While your TikTok page is a place for you to express yourself and your creativity, you’re still there to give your followers content they love to see (psst! If you’re looking to grow your followers, read this).
Sure, becoming a TikTok influencer is important, but we can't overlook that crafting inclusive content will help you build your TikTok brand, better connect with your audience, and keep them coming back for more. Heck, if they love your content, they’ll likely even share your videos or your profile with their friends or followers.
How to make more inclusive TikToks
Not sure whether your TikToks are inclusive? Let’s explore the different features that make your content more thoughtful, appropriate for the masses, and loved.
1. Captions
Not only do captions make your videos friendly for people with hearing issues, but it’s also just a great practice to embrace. Some people swipe through TikTok on mute, so it’s much more likely they’ll stop to watch a video that has subtitles.
Thankfully, TikTok has your back on this one. The app has a built-in automated caption generator, which can add subtitles to your video at the tap of a button. Before you post, just watch it through once to check for any errors (it’s not a perfect feature just yet!)
How to turn on automated captions:
1. On the editing page, look for the ‘Captions’ button on the right-hand side of the screen
2. Tap ‘turn on captions’ and wait a moment for your speech to be transcribed
3. You’ll be taken to a screen that has a smaller version of the video with the captions listed underneath — read through them to make sure you’re happy
4. Tap the edit icon (the pencil) to fix any errors
5. Hit save in the top right corner when you’re done
2. Translations
Translations can be used for captions, video descriptions, and text stickers. They’re a great way to get your videos in front of a wider audience, regardless of their native language.
It’s a fairly new feature and is currently available for English, Portuguese, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish and Turkish. The best part about this feature? It’s completely automatic! Viewers can choose to translate your captions, text stickers, and descriptions without you needing to turn anything on.
3. Video descriptions
Video descriptions are text-based components of your content that can help people with visual impairments get the most out of your video.
When writing a video description:
• try describing people, animals, or objects that appear in videos
• transcribe on-screen text
• describe any dance moves
• describe any animation, effects, or filters used
You can also record audio descriptions if there’s a lot going on in the video and it’s too much for a text box. Video descriptions can either appear within captioning or in linked comments.
4. Colours
You instinctively know not to put white text on a yellow background because it’s totally impossible to read! The same applies for other colour combinations, but they might just be a little less obvious.
For those with low vision or who have trouble seeing certain colours, particular pairings can make things harder to see. Think carefully about your colour combos, contrasts between light and dark, and where you place text within your videos (the centre and the top are usually the best places). When in doubt, use white text with a solid black box underneath.
5. Flashing and strobing
Flashing and strobing effects can cause seizures for some users. TikTok will warn users when creators use an effect that could trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy, but for the sake of inclusivity, it’s best to avoid it entirely.
If you absolutely have to include flashing for the sake of your video, just be sure to add a flash warning at the beginning of the video as well as in your caption to give users enough time to scroll away.
Want more tips to set yourself up for success on TikTok? TRIBE’s blog is full of inspiring, tip-heavy content for creators like you.
