Full Episode Transcript

Hey, hey, Erin Kelly here. So yesterday, there was a really interesting conversation that came up in the Collaborative, which is our user community on Facebook. And it got me thinking about the whole thought process of making something pretty, but not actually thinking about, like, what the performance is going to be like.

So someone had posted a Membervault sales page that they had done, they're really excited, and it looked really pretty, but they had done it as an entire image. And so a lot of people that commented on the thread were like, Oh, my gosh, like, this is so beautiful, like, now I want to do this. But the thing that I love about our community is that there's a lot of really smart people that have different expertise is, and so there was, there was definitely some negative. I don't want to say negative, because that makes it sound super critical. But there was some feedback in terms of why maybe not, it's not the best idea to do a sales page as an entire image.

And so there was, you know, there was the the point of view, like, you know, people are accessing your MemberVault or any of your content online, using different devices. So there's some people that are gonna be on like really small phones, there's people that are gonna be on their laptops, or their iPads, there's gonna be people that have really big screens.

And because number one is responsive, you know, it technically does work to use an image as your sales page, however, it's not going to be the best experience, because like, for example, and I have a fairly large iPhone, and it was really hard to read a lot of the text because it shrunk down, obviously, you can zoom in, but people are, people are probably not going to do that. Right?

When they're looking at a sales page, you do not want to make them work harder. And then of course, if they were on a huge screen, like it would be a little distorted, because it would be grainy. Because it would be stretched way out. So remembering that whatever you're testing on, whatever you're like looking at the preview on on your own device is not going to be the same that everyone is using. So that's like the first thing that was brought up.

Second thing. And this is something I totally wouldn't have thought of, because I'm not an SEO person. But I do know the value of SEO. And it's like, Okay, well, if you just use one big image, you're not getting any SEO juice juice from, from the sales page, that people are not going to be like Google is not going to be able to crawl this. And because it's a public page, like they would be able to if you use text, and so you're not getting any organic search benefits from your sales page. And that's kind of one of those.

One of those things that like, it's not an immediate gratification to think about SEO. But if you build all of your public facing content, with SEO, in mind, at least just like making it searchable, is going to have long term impact on your business in a good positive way. So I thought that that was a really good point.

And then the third point, which is very close to my heart, because I want to always be creating inclusive content and have an inclusive community is that anyone that is using a screen reader is not going to be able to consume any of that sales page, because it's all all the content is in the image. And so a screen reader is not gonna be able to read any of it.

And so I don't think that I don't think that accessibility comes up enough. In the online space, I think that it's something that is still one of those, like, oh, I'll do that in the future. And we really have been making an effort, in MemberVault to not only build a platform, and we're in this, we are not perfect, we are always making improvements and learning.

So for the platform, but also with the content that we create. And so, you know, I want to be very clear that like we are not perfect, so I'm not standing up here on my soapbox and being like, you could do better and be like us.

It's more just like a paying attention and learning about how you can make your content more accessible. So like, for example, I want to have transcripts for every piece of audio content or video content that we create. And so we have that for all of our evergreen content at this point, like we have a workflow workflow in place. But for the podcast, like we're a little bit behind, and like for this podcast, in particular, because I just started redoing it this week.

I don't have a workflow in place with a team member to get the transcript created. And then you got to figure out like, where are you going to put the transcript. And so these are like, these are things that you have to think through. It takes energy, it can feel very overwhelming. And I think a lot of people let that stop them in their tracks.

But when you consider accessibility, you are not only making yourself a more inclusive community and business and making it possible for people that have disabilities that need those accessibility features. Whether it's transcripts or captions or just the ability to use a screen reader on your content. You're not only making it possible for them to be able to participate and consumers content and benefit from your expertise. But you're also going to be helping people that might not need those things, but prefer them.

Like, for me, I only watch videos with captions. Like if your video doesn't have captions, I'm not watching, especially if it's a small video, like a short video, like on social media, it's just not going to happen. And it also takes, I have to be really interested in the content. If it's an odd if it's a podcast or something, and it's like, emailed to me, I have to be, it has to like really hook me with the topic and the benefit of spending the time and getting my air pods out and like listening to it, versus if there's a transcript that I can click on.

So if there's a transcript, I'm way more likely to just click over and like, quickly browse it and get the benefit, right. So I don't need those things. But I prefer them. And so that's one of the things that if you create a lot of video, like you'll, and you do some research, the boost in not only how many people actually watch your video, but also how many people complete your video is exponential, when you add captions, I mean, it's crazy.

We don't do that many videos anymore. But when we were on Facebook, and you can do the auto generate captions, like the watch time, but like immediately spike up as soon as we added the captions. So that's something to pay attention to like you. It is a worthwhile place to put your energy. And I know that accessibility, like adding captions to your videos, adding transcripts, it adds, it adds work.

And so you might not immediately, like it's not like I'm asking you to listen to this podcast episode and then immediately go and like put transcripts and captions on everything you've ever done, it's more of an intentional, once you know, then you can be taking steps forward to make your content in the future, more accessible and inclusive.

And so like I said, I mean, all of our evergreen content is has a transcript and caption at this point, like we have a workflow in place we use Otter, we use use Rev back in the back in the day. But now we use auto because we do actually do quite a few captions and transcripts. But I don't have a workflow in place for this podcast yet. So like I don't have a transcript for this podcast. So it is a work, it is always a work in progress. But it is something that is very important to pay attention to.

And like I'm always looking, I'm always looking to learn about different perspectives because I don't use a screen reader. And so I don't know the things that would be annoying to someone that is using a screen reader. Obviously not being able to use your screen reader at all would be very annoying. But I recently learned, like having multiple emojis in a row is like super annoying if you're using a screen reader because a screen reader has to like read out the description of each emoji.

So it's like happy smiley face, like confetti party face, like. And so if you have like four emojis in a row, like that's super, it's gonna break the person's concentration and flow. And it's just annoying. So I have really I used to, I used to be a very prolific emoji user and in rows. And now I make sure that I only use one.

And so it's like those little things where once you start paying attention to once you know it, you can't unknow it. And that realizing, making your content more inclusive and accessible benefits beyond what you think like, beyond the specific accessibility means like, there's also going to be a bunch of people in your audience that just prefer consuming content in that way.

And so, yeah, that's kind of my little like, something to think about your way before you. And again, like, it takes time, it's an evolution, you are not going to be able to just like go from what you're doing right now, especially if you're not doing anything to being like the most inclusive, accessible content creator on the planet.

Like it's just, it's gonna take you time to figure out your workflows and to figure out your tools and to figure out where you put stuff and all of that. But it is it is absolutely not a nice to have it's a need to have in my opinion. Because it is beneficial in so many different ways. So there you have it again, like we use Otter which is a membership like we we pay monthly for it, and then you get like a chunk of time. I actually don't even know how to use it because it's a team member job.

But, but we really like that we can do big batches of things. And if you do a lot of Facebook video or if you upload videos to Facebook, you can use their auto generate captions on your videos if you do it to a Facebook page. If you do it directly into your group you can't which is a little bit of a bummer.

But yeah, like paying attention to those things, learning those things, and just like step by step improving, improving how accessible your content is. So, there you have it. That's my little mind nugget for the for the day and I hope you're having a great week.