How Long Should Your Outstanding YouTube Intro Be? — Mubert Blog How Long Should Your Outstanding YouTube Intro Be? — Mubert Blog

How Long Should Your Outstanding YouTube Intro Be?

Every successful YouTuber understands the importance of a strong 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 a lot of content creators  wonder, how long should a YouTube intro be?  And what are the secrets to the great intros used by YouTube’s biggest names? Let’s read on and find out. 

What makes the perfect YouTube intro?

Aspiring vloggers generally ask the same first question, “ How do I start a YouTube intro? “ First, let`s inspect and discuss the elements that make a great YouTube intro. We’ve looked over hours of YouTube’s most watched videos and found that 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 strong jingle or intro song will create a simple but highly effective imprint on your viewers memory, especially if it’s catchy or uplifting. Thankfully, Mubert is now a well known resource amongst creatives looking to generate good 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 identify with. Strong logos remain in the minds of viewers long after the video has ended and help to strengthen the relationship between you and your audience. Consistent and strong branding can also give any prospective merch sales you have a considerable boost. 

To the point

The average viewer’s attention span requires YouTube intros to be short and sweet. Anything longer than 10 seconds and they will begin to work against you instead of for you. 

Animations

Static imagery generally doesn’t create much of an impact with YouTube viewers. Animating your graphics and logos will add an impressive and necessary dynamic to your YouTube videos and help create a seamless transition through to the rest of your video. 

Authenticity

So many YouTubers underestimate the importance of strong background music for their videos. Instead they tend to rely on generic music to add to their intros, often with detrimental effects. Understanding your brand’s identity and applying the appropriate music to that identity, will only benefit your YouTube intros. 

Naturally, it’s up to you, the creator, to decide which of these elements to consider for your perfect intro for YouTube. The more of these you manage to integrate into your vlog introduction ideas, the stronger they’ll be.

How you start a video matters

Vloggers

The Importance of the First 30 Seconds

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 important than any of the interesting, entertaining or heartfelt moments that come afterward.

Understanding Audience Retention

YouTube uses the term “audience retention” to measure how much of a video the average person watches before closing the tab or jumping to the next video. After 2 minutes, 5% of people tend to move on. After just 6 minutes, the average audience retention drops by 20%.

Competing in the YouTube Space

Creators understand that YouTube is a highly competitive platform, with every video jockeying for position against millions of others. And even though people are spending more time on YouTube every day (up to 12 minutes per person per day), you have to compare that to the 500 hours of content that’s being uploaded every single minute. The content to viewer ratio is nearly overwhelming.

Navigating the Challenges for New YouTubers

Newbie YouTube creators may find those kinds of stats intimidating and rightly so. However, it’s been proven that having a good intro for your videos will drastically improve both your audience retention rate and overall brand consistency – both of which are crucial in building a strong YouTube presence.

The Creator’s Role in Intro Design

It’s up to you, the creator, to generate powerful YouTube intro concepts. A great YouTube intro helps to ensure that your users commit to your video in its entirety. This is an essential step in growing your subscription audience and in creating an online profile that makes you a serious consideration in YouTube’s algorithms.

How long should your YouTube intro be?

With all these aforementioned 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 5 seconds and 20 seconds.

Use this guide as a benchmark for future projects. The general idea is to entice 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 conceptualize and brainstorm ideas for YouTube intros, it’s even more fun to create them and put them to good use. Not many people know how to start a YouTube video intro or at least where to begin.

YouTube Intro Ideas
YouTube Intro Ideas

Researching Your Competition

Generally, the first place to look is your competition. Try finding creators that you aspire to be like or channels that focus on similar content or topics. It’s also important to find channels with an audience size similar to yours. These channels provide valuable insight into what works well for the type of people you’d like to reach and engage with.

Finding Your Unique Style

It’s equally important to not spend too much time researching, as YouTube has a near endless supply of different types of intros and videos. Instead, find what you feel works best for your personal message and brand and stick to 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 creating your intros and then decide which is the most appropriate and attainable with the resources and skills you possess.

Choosing the Right Intro Style

It’s important to remember that different intro styles create 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.

The Significance of Filming Location

Most vloggers prefer to film from a central or fixed location; this creates a kind of home-base for the viewers every time they tune into a new video. Thumbnail collages create the idea that you’ll do a lot of videos, while animated intros suggest a more lighthearted or quirky approach. Understandably whatever elements you ultimately decide to use, your YouTube intro needs to match the intention of the rest of your video.

Impact of Music in YouTube Intros

With these concepts in mind, we know that song choice will play a vital role in the impact of your video intros. YouTubers tend to opt for music that brings some kind of energy and excitement to help build anticipation for the rest of the video. 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.

Mubert’s Contribution to Your YouTube Success

Fortunately, Royalty-free music is something we specialize in here at Mubert. Knowing how to use music in your YouTube intro can be a powerful tool for any content creator. At Mubert, we value the importance of high-quality music and have compiled a library of world-class compositions that will set your videos apart. Our playlists are specifically curated to help you quickly find the perfect intro song to match your desired tone or mood.

The right music helps you create the perfect mood and energy level for your YouTube intros – something that will directly impact on audience retention for the better. Strong 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 may not build your channel to a million subscribers, but it will help towards that goal!

About us

Mubert is a platform powered by music producers that helps creators and brands generate unlimited royalty-free music with the help of AI. Mubert's mission is to empower and protect the creators. Our purpose is to democratize the Creator Economy.


For Creators API for Developers For Musicians

Related Posts

Democratizing the Creator Economy

Millions of creators soundtrack their content via Mubert apps & partner integrations

Mubert for Creators Mubert API for Developers
TRUSTED BY SOME OF THE WORLD’S SMARTEST COMPANIES
Mubert customer — Adidas. Next-gen music is here
Mubert customer — Restream. Next-gen music is here
Mubert customer — BBDO. Next-gen music is here
Mubert customer — PWC. Next-gen music is here
Mubert customer — Banuba. Next-gen music is here

Subscribe to our newsletter

Exclusive drops, secret channels, partnerships, new music