Every successful YouTuber understands the importance of a powerful video intro. Intros are the opening segments of your videos and set the tone and expectations for the rest of your visual project.
Strong YouTube intro ideas are crucial to settling the viewer into your video, and they go a long way to building brand consistency. So it’s no surprise that many content creators wonder, how long should a YouTube intro be? And what are the secrets to amazing intros used by YouTube’s biggest names? Let’s read on and find out.
What makes the perfect YouTube intro?
Aspiring vloggers generally ask similar questions, “ How do I start a YouTube intro? “ Most successful YouTubers make use of five prominent elements in their intros:
A memorable jingle or opening song –
We’ve touched on the power and impact that jingles have for YouTubers in the past. A catchy and uplifting jingle or intro song will create a highly effective imprint on your viewers memory. Thankfully, Beatoven is now a well known resource amongst creatives looking to generate great intro ideas for YouTube.
Strong branding and a logo sting –
It’s always encouraged to create a simple, easily recognizable logo for your viewers to spot with. Simple logos remain in the minds of viewers long after the video has ended and help to strengthen the relationship between you and your audience.
To the point –
The average viewer’s attention span requires YouTube intros to be short and sweet. Anything that longs more than 10 seconds will begin to work against you instead of for you.
Animations –
Static representation generally doesn’t create much of an impact with YouTube viewers. Animating your graphics and logos can add a powerful and necessary dynamic to your YouTube videos.
Authenticity –
So many YouTubers underestimate the importance of best royalty free background music for their videos. Instead they tend to rely on generic music to add to their intros, often with harmful effects. Understanding your brand’s identity and applying the right royalty free music to that identity, will only benefit your YouTube intros.
How you start a video matters?
So just how long should a YouTube intro be? Interestingly, the first 30 seconds of a YouTube video are more crucial than any of the interesting, entertaining or heartfelt moments that come afterward.
YouTube uses the term “audience retention” to measure how much of a video the common man watches before closing the tab or jumping to the next video. After 2 minutes, 5% of viewers tend to move on. After just 6 minutes, the audience retention drops by 20%.
Creators understand that YouTube is an extremely competitive platform, with every video jockeying for position against millions of others. And even though people are spending more time on YouTube everyday you have to compare that to the 500 hours of content that’s being uploaded every single minute. The content to viewer ratio is overwhelming.
Newbie YouTube creators might notice those kinds of stats intimidating and rightly so. However it’s been proven that having a good intro for your videos will highly improve both your audience retention rate and overall brand consistency – each of them are crucial in building a strong YouTube presence.
How long should your YouTube intro be?
With all these concepts in mind you may be asking, “How Long should your YouTube intro be?”. Most filmmakers agree that it’s best to keep your YouTube intros short. The average timespan for intros ranges between five seconds and twenty seconds.
Use this guide as a benchmark for your next projects. The basic idea is to provoke viewers and showcase your brand within the first few seconds of someone clicking on your video.
Coming Up with YouTube Intro Ideas
While it’s fun to create and brainstorm ideas for YouTube intros, it’s even a lot more fun to conceptualize them and put them to good use. Not many people will know how to begin a YouTube video intro or where to begin with.
Generally, the first thing to think of is your competition. Try finding creators that you aspire to be like or channels that focus on similar content or topics. It’s also necessary to find channels with an audience size similar to yours. These channels give valuable insight on what works well for the type of people you’d like to reach and engage with.
It’s equally necessary to not spend too much time researching, as YouTube has a near endless supply of different types of intros and videos. Instead, discover what you feel works best for your personal message and brand and be persistent in finding content that mirrors this.
Once you’ve done a reasonable amount of research, you’ll be able to lay out a set of options for designing your intros and then decide which is the most appropriate achievable with the resources and skills you possess.
It’s important to remember that different intro styles produce different perspectives on your channel and content. And your content needs to fulfill whatever promises your introduction vlog ideas offer, or users will simply move on to the next thing.
With these concepts in mind, we know that song choice will play a significant role in the impact of your video intros. In certain cases, soft and dreamy music might even work (depending on your content) but you’ll usually need an intro song that delivers some form of impact.
Fortunately Royalty-free music are a few things we specialize in here at Beatoven. Knowing how to use royalty free music for YouTube videos in your intro can be a strong tool for any content creator.
At Beatoven, we value the significance of high-quality music and have compiled a royalty free music library of world-class compositions which will set your videos apart. Our playlists are specifically curated to assist you quickly find the perfect intro song to match your desired tone or mood.
The right music helps you produce the perfect mood and energy level for your YouTube intros – something that will directly impact on audience retention for the better. Powerful intros almost always lead to improved engagement, increased subscribers and returning viewers – which allows you the foundation to build a reliable, successful YouTube channel for years to come.
Conclusion
No matter how you create your perfect YouTube intro, it will become a valuable part of your content. It brands your content and channel, builds loyalty and sets your content apart from others. The perfect YouTube Intro helps you build your channel to a million subscribers and helps you achieve your goal!
