What is the first thing your audience hears when they play your latest episode? Are your providing value in your opening, or just keeping your audience from what they came to hear?

Although the terms “intro”/”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 your topic.

Yes, I'm actually leading with the answer—just like how you should lead with great content!

People come to your podcast to hear the content, not your introduction of the content. And they especially don't come to your show to hear you explain 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. But I challenge you to consider that your audience will be impressed not by the production quality of your opening, but by the quality of your content and how quickly and how well you fulfill your promises.

Have you ever searched the Internet for a recipe? Searching DuckDuckGo for “cinnamon toast recipe,” I picked the current top result: “The Best Cinnamon Toast Ever!”

This should be one of the simplest recipes on the Internet! Instead, that top webpage contained 14 paragraphs and 2 subheadings before getting to the actual recipe! (In case you're wondering, it's 1/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and they recommend a pinch of salt. Though I personally prefer 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon.)

Don't let your podcast be like those recipe webpages unless your audience is coming for the story and explanation because you've promised that to them from your podcast description.

So specifically, how short should your podcast 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)!

I'm definitely a fan of audio branding! And the best audio branding can be done in seconds!

The Audacity to Podcast‘s complete opening used to be longer than a minute. But then I restructured it and now the music is only about 6 seconds! 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 is actually from the same music I've used for 15 years—but now much shorter so you get the content sooner!

Podcast consumption is different from broadcast TV and radio, and it's even different from YouTube consumption.

On traditional broadcast media, you might tune in right in the middle of the content, or you don't know what you're actually tuned into at all. And people frequently come and go with little to no context about the content.

And on YouTube, people will bounce from video to video, often falling down a recommendation rabbit hole that includes other channels they've never seen before but that offer attractively relevant content.

But podcasting is different.

People don't usually stumble upon or accidentally start playing a new podcast; they usually listen (or watch) from intentional action (aside from “secondhand podcast”).

Additionally, they usually have a lot of immediately available context about the podcast and episode-specific content:

Thus, I don't think it's necessary for you to explain the premise of your show or introduce yourself (beyond your name) in every episode.

If you really want your new audience to hear you introduce the podcast and yourself, then make a short “trailer” episode specifically for that and mark it as a trailer [353]!

As you can see, 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 episodes! 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 a session (in person or in an online meeting), eager to hear something from the presenter. You're there on time and the presenter has started. 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, 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 the late people.

Just don't assume even your existing audience knows everything from years ago in your podcast! That's a different kind of “podcasting sin”! So it's okay to rehash older content within a new context.

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.

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!

The “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! Consider how most movies and TV shows jump straight into the scene and don't display a title sequence and credits until later—sometimes not even until the end!

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!

I want to catch up with some support and feedback that has come in lately.

If you get value from The Audacity to Podcast, there are multiple ways you can give back:

Do you ever feel like your podcast is stuck? Like you're pouring your heart into your podcast but it seems like no one is listening?

Try Podgagement to help you supercharge your podcast endgagement!

Get speakable pages to simplify engaging with your audience, accept voicemail feedback (with automatic transcripts), see and share your ratings and reviews from nearly 200 places, follow your podcast rankings across nearly 34,000 global charts, discover networking opportunities, and more!

• Comment on the show notes
• Leave a voicemail at (903) 231-2221
• Email [email protected] (audio files welcome)

This post may contain links to products or services with which I have an affiliate relationship. I may receive compensation from your actions through such links. However, I don't let that corrupt my perspective and I don't recommend only affiliates.

The post How Long Should Your Episode Opening Be? [episode 395] first appeared on The Audacity to Podcast®.