How to Reach A Global Audience
Updated: August 25, 2023
Just as English captions make your videos accessible to more viewers, subtitles in other languages help you reach a more global audience.
Thanks to the internet, the world is more connected than ever before, although most of the content published is rarely translated into other languages.
In the United States alone, there are at least 350 languages spoken – English, Spanish, and Chinese are the top three.
So what are you doing to optimize your content to reach a more global audience?
How Video Helps to Reach a Global Audience
We are creating and consuming more video than ever before – and we are not slowing down. In fact, by 2019, 80% of the world’s internet traffic will be video.
On YouTube alone, more than 500 million hours of video are watched each day; Other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are also experiencing unprecedented video consumption.
Unlike other media forms, video has the unique ability to engage users both visually and aurally. Video has been proven to increase consumer’s trust, boost conversions, and capture a viewers attention for longer.
Pairing video with captions creates an even greater effect on the user. Captions have been shown to increase brand recall, verbal memory, and behavioral intent.
What Countries are Watching the Most Video?
YouTube is undoubtedly one of the most popular platforms to publish and consume video – worldwide.
80% of views on YouTube come from outside the United States. Eight of the top 10 countries with the most YouTube users are non-English speaking countries.
In terms of overall internet video consumption, Saudi Arabia ranks as the country with the highest daily online video access.
Making Video Globally Accessible
All over the world people are consuming and creating video. But as we mentioned, most of this video isn’t being translated, which means organizations are missing out on potential consumers, advocates, and viewers.
Translation is when you convert something into another language. The easiest way to translate video is to create subtitles.
Subtitles are a translation of the captions of a video into another language. They are much easier and cheaper to create than having a voiceover translation of the audio.
Most video players allow users to upload subtitles. If you are posting to a social media platform like Instagram or Snapchat – were you can’t post translations – you can also encode them onto the video so that you don’t have to recreate the video.
Translating your video content can become a powerful tool to reach a global audience and get a leg up from the competition.
How to Translate Your Content
Usually (and the easiest way) to translate your content is to first create a caption file of your video in the original language.
Once you have a caption file of the original audio, you can easily get it translated.
If you used a professional captioning service, see if they also offer subtitles.
Always make sure to check your final transcript for accuracy. Accuracy is imperative for SEO, branding, and accessibility.
The SEO Benefits of Translating Your Content
Translating your content can also improve your SEO. As mentioned above, not a lot of content is translated into other languages, which means that those searching outside your country aren’t seeing results for your content – and most likely they don’t see results for your competitors content either.
On the other hand, if you translate, search engines will index your translated caption files and include your video in the search results in those languages. You’ll also have a better chance of ranking higher for non-English keywords due to lower competition.
Tools & Services to Translate Your Content with 3Play Media
3Play Media offers several tools to help translate your video or audio content.
- Subtitles: We offer translation of your original captions into more than 40 languages, including Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Thai.
- Other Language Transcription: We accept original source media in over 20 languages, including French, Spanish, German, and Chinese.
- Machine Translation: You also have the option to choose machine translation, which means that your caption file will be automatically translated by a software. Through our Subtitle Editor, you’ll be able to easily go in and edit your final translations.
Continuously Reaching a More Global Audience
Our world will only continue to become more interconnected as the internet expands. Translating your content will help keep you ahead of the curve and continuously reaching a more global audience.
