Captions can significantly enhance the viewing experience on TikTok, making your content more accessible to a wider audience. These blocks of text on your screen are meant to help you pass your information clearly but can be there for other reasons.
Whether you’re aiming to improve discoverability or cater to users with hearing impairments, adding captions to your videos is a practice you should embrace. We’ll tell you why.
Importance of Using Captions in TikTok Videos
Adding captions to your TikTok videos can help you and your viewers in many ways. These include:
- Accessibility: Captions make your content accessible to everyone. From people with hearing impairments to people who just can’t grasp your words because of either your accent or speed.
- Improved SEO: Captions can help your videos appear in search results, increasing discoverability.
- Enhanced engagement: Captions can make your videos more engaging by providing additional context.
- Global reach: Captions can help you reach a wider audience by breaking language barriers. Someone may not speak your language but would relate to your video because of the captions.
How to Add Captions to a TikTok Video
If you want to add in these captions to your videos, there are a few ways to go about it.
TikTok’s Built-in Captioning Tool
TikTok offers a built-in captioning feature that automatically generates captions for your videos. While it’s not perfect, it’s a convenient starting point that you can expand upon.
- Record or upload your video: Begin by creating or uploading your TikTok video.
- Access the editing screen: After recording or uploading, you’ll be taken to the editing screen.
- Turn on captions: Look for the ‘Captions’ icon in the editing tools menu. This is located on the right side of the screen.
- Review and edit captions: TikTok’s AI will analyze your video for speech and generate captions automatically. These may not be accurate, so ensure to review them for accuracy and make necessary edits.
- Customize captions: You can adjust the font, size, and color of the captions to match your video’s aesthetic. It mustn’t be a block of white text.
- Position the captions: Drag the captions to the best position on the screen, and you’re done.
Manual Captioning for Precision
TikTok’s captioning feature isn’t limited to English, as it supports numerous other languages like French and Spanish. However, if you’re speaking a language that isn’t on the list, you’ll have to put in the captions yourself. It’s more stressful, but still doable. Here’s how it’s done:
- Record or upload your video: Start by creating or uploading your TikTok video.
- Access the text tool: Look for the “Text” button on the editing screen.
- Add captions: Tap on the text button to add captions to your video. You can adjust the font, size, color, and placement of the text easily.
- Synchronize with audio: Manually time your captions to match the spoken words in your video.
By following these steps and considering the importance of captions, you can create more inclusive and accessible TikTok content. Simply keep your words and captions simple, then ensure your text stands out from the background of your video. With that, you’re good.
