I don’t know about you, but I’m super busy. All the time. It’s not just work. It’s things like keeping up the homestead, taking my doggy for a shot, or taking a ukulele to a neighbor with a broken leg.

Often it’s taking a break to help my daughter,  who has five children, when she has a “babysitting emergency.” Recently, I had to break from my desk to go see three of my enormously talented grandgirls perform The Duck Song in their school talent show.

I’m all for busy folks taking breaks to see their children or grandchildren show off.

But at work, we need to be more deliberate about other interruptions. When I am hard at work and a work-related video comes to my attention, here’s what this busy lady does.

I look to see if there’s text of the video content. Scanning text content is much faster than actually watching video content.

By scanning, I can decide 1) Yes, I definitely want to  watch this; or, 2) I got the information I needed and I’m very happy to have it but  there’s no need to watch; or, 3) This really isn’t worth my time.

When a video arrives without the text content or, at least, a good summary, I’m more likely to delete it and not consider it at all.

Thus I recommend you include transcriptions of your video content with your videos. Transcriptions can also be uploaded to the description tag in YouTube which will help your search results. There is a word count limit, but it’s generous.

You can get a transcription done inexpensively with Rev.com or another transcription service.

Easy Web Tip 275: When using videos in your content, include a text transcription.

P.S. Text transcriptions in YouTube description tags of your children’s performances are not necessary, unless you’re hoping for them to go viral.