How long should your episode opening be?
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis.
Did you take note of how long that took?
What is the first thing your audience hears when they play your episode?
Are you providing value from your very opening?
Or are you just keeping your audience from what they came to hear?
Although the terms intro or introduction and opening are often used interchangeably, I'm
going to be more specific to call the opening everything your audience hears before your
episode's unique content.
I would consider the intro to be a smaller piece of that.
For example, an intro could be for the podcast as a whole, or the introduction for your guest,
or how you lead into the topic like I'm doing right now.
it's my introduction to the topic. So how long should your episode opening be? The answer is
as short as possible. Thanks for listening! I'm Daniel J. Lewis. No, of course, I'm going to dig
into more detail because you probably have some questions and I want to try and answer those with
some anticipation and go into more detail about why it should be as short as possible and how to
make it that way a little bit. So yes, I am actually leading with the answer here. Just like
how you should lead with great content in your podcast episode after episode. People come to
your podcast to hear the content, not your introduction of the content. And they especially
don't come to hear your introduction of the whole show and explain again the premise of your whole
podcast. It may seem impressively professional to have a high production opening with custom music,
dramatic sound effects, and a professional voiceover explaining who you are, who the podcast
is for, and what the podcast promises. That was tiring just listing all of those things that
people often include. But I challenge you to consider that your audience will be impressed
not by the production quality of your opening, especially if it's in a stark contrast to the
production quality of your content, but really they will be impressed by the quality of your
content and I think how quickly and how well you fulfill your promises for that content.
Take internet searches, for example. Have you ever searched for a recipe? Try searching DuckDuckGo
for cinnamon toast recipe. I did that as a little example and I picked the current top result and I
knew what kind of result I'd get. The title of that page, at least at the time of this recording,
was the best cinnamon toast ever. This should be one of the simplest recipes on the internet.
Cinnamon and sugar. You just need to know the amounts. Instead, that top result, the best
cinnamon toast ever, contained 14 paragraphs and two subheadings and several pictures before
getting to the actual recipe. And in case you're wondering, the recipe they gave is a quarter cup
of sugar and one teaspoon of cinnamon. And they actually recommended a pinch of salt, though.
I personally prefer about one and a half teaspoons of cinnamon in my cinnamon sugar recipe. But you
see, I just gave you the recipe right there in a very short sentence. I know there can be some
other explanations about the technique and stuff and make sure you use this kind of bread or this
kind of butter or toast your bread for the best results or anything like that. Sure, sure. Okay.
Yeah, some people don't know that stuff and maybe the recipe needs to include that.
But don't let your podcast episodes be like those recipe webpages unless your audience
is actually coming for the story and explanation because you've promised that to them from
your podcast description.
See, people are coming hoping that you will fulfill the promise you've made through your
podcast description.
And if you don't fulfill that promise quickly enough, people will often leave.
So specifically, how short should your opening be?
I recommend keeping it shorter than 10 seconds before you get into at least the unique content
intro.
But maybe your content doesn't need much of an intro.
Certainly not 14 paragraphs and two subheadings just to get to a two-ingredient recipe.
Now you may be thinking, well, what about audio branding?
How am I going to fit audio branding into only 10 or fewer seconds?
And I am definitely a fan of audio branding.
And the best audio branding can be done in seconds.
Just think of some commercials for different products out there
that have little tunes or little ditties that come with them, like Intel.
And that's it.
Think about other brands, car brands or food brands, products, software and such
that have unique audio branding, that their audio branding lasts for maybe less than a second.
Your podcast could have that same kind of thing. The Audacity to Podcasts complete opening used to
be longer than a minute, maybe even closer to two minutes, because I had this whole thing where I
might do a teaser in the beginning and I'd say, welcome to The Audacity to Podcast episode number
whatever. And then I give the episode title, then there'd be the intro music, which was way too long.
And then I'd come in, introduce myself, introduce the premise of the podcast and who the podcast
was for, remind you of the web address, all of this stuff.
And my explanation of what was in it is only representing part of the time it took.
But then I restructured it and now the music is only about six seconds long.
And when I made that change, it actually felt really good to have a short music clip that
was still unique to my show.
And it's actually from the same music I've used for 15 years now, but now much shorter.
So you get to the content sooner.
And you may be thinking, well, what about welcoming my new audience?
How will they know what my podcast is about or whether my podcast is for them or any of
this kind of stuff that you may be thinking.
And some people even advise saying, don't forget your new audience.
And certainly don't forget your new audience, but also recognize that podcast consumption
is different from broadcast TV and radio.
And it's even different from YouTube consumption.
YouTube is not a podcast platform.
And consumption on YouTube is very different from consumption in podcasts.
On traditional broadcast media like television and radio,
you might tune in right in the middle of the content.
Or you don't know what you're actually tuned into at all.
You just turned on the radio or turned on the TV.
What channel are you even on?
What time is it?
What is this thing right now?
Am I on a commercial break?
Is this the actual show?
What is the show?
What is this about?
You don't have that context there. And people frequently come and go with little to no context
about the content that they're consuming or about to consume in traditional broadcast media.
And on YouTube, people will bounce from video to video, often fouling down what I call a
recommendation rabbit hole that includes other channels they've never seen before, but that offer
actively relevant content that you just have to watch just one more video. But podcasting is
different. And I think that difference is a big thing that makes podcasting great. People don't
usually stumble upon or accidentally start playing a new podcast. They usually listen or watch from
intentional action, aside from what we can call secondhand podcast. Additionally, they usually
have a lot of immediately available context about the podcast and episode-specific content.
Number one, they probably saw your podcast title, artwork, and description before they followed the
podcast in the first place. Number two, they can usually see your episode title and artwork while
playing the episode. And number three, they probably found or were recommended your podcast
for a specific reason. Thus, I don't think it's necessary for you to explain the premise of your
show or introduce yourself beyond your name if even that's required, which I think that is a
good thing to still include, but I don't think you need to do much more than that in every episode.
If you really want your new audience to hear you introduce the podcast in yourself,
the kind of stuff that your podcast description should have, but if you want your audience to
hear you expound on it, then make a short trailer episode specifically for that and mark it as a
trailer type. And that can be the trailer for your show that then gets featured inside of podcast
apps. And many podcast apps will promote that as listen to this trailer to learn more about the
podcast. So it's a great reason to have a trailer. And you only get that when you mark that episode
as a trailer type of episode. I went into more detail about trailer types and also bonus types
episode types in episode 353 that I have linked in the notes, a simple tap or swipe away, or at
theaudacitytopodcast.com/shortopening. So it really comes down to this. You need to consider
your most important audience. That is, the one you already have. As you can see that I've mentioned,
there are other ways to ensure your new audience knows what your podcast offers. But your most
important audience is the people already consuming your podcast. So optimize the experience for them
and I believe you'll actually make a more comfortable experience for the new people
coming to your podcast. Imagine this, and please tell me I'm not the only one who feels this way.
You're in some kind of a session, whether in person or in an online meeting. You're eager to
hear something from the presenter. You're there on time and the presenter has started also on time.
But then some people join late. So the presenter breaks their flow, welcomes the new people,
and then rehashes what they just said for the sake of the new people. Frustrating, right?
Not only did that break the flow for everyone already there, making them hear certain things
over again that they already heard, it actually even wasted the time for the people who joined
late because now they'll miss what the presenter could have shared in the time it took to rehash
for those late people. And nowadays, pretty much everything is recorded or someone is taking notes
so anyone who's late could just say, hey, what'd I miss? And can get the notes or look at the
recording later to get it. Just don't assume even your existing audience knows everything from
ago in your podcast. That's a different kind of podcasting sin to assume that. So it is okay
to rehash older content within a new context, but you don't have to rehash what your whole podcast
is about and who it's for and who you are. You don't have to do that in every single episode.
Keep this in mind. No one will hate you for not wasting their time. Let me be blunt. A lot of
podcast openings and intros are wasting people's time. And this is exactly why several podcast apps
offer a feature to automatically skip a portion of a podcast's opening. Try to make your podcast
so that your audience doesn't want to use that option on your show. If you're an indie podcaster
just starting out, I hope this encourages you that you don't have to spend a lot of time and
money producing a fancy opening. Be unique and audibly branded, but it doesn't have to be a major
production. And here's a bonus tip. Use a unique cold open. A cold open has become commonplace in
all kinds of media. And I think that's because it works so well to hook people into the content
from the very first second. Consider how most movies and TV shows jump straight into the scene
and don't even display a title, sequence, and credits until later.
Sometimes, not even until the end of what you're watching.
I'll make a separate episode about what makes a good cold open,
but as part of your episode opening,
I still suggest that you keep your cold open as short as possible
because you're going to keep your opening as short as possible.
If you've appreciated this short episode,
then please give it a like, thumbs up, share it,
whatever it is that your podcast app allows you to do.
Especially, let me know if you have any questions,
if there's anything that you would like me to dig into further with this.
You can probably do something through your podcast app
or go to the website at theaudacitytopodcast.com/shortopening.
Now, I want to catch up with some things in the value for value community corner
because it's been a while since I've thanked some people
and also I've gotten some new feedback and support
that I really want to shout out
because I love doing this kind of thing, connecting with you, learning about you,
and getting to feature you. So Mike Dell sent 1,701 sats or 1,701. That's a Star Trek super
comment on my previous episode, 15 regrets from 15 years of professional podcasting, episode 394.
And he said, I have a lot of those issues. Hiatus is my number one as well. I'm the king of
inconsistency. Happy 15th. Also in response to the same episode, Stevie Taylor from the Gig Life
podcast said, I just listened to episode 384 and loved it. I've taken a lot away from this. I love
your podcast and I'm happy to see it back in my feed these last few weeks. Keep up the great work.
Thank you for inspiring. Thank you, Stevie. I am glad to be back in your feed too. And Brian
Inspringer from Top Tier Audio streams Satoshis with a modern podcasting 2.0 app. Thank you so
much for that, Brian. And Randy Black sent a super comment on a past episode digging far into the
past with 2222 sats and i call that the march of the rubber duckies boost because you've got to
see the video that i animated a long time ago when i was practically just a kid i've got that link in
the notes for this episode too randy said another awesome episode daniel keep up the great work go
podcasting boost boost boost am i going to become a soundbite now because of that we'll find out
And Drebscott sent, wow, 55,555 sats saying, thank you very much for your tips on video
feeds and enclosures over on podcastindex.social.
Well, thank you, Dreb.
And thank you everyone else for the kind support.
If you get value from The Audacity to Podcast, there are multiple ways that you can give
back.
You can give back a financial gift of any amount, whatever you think the Audacity to
Podcast is worth to you.
you could give some of that value back by going to theaudacitytopodcast.com
/giveback. You could also send Satoshis through Modern Podcasting 2.0 podcast app.
If you need one, I've got a link in the notes for how to find one. And the easiest thing you can do
that doesn't cost you anything but a little bit of time in a relationship. It won't cost you a
relationship. I mean, you need to have relationships for this to work. I'm not going to say, hey,
destroy your relationships for me. It's going to cost you an arm and a leg and a relationship.
No, but what you can do is get someone else listening to The Audacity to Podcast so that
they can become better podcasters like you too. Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught
you some of the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion
and profit. I'm Daniel J. Lewis from theaudacitytopodcast.com. Thanks for listening.
Maybe I should do episode closings next.