Subtitles are often one of the most overlooked things when it comes to a successful flight school video campaign. While traditionally considered only useful for the hearing impaired, it’s quickly become a critical aspect of your video for a much different reason. Silent video… that’s right, Facebook alone is now reporting that 85% of all mobile video views on their platform are viewed silently!
Now imagine simply turning off 85% of your potential flight school student leads.. not pretty right? Subtitles allow you to communicate with this audience of viewers in the way they actually want to learn, and it’s not as hard as you might think.
There are many tools available to you, we use a mix, depending on the specific application.
Youtube: After uploading a video into your flight school’s channel, you have the option to upload or create subtitles directly on Youtube. This allows you to simply write in the text as you follow along the video, and you can easily adjust the timestamps and order of captions to match your video.
Facebook Ads Manager: By far the easiest and quickest free option if you aren’t a video editor and have access to a Facebook ads account. First, create a new ad by selecting ads manager.. then new campaign… choose the video views objective.. set up any parameters and hit next. Now upload your video as if you were creating an ad. Once the video has finished uploading, select customize video. Now select closed captions and then hit the generate captions automatically button.
After Facebook generate the captions, you have the option to review and edit each line of text to ensure there are no errors. After verifying everything is 100% correct, save the captions. You know have the option to download the .srt file containing the captions.
Final Cut Pro / Adobe Premier: While considered more advanced video editing software, these both allow you to add and edit subtitles directly in the timeline of your project. One of the advantages of using this option, is the ability to “burn in” the subtitles directly to the video. Going this route can be great if your typical demographic is older, as they will still see the subtitles, even if the volume is on/up.
The other benefit of using professional video editing software is the option to customize the captions with different fonts, colors, backgrounds, location, as well as fade in the words as they are being spoken, instead of line by line.
Wistia: Our favorite for anytime you need closed captions, but simply have no time or desire to create them yourself. Wistia is a video hosting and tracking platform that we suggest most of our clients use. One of the great features available with Wistia is that it allows you to request 100% human generated captions with nearly perfect accuracy for the low price of $2.50 per minute at the click of a button.
Interested in creating videos that move the needle for your business? Reach out to our team for a free consultation
