If you're serious about YouTube, you want to pay attention to your audience retention, i.e., the average view duration of your videos or how long people watch your videos.
While a lot goes into improving your audience retention, an important parameter is the first 30 seconds of your video and whether you're able to hook your audience's attention in that time. This means that your youtube channel intro needs to be super compelling and engaging.
If you’re thinking about how you can create thumb-stopping intros, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will look at 5 thumb-stopping YouTube intro ideas to help level up your videos. And if you stick around till the end, we will also show you how you can bring these to life quickly and easily using InVideo’s intuitive online editor.
Here’s what we'll cover:
1. YouTube Intro Ideas
2. 3 Pro Tips For Creating YouTube Intros
3. Bonus: How To Customize A Youtube Intro For Your Channel Using InVideo
Let's get started!
1. YouTube intro ideas!
YouTube Intro Idea #1: Create A Video Montage
Video montages rank #1 on our list of great YouTube intro ideas because they’re a great way to create a memorable impression on first-time viewers and increase brand recall for returning viewers once you develop a consistent style.
In simple terms, a montage is a compilation of photos or videos that are typically played against a high-energy, catchy soundtrack. It is useful in grabbing people’s attention quickly and easily.
For instance, take a look at this cool youtube intro (starts at 00:42) by Worth It, a Buzzfeed-owned brand. They have a montage of foods and culinary visuals from different places that appeal to any food lover and help keep them hooked to the video. The funky soundtrack also adds to the fun vibe of the video and helps viewers associate the music with the brand.
When creating a video montage, you want to keep the clips short and cut to the beat of the music. This ensures that it is snappy and engaging. To create a video montage intro that resonates with your audience and helps create a sense of familiarity, use a readymade template like the one shown below.
You can edit the text in the scenes, add high-quality footage and soundtracks that evoke emotions, upload your logo, add new scenes, and edit the footage to complete your montage intro. For more tips on creating montages, check out this article here.
YouTube Intro Idea #2: Make a Slideshow Intro
Don’t have the time to produce videos for your intros? You can simply create a slideshow using images to grab your viewers’ attention and keep them hooked.
Now, if you’re thinking slideshow videos are too simple to grab someone’s attention, check out the Try Guys’ slideshow intro in this video (starts at 00:14), and you’ll know what we’re talking about:
It grabs attention despite being fast-paced because of the loud colors and funny visuals highlighting each guy’s goofy personality. The intro completely convinces viewers that things will start getting entertaining soon, so they stick around to see the rest of the video.
Here’s an InVideo template similar to the Try Guys’ slideshow template. It has bold colors and text that you can replace to give the audience a teaser of what you’ll cover in the video. If you want to read more on creating a smashing slideshow video, check out this article here.
YouTube Intro Idea #3: Create an Animated Video Intro
Animated videos are a great way to give your YouTube intro a fun spin with eye-catching visuals and cool music. They can help you showcase your personality, editing style, and the area you create videos in without actually having to shoot clips or pictures for this step of your video. So, they’re one of the best YouTube intro ideas that you must try.
For instance, this SciShow video’s simple and short animated intro is aimed at science enthusiasts. And it immediately stands out to viewers interested in the field and encourages them to explore their channel to find videos they may like since the intro has visuals from different science disciplines.
When creating animated intros for your YouTube channel, it is important to have high-quality graphics that represent what your channel is about. You can do that by using this InVideo template below and customizing it by adding stickers, animating the elements, and changing or adding text from the Text tab to make your YouTube intro more visually appealing.
YouTube Intro Idea #4: Logo
As your brand grows, your logo becomes a symbol people trust and associate your brand with. So it’s a good idea to introduce your logo in the early stages of your YouTube career so that people can start making that association from the beginning. Creating a short intro video around your logo is a great way of doing this.
For example, TED does a wonderful job by adding an animated logo intro to its videos. As a result, if you now look at the iconic red-colored word 'TED' anywhere, you will immediately associate it with the brand.
To do this, you first need to have a brand logo, and then you can go ahead and animate that using an intuitive editor like InVideo. If you want to create a more nuanced logo intro that reflects your brand’s values and makes it memorable, upload your logo to the template below, and add a prominent soundtrack (like TED’s raindrop sound.)
YouTube Intro Idea #5: Kinetic Typography
Kinetic typography is an animation technique that uses moving text to capture the viewer’s attention. You can use it to make your YouTube intros more compelling and engaging without actually having to shoot pictures and videos.
Take a look at this black and white typography intro (starts at 00:10) in this video by GQ in their YouTube show called The Breakdown. The intro reflects the candid, simple, and straightforward content they share with their audience. It’s also visually appealing and doesn’t break the video’s flow, so the audience transitions seamlessly from it back to what Jocko Willinks is saying.
You can also create a kinetic typography intro for your video using the InVideo template below. Simply modify the text on the scenes, add matching visuals and transitions, upload your logo, and you’re good to go!
Now that you’ve looked at different YouTube intro ideas for your channel, let’s go ahead and take a look at a few points you need to consider while making these cool YouTube intros:
2. 3 Pro Tips For Creating YouTube Intros
Here are 3 tips to keep in mind if you want to create good youtube intros that influence your audience to check out your content and boost traffic and sales.
Tip #1 - Keep It Short
An intro is just a teaser that should hook your audience enough to get their attention and compel them to check out your video. While many channels create super long intros, that might not work for your audience retention as people are there for the video and not to keep watching your YouTube intro. Ideally, you want to keep it between 3-5 seconds long and less than 10 seconds, in any case, to grab their attention, establish your brand, and not have people click away.
Tip #2 - Address Objections
Take a moment to make a list of reasons your viewers would give for not watching your video. For example, they might think that the results you’re promising are too good to be true or feel that the methods you’ve mentioned in your video are too time-consuming and effort-intensive.
In the intro, you can counter these objections and get them excited to check out your video by adding a few words to your InVideo templates. For example, if you want to promote your fitness channel, you can add “no equipment” and “beginner-friendly” in your intro to attract viewers who don’t want heavy, equipment-based workouts.
Tip #3 - Choose The Right Music Track
You can have the best YouTube intro ideas, but if they don't include the right music track, the result will not create the impact you desired. This is because music fosters an emotional connection, creates a brand association, and contributes to building a relationship with your customer that eventually turns into a sale.
Netflix's "tudum" sound that plays at the beginning of every movie and series is the best example that highlights audio's impact on your customers.
So, understand the emotion each type of genre conveys and decide what type of music your intro should have. For example, Nike’s cinematic music track motivates and inspires their audience to do and be more.
Once you’ve decided the emotion you’re going to convey, use InVideo’s royalty-free music library that has music grouped according to genres and moods to choose the perfect track for your video.
3. Bonus: How To Customize A Youtube Intro For Your Channel Using InVideo
Here’s how you can bring your YouTube intro ideas to life with InVideo’s online editor.
Step 1: Login or signup to InVideo and search for templates in the search bar. Once you’ve found the right template, click Use This Template button to go to the InVideo editor.
Step 2: Next, add text to your videos. Double-click the text on the template and replace it with your content to add text.
Step 3: Next, click Logo and select Upload Logo to add the logo to your video or simply click the Logo icon in the workspace to upload your logo.
Step 4: Next, go to the Music tab, select a track and click Replace Music to replace the existing track.
Step 5: Once your edits are complete, click on the Play button to preview the entire video. If you’re satisfied with the edits, click the Download & Share button on the top right corner of the editor, choose the resolution of the video, and click Export.
Wrapping Up
Video intros can make or break your viewership. Unless you can create one that strikes the right balance between being informative, short, and engaging, it is best not to have an intro. So, do some research on similar channels or those that you enjoy, note down what you notice about their intros, and try to incorporate information from them into your own. Plus, the youtube intro ideas we've shared will help you get started with creating compelling intros for your channel.
If you want to learn more about how you can make your videos compelling, check out this blog on how to add cool effects to your videos quickly and easily. And if you prefer learning via videos, you definitely should check out our YouTube channel where we share daily video creation tips and tricks, the latest video trends and ideas, and help you make more money as a video creator.
This post was written by Mrignayni and edited by Adete from Team InVideo
