adding subtitles to your videos easily. So let’s just dive straight into the steps for it.

Method1:- The DIY Approach:-

When you do it by yourself, it can be a tedious task but at the same time it is very cost-effective especially for someone who does not have very high budgets for investing. For enabling this, all you need is the video file you wish to upload, an editing tool such as Adobe Premier Pro or any other free alternative and finally a transcript of the converted audio into a caption friendly file such as SRT or SCC.

• Transcribe:- the most time consuming part in this process would be to transcribe your audio. Generally,for every hour of audio the basic standard requirement is 4 hours of video transcription. Those who do not have an expertise in transcribing generally cannot accurately estimate the actual time consumed for it. It is also possible for a layman to end up spending over 8 hours in transcribing 1 hour of content for creating a transcript.

• Converting:- once you have the transcript, next you need to convert them into a format which will be caption friendly like SRT. There is a plethora of online resources available at your disposal which could help you in doing it.

• Place and embed:- now you need to open a video editor of your choice, for importing your subtitles. You are also allowed to control the placement so that you can smoothly align it with the actions in your video. There are numerous caption settings available, an important requirement is to keep them too ‘forced open’. This further is implicative of the fact that now captions will be displayed automatically after the video is played.

• Upload:- now the only final step which is left is to upload the video with captions on Instagram. This will however require you to import the file to your mobile phone because Instagram is a mobile based application. The images and videos can be displayed from a desktop but not new photos or videos could be uploaded.

Method 2:- use an app with automated speech recognition capabilities:-

Somepeople might feel that Method 1 requires too much of hard work as well as can be regarded as a time consuming method then do not worry you have other alternatives too. There are multiple transcription services available online which can do the most time consuming part of transcription very easily and in lesser time period too. There are numerous apps available which use Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) for converting audio files into text files in just a matter of sometime only. It can be converted into SRT or a caption friendly format according to your choice which will be added to your video. However, there are some precautions you need to keep in mind while using such apps. Although they are really quick and effective yet one cannot assure the accuracy in its results. It is stated that even after providing absolutely favourable circumstances, the accuracy rates will not go above 85%. Thus the time you have saved might be consumed again in making corrections in the transcript rendered by the app. On a real-time basis, there are apps available to add captions for your videos. For example, for voice overs for a video you might avail apps like Apple clips or clipomatic which will transcribe whatever you speak. After recording, you can inflict changes such as size, font, change positioning, add filters and effects. However, some of these apps could be costly so you need to look for more affordable and accurate alternatives.

Method 3:- using an outsourced transcription service

If you are looking for higher accuracy rates than an ASR app but are not fond of the idea of transcribing your own audio then here is an alternate solution for it which is getting your transcription service outsourced. The accuracy rates derived from it are actually stated to range from about 99-100% which is great. Moreover, the final outcome is also not baffled with factors such as background noise, local accents or use of complicated jargons unlike automated service facilities. Here much experienced transcribers are used unlike the auto mated services which are known to provide a better standard quality of transcription which can also deliver your captions in a format which is ready to use and suited according to your own individual choices. They also offer a flexible pricing system where the pricing packages for your services varies according to the time period such as how quickly you want your transcript. The rates can be affordable and cheaper when you can wait for sometime to get your transcript implying for situations when you do not urgently need it. It also allows in many cases to even directly upload a file from a safe and secure mobile app. After receiving your captions, you just simply need to add them in your videos and then just upload them according to your requirements.

Therefore, these ways are quite effective in helping you to add subtitles for your Instagram posts. You just need to find a way which works best for you and is suited to your requirements. Once you achieve that, there is no looking back because now you can easily add subtitles for your videos and it will no longer be a struggle.

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