3 podcast intro examples to hook your listeners
Starting a podcast can feel awkward sometimes, especially if you haven't thought about it.
Like, what am I going to say when I turn the mic on?
You can end up kind of blabbering and saying, “Hey, welcome to the show. How are you?”
A lot of filler stuff that might allow the listener to bounce and not listen to the rest of your episode.
So if you think about one of the reasons that podcasts don't get listened to, it's because one, they're not good.
And two, even if they are good in the first minute or two minutes, of the show, you don't get that impression.
So I want to share three different ways that I found that you can start a podcast.
This is from working on my own since 2016 and also from working on clients’ podcasts since 2017.
So there are a couple of different ways you can do this.
Do a formal intro.
Number one is to do a formal intro. So Hey, welcome to the show. My name is blank. This is what the show is about. This is who it's for. Ideally, you're keeping this under 30 seconds.
Typically you'll hear music that's in the background here. This can be a file that you plug and play at the beginning, every time you're editing the episode, or it's something that you can do every time you start recording.
So that's number one.
2. Do a rolling start.
Number two is one of my favorites. It's called a rolling star. So this is something where you don't have a formal intro. You don't make it weird. You don't say, “Hey, how are you?”
And a lot of like fluff in the beginning. You kind of just dive into whatever you're talking about, and you might have some fluff in the beginning, but you can cut that out.
The whole point is you start the episode somewhere in the middle of a conversation or story.
This is something you might see on Joe Rogan, where there was no formal intro, but all of a sudden you're like, oh, what are they talking about?
Three four minutes go by and then they go. “Hey. All right. Welcome to the show.”
That was a nice teaser. So that's one way to do it It feels natural and conversational. It doesn't feel forced.
It can help if you have a tough time, doing more of a formal intro.
3. Start the podcast with a standout hook
Number three is one of the most common and effective ways to do your intros and it's to proceed with the conversation as you normally would so you can do some of that “Hey, how are you?”
Whatever gets the guests comfortable, but then what you're gonna do is find a juicy bit that's about 30 seconds, 15 seconds sometimes maybe even up to a minute somewhere in the middle of your show, and plug that into the beginning of the episode so that way it starts as kind of a teaser like here's what's coming up in the episode and then you can kind of cut to the intro or the beginning and kind of dive into the rest of the episode.
So that's a very very common one that you'll probably see in a lot of podcasts that you like the hook is essentially a piece of the conversation that happens later on anyways, you just copy and paste it to the beginning of your sequence.
So just like a movie trailer or a show trailer, it makes the viewer listener want to consume the rest of the content.
So those are three different styles that you want to keep in mind with audio. All of these, the common denominator is going to be that the content is good and what you're talking about is interesting and or relevant to the rest of the episode.
Because you don't want it to be misleading, you don't want to title the episode something that it's not.
And then when somebody listens to the intro or the first minute of this thing, they're like, Hmm…this doesn't seem to be what I expected.
So you want to keep just the listener experience in mind when you tune in to an episode.
What do you like to hear?
What kind of intro do you enjoy that doesn't feel super forced that feels fun and something that you can do?
So let me know if you liked any one of these and if you need any help drop a comment or send an email to hi@podmahal.com and I'd love to help you out.
