The obvious reason for Closed Captioning is to help your hearing impaired or deaf viewers follow your video, but there are other benefits as well. First, it’s super easy to do. Even if you’re speaking off the cuff in your video, I’m going to bet you have a few notes. Jot those notes into a text file of seven to nine words per line and capitalize the first word in each line. You’re not even supposed to worry too much about grammar or punctuation, because you’re going to be capturing exactly what you say in your video. For a helpful YouTube video about this, BigNate84 has a good tutorial.

I’m writing my script this way to make it easier for me to make my video. After I complete the video and get it edited the way I want, I go back and make sure my .txt file matches what I actually said.  By doing this, I’m making it easier for me to know what I want to say before I record, and easier to make the Closed Captioning file after I finish. This saves time and effort.

Second, YouTube can translate your text file into something like 66 languages, expanding the audience for your video to people who don’t speak your primary language nearly exponentially with no extra work on your part.

Third, not only does the script help you, it helps your viewers, especially if you’re doing something they want to be able to skip ahead to get to — like a recipe or step-by-step instructions. (BigNate84’s video explains how to do this.)

And finally, it helps Google optimize your video in search engines, because your text is searchable, and it can be indexed to bring your video to a wider audience interested in what you have to say.