How to craft the perfect YouTube intro

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

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1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. What makes a good YouTube video intro? Well, that's the first question we answer on today's episode of creator support. We also give some advice for how you can transition from being a short form creator to being a long form creator. And we break down how Mr. Beast continues to break YouTube records. Okay. Before we get into this episode, a quick question from the discord, Colin. This one was specifically for you.

1:45Just click this one. Oh no. Yeah. Oh goodness. Hi, I'm Typhoon and... Gotcha. All right. If you make it to the deep end, let us know. Is this the deep end? Are we starting in the deep end? What just happened? All right. Our first question comes from Roman Peschi on the Discord, and he asks, video intro checklist. I guess that's just the title of his question. It's not what he asked. This is what he asked. He said, does anyone have a checklist they put together for the first minute of a video? Because I've noticed that in a Mr. Beast vid, it's typically an attention grabber, quick explanation of what's going on, cuts to showing further into the video to keep people engage, some sort of music element, and then around a minute in, there's usually another flash forward to what's happening later in the video.

2:30If you have a checklist of what you use, I'd love to see it. Well, Roman, we do have a checklist. Colin wrote down a checklist. We talked about this a ton. This was a great question and leads into a great conversation around YouTube video intros. Now, before we answer your question, we do want to thank Discord for sponsoring this episode. Earlier this year, we partnered with Discord to launch our server. And it's been an awesome experience. We've done live stages in our Discord. We give feedback on thumbnails, videos. We have chats about creator news. It's a really great place to build community for us as creators and for our community to come together and meet each other.

3:10Yeah, we found out that people are actually meeting through the Discord and then hanging out in real life, like helping each other with their videos and then hanging out. And not only is Discord a great place for community, but it also supports the diversification of our revenue. During VidCon, they announced that they're exploring server shops, which means we can actually launch a shop within our Discord server. This would be to sell digital goods. So like Notion templates, backgrounds, LUTs. Love a good LUT. Love a good LUT. And you can actually also sell media assets up to 500 megabytes. So we could upload a video and it could be pay-per-view in the server shop.

3:44I think that's really cool. You also could sell fonts. Dude, you could sell fonts. I could sell fonts. You should sell your handwriting as a font. I have two fonts that I made that I could sell. Just saying. Dude, that actually would be really cool if you sold fonts. I don't know. Comment below if you're interested in buying one of my fonts. Yeah. What if I become a font dealer? You could be a font dealer. All right. Yeah. Cool. So Server Shop is still in its alpha phase, which means it's not rolled out to everyone yet. It will be launching later this year. But if you want to join the wait list, we put a link in the description.

4:15You can join the wait list to get access to Server Shop. It's a great way for creators to build sustainable businesses and offer digital goods to their communities. All right. The video intro checklist, Colin. Okay. This morning, I wrote out a full checklist of what I think makes the ultimate YouTube intro. Oh, wow. And I watched a bunch of our videos. I watched other creators' videos. And here are the commonalities that I found. I'm going to caveat this by saying I think this should be noted as the 2023 video intro checklist. because after you go through this, I want to talk about how this has changed.

4:51But I actually don't know what you wrote down, so I'm interested to hear. Okay, so the first thing that I think every YouTube intro needs is to immediately confirm to the viewer that this is the video you clicked on and the packaging is not clickbait. So the first thing that I think every great YouTube intro needs, and you may think it's like to hook the viewer to watch till the end, but actually I think the job is to reassure the viewer that this is the video that you wanted, that you clicked on. Right. And that has to happen immediately. And to prove that it's not clickbait. So I'm going to use our video that we made about Emma Chamberlain.

5:29It's called Why Emma Chamberlain Quit YouTube Again. And I'm going to run through this point and then the rest of the points. Okay. So let's check it out. Why is one of the most successful creators leaving YouTube? I'm taking a break from YouTube. I need to step back completely and give myself weeks, months, years if I need to. Okay. So immediately right there, we're showing you that this is a video about Emma Chamberlain quitting YouTube. And we're actually giving proof with her own voice that like, this is not click bait. This has really happened. And it is the video you clicked on. So that's number one.

6:07Number two is that you have to introduce new narratives or unclosed loops. So it's not enough, I think, in a really good YouTube intro to just affirm to the viewer this is what you wanted. You got to go a step further. Describe or define an unclosed loop. So an unclosed loop is opening a story arc that makes the audience want to get the answer, basically, right? And in this instance, in the intro, I think it should be something unexpected that was not in the title thumbnail. So it's like you clicked to get the answer. Why did Emma Chamberlain quit YouTube again? But we're going to give you that answer.

6:45And you didn't know we're actually going to give you more than that. So that's what we do in the next part. Months, years, if I need to. By the end of the episode, we're actually going to pitch Emma on a way that we think she could return to YouTube in a healthy way. We're also going to suggest a change that we think YouTube should make to the platform. Yeah. So that's two extra things you didn't know you were going to get. Yeah. And when we suggest that we're going to come up with a change to the YouTube platform, it's blurred out. So that's like the definition of an unclosed loop. You want to see what's behind that blurred out photo.

7:18The Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University helps you go from I know the way to I've arrived with our top 10 ranked online MBA. Gain skills you can learn today and apply tomorrow. Get ready to go from make it happen to made it happen. and keep striving. Visit Strayer.edu slash Jack Welch MBA to learn more. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Shev and as many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street North in Arlington, Virginia. Yeah, essentially we, it was a term that we talked to about with Collins Key one time, Unclosed Loops, in a hotel lobby in New York, his real like YouTube meeting.

7:58And he's just so sharp when it comes to packaging and intros and everything. And he taught us this term, unclosed loop where he said the human mind needs loops to close. Right. So like, here's a question. Okay. I want the answer to it. And he was showing it in the context of like, sometimes you see stuff. It's a lot of what Jimmy does where it's train versus giant hole. You kind of look at it and you're like, well, what would happen? Okay. Now I need to close that loop. Like that is like, there's a gap of what we call a curiosity gap is, is, is in between there. And the first unclosed loop is the title thumbnail, right?

8:34And so basically you click there. Once you're reaffirmed, now you need a new open loop so that your mind stays active of like, Ooh, I do want to know that actually too. So that's, I completely agree. I guess the question is how long into the intro do you introduce that loop? I think it kind of depends. Like if you watch our video, our interview with Reed, Mr. Beast Manager, we actually get right into the unclosed loop, basically. Like, we start in the middle of a story that was not necessarily in the title thumbnail. One of my favorite intros. It's great. Should we watch them? I love this one.

9:12In May of 2017, Mr. Beast crossed 1 million subscribers, but there was a problem. Some months we're spending like$4 or$5 million on videos. We've ran out of money many times. I'm not a businessman. I'm a creator. So if Jimmy doesn't care about the money, who does? So the opening line is something that we worked on a ton. It's in May of 2017, Mr. Beast crossed a million subscribers, but there was a problem. So that immediately just creates a situation where you're like, oh, okay, what was the problem? Right? And then he answers that question right after. He says, some months we were spending so much money, we were losing money.

9:51you're like okay he loses money and then we pose the question so he says uh i'm not a businessman i'm a creator and we pose the question so if he's not if he doesn't care about the money who does enter reed his manager so that's like okay we we we had to work on that a lot to build the intrigue of who is reed who's this guy so yeah i i really like that one because it does that like it starts in the middle of the story gives you something that you're like oh interesting and then you're like, but there was a problem. Yeah. Yeah. So number one, reaffirm to the viewer that this is the video that you wanted.

10:26It's not clickbait. Number two, open up an unclosed loop, create a new narrative that the audience wasn't expecting. Yeah. So all of that, I think those two points have to be conveyed in a simple manner visually and be easily understood. Many times people are watching YouTube videos like without audio on sometimes like the auto scroll, which we learned when we were talking with autoplay. Yeah. When we were talking with Mr. Beast. And so like for a lot of our intros, we put subtitles in the beginning to make sure that it's like as easily understood as possible. That you're not working. There's actually another thing we've done which has to do with packaging.

11:03But like the Emma Chamberlain video is a great example. But that one didn't look like a podcast about, it didn't, from the packaging perspective, it did not look like two guys talking about it. It could have been anything because it was Emma on the thumbnail and then why Emma quit as the text on the thumbnail. So the autoplay then shows me at a mic. And so you're going to immediately be like, okay, this is like a dude at a mic talking. The thing that we've done now on the channel is especially when we're doing interviews, like we ensure there's a mic in the packaging and the person looks like they're really in the seat.

11:39So you're like, okay, my assumption is that person is sitting in a mic. I scroll over it, get the autoplay. that person was sitting in their studio at a mic. Yeah. Confirmed. I think what you're talking about is expectation setting. Yeah. And I have that as the third point on the checklist, which is to make sure that you're setting the right expectation in the intro. And that comes down to style of video, tone. Is it comedic? Is it dramatic? And pace. We've noticed in some of our past videos, the pace of the intros can be frenetic, like really fast paced. and it was hard, we thought, to transition or expect the audience to transition to then a very slow-paced conversation.

12:19So we've tried to even out the pace of the intro and have it be more similar to the rest of the video. So I think it's important as you're crafting your intro to know that those first 30 seconds are probably setting the expectation for the viewer of what the rest of the video is going to be like. If you're going to have jokes or humor, make sure you have that in the beginning and back it up throughout if that's important to you. Yeah, I think the thing that we've talked about before is like all storytelling is about tension and release and the style in which you build tension and release tension should be introduced early on.

12:53Because if I like that, then I'm going to want to continue on that. Right. So I kind of want to know what ride I'm in for. What Jimmy and some of the more challenge focused creators do when it comes to like what you can expect later in the video. you know they've really been pushing on that where I feel like a lot like Jimmy's videos oftentimes in like 60 seconds every 60 seconds I'm reminded that something is coming you know and sometimes he does this this frame where it's like you know five different scenes and it zooms in and zooms out of that frame and you're like oh yeah there's there's five other scenes I'm gonna get right now yeah I think that's where like listicles like Ali Abdaal talked about with us actually work really well because that's actually what you're talking about is an unclosed loop Right.

13:37If I'm like, I'm going to tell you three reasons why blank. Now my mind kind of wants to know all three. If I only do one and don't get to two, I might even just, if I'm bored, I might even just click to see the third one just to make sure I know what it is and then move on. Yeah. So like when you introduce these things that like expectation setting doesn't have to be like, and you won't believe what happened at the end of the video explosion. It can be, there's three things I want to tell you. And that just means you're going to get to a third thing, you know, by the end of the video. Yeah, so I have one more.

14:08Okay. And that is to establish singularity. And I think this is one that is potentially harder and we don't get it every time. But when it's possible, we always take the opportunity to do this. And this can come in many forms. I think our Mark Rober studio tour was a really good example of a line that we included to establish singularity to show that this video is something that only we could make that is unique to us. and there's a line in there about how people, not many people have gotten to see his studio or understand how he makes his videos. And then he cuts, we cut to him saying, this is closed to the public.

14:49I don't really invite people here. And I think we did that early in the video to show the audience that you're getting a unique opportunity through us, that this is like a one of a kind opportunity that only we can provide in this moment. That's good. And I think that's important. Like if you can add that on top, you don't always have that. But if you have the opportunity to, I think it's important to establish why you are the one bringing this story. Yeah, that's good. I like that. I think even more so because ideas are getting replicated. It's kind of like if two ideas come out on the same day, this checklist number four is like, why are you watching mine versus theirs?

15:29Yeah. Right. Like what makes mine different to the point where only I could have made it? Do we want to recap? Sure. I think you should recap those four. Okay. So the great YouTube intro checklist of 2023. Number one, you want to immediately confirm to the viewer that this is the video you clicked on and that the packaging was not clickbait. Number two, you want to introduce new narratives and unclose loops. Number three, you want to set the right expectation. Whatever you put in the intro is what you want the audience to believe is coming for the rest of the video. Number four, establish singularity.

16:05Make sure you explain or show to the viewer why your video and your point of view is unique. That's good. We're definitely gonna turn that into a short. That's pretty good. Yeah. I wanted to bring up, so this year, I think the absolute highest AVD on an intro for us was our Try Guys interview. And that also comes down to timing. You know, that interview with the Try Guys was at a time where they hadn't really spoken after controversy, you know, or after, you know, the internet got very interested in them. And we try and ask this question when we're interviewing someone, like, is there a burning question from the public about them?

16:46And we titled that an unfiltered conversation with the Try Guys, right? So immediately that has to, you click on it, has to confirm that there was unfiltered access, you know, that there was truly this honest, transparent conversation. Click on it. First line, Zach goes, they're worth four of us. Now there's three. Immediately you're confirmed. Okay. They're going to talk about it. They're going to talk about the thing that I wanted them to talk about. They're going to be honest. And then, you know, that follows up with like three or four clips of not only Zach and Keith being very transparent and honest, but us asking them questions that are, would provoke unfiltered answers without them answering.

17:28And then after those clips, we actually open unclosed loops by showing you clips from conversations that you didn't exactly know you were going to get. You know, the anatomy of a successful Try Guy video, how they retained the name, the Try Guys coming out of Buzzfeed. Like you get little bits of topics that you didn't know you were going to get. And hopefully that's like the icing on top to get you to keep watching. Right. Yeah. And that has been one of our highest AVD videos this year. And I would say also because Zach and Keith are so engaging. We had a great like great chemistry with them.

18:04But I think also because we did like those clips, sometimes it doesn't work out like that. We don't get perfect soundbites all the time for the interviews. But that one particularly, we had soundbites that did this exactly. Like hit this intro checklist exactly. I think that's just a lesson for creators that it doesn't always need to be a scripted intro. The clip selection of your footage, whether it's an interview or something documentary style, can tell a story. Yeah. We have another one, Story of Carl. That was really, I think, just one if you want to watch an intro that we spent a lot of time on.

18:38Like that was iteration, iteration, iteration, just dialing in the opening line of that. It's a lot of work. You know, you just got to write it and just look at it and be like, does it hit these marks? Is this interesting? Would you, after hearing these first four lines, want to watch this? Like, do you have questions? If you don't have questions, you're not going to watch. Before we move on, should we watch that one? Carl Jacobs is a college dropout that hacked MrBeast's videos to become the number one streamer on Twitch in just a matter of months. Welcome, everybody. Welcome. It's me, Carl. He's always trending on Twitter.

19:12One of the breakout stars of the last year. His newly launched podcast beat out Joe Rogan on the Spotify charts. What's up, guys, and welcome to the Banter Podcast. And he has one of the most diehard fan bases on the internet. If I got a Carl notice right now, I'd be on the floor. The man is quite literally perfect. But if we're being honest, we don't fully understand Carl's content. How is Carl doing what he's doing? How did he become Carl? I think one of the most important things is like, do you have a butt in your intro? Right? Do you have a butt? Yeah. Where it goes like this, this, this. But this.

19:46Yeah. You just, you need that. Yeah, we used to really think about that when we would do these hosted intros. Without us saying in that moment that we don't understand his content, it's kind of not really a story. It's just like a - It's just praise, right? Like there needs to be some exploration. There needs to be some tension. Yeah, but I do think the opening line of like he hacked Mr. Beast videos, that brings some questions to me. True. But if I was to go back, I would want validation that you're going to tell me how he did that, which we do in that video. Yeah. Now, okay, this is the video intro meta of right now.

20:23And I think it's because competition has increased, storytelling has gotten better, but this was not YouTube when I got into YouTube. I went back and wanted to watch one of my favorite Casey Neistat videos, which was when he saved his drone. You remember that? Yeah. Okay, the packaging of it is my all-time greatest. Now, I want you to watch this open.

20:51Where the f*** is he going? What was that all about? That was really weird, wasn't it? Yeah, maybe you didn't like your Invisalign. So you think that was just a bad egg? Yeah, I think he was mad at me because I waved him and I didn't know how to buy his way. So it goes on to do his, you know, intro with the music. And then he goes into his studio and explains what the video is going to be about, about a minute in.

21:25Today's vlog is a mission. That is where, like, in today's world, he would have started there. Today's vlog is a mission, a rescue, a search and rescue mission. I lost my drone. It's unlikely I'm going to get it back. Like he does a really great job of contextualizing what goes down there. But 3.2 million views in this era, I think, really showed how much trust these creators had from us as audience members. How much of a relationship we had with these creators to give them a minute of time that was just a slice of life. Yeah, the behavior was perhaps a little bit more similar to how audiences look at podcasts now.

22:07Sure. Like podcast audiences are really sticky. They don't really care as much about the title. Exactly. Right. They're just like, I like these people. I'm going to tune in and I might tune in for 30 minutes to an hour, hour and a half. I don't know. Yeah. I think it's like, uh, it's, it's what we've talked about before with permission-based versus, uh, interruption-based viewing, which is like permission-based. Like Casey had my permission to give me a new video every single day, no matter what it was. And he had millions of people permission. And I think we've moved into a place where we have to work really hard to earn your time.

22:38Now, we have to interrupt your scroll. We have to catch you. Then we still have to earn your time once you're in the video. Once you've clicked on, it's not like we've earned it. You know, we still have to earn your time. 30 seconds in, we have to earn the next 30 seconds. Yeah. We have to continuously earn those, which again, it's good storytelling, but it's an interesting new reality in the creator economy. I think that also though comes down to the difference between the idea-based creator and the relationship-based creator. because there are still relationship-based creators. Yeah, your mom Ashley is a good example.

23:10Today, right, who have earned and set the expectation for their audience that the title thumbnail is not going to be the heavy driver of why you come in through the door. One more for fun. Ben Brown, okay? Remember Ben Brown? Yeah, yeah. Ben Brown, great thumbnail. It's called Dangerous Swimming. He's swimming in front of like this huge cruise ship. Here's the open. Good morning, everybody. What's happening? What's going on? We're in the breakfast hall of dreams right now Just feasting on all kinds of goodies like this honeycomb Look at that just slicing off chunks of honeycomb. We've got jams for days So I mean, I want to acknowledge that this was the YouTube we fell in love with fell in love with and tried to emulate and become successful at.

24:02And we couldn't do it. And we could not do it. I think also it's an incredibly long game to become successful at this. But if you do this, like if you go against the grain and you're like, it's my personality that you're here for. It's me you're here for. Right now, if you do that, and even if you build an audience of 100 ,000 people who love that, I think that is one of the most impactful audiences you could build. Absolutely. If they're just there. because then you're, you're like truly have a relationship with them. So I just wanted to bring that up that like the meta has changed. And I wonder if podcasting is, you know, this now, like you said, right.