An inviting podcast intro is what hooks your listener—be it a binger or a newcomer—into listening to the rest of your episode. In this episode, Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard share their practical tips and insights on how you can create an intro that brings people in. They cover everything from the length of the intro, the music, the voiceover, and the content. Plus, learn about an exciting new feature that makes creating and changing intros more painless when you host your podcast on Podetize.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

How To Create An Inviting Podcast Intro That Hooks Listeners?

We’re going to talk about how to create an inviting podcast intro that hooks listeners. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? We want to hook and excite them. We want them to listen to the whole episode. Do you think that happens if you have a 90-second intro? We’re going to talk about that.

I’m being clear here. We’re talking about intros. Sometimes people call intros outros and they use them interchangeably, but they are two different animals. We’re going to talk about outros at another time altogether, but we thought it was better to talk about the intro part because this is the introduction. This is the start of it. It’s the teaser. It’s the tie-in. It’s the, “Am I in the right place?” That’s the part of the intro that we want to talk about because it does set a professional tone for your podcast.

It has evolved over the years we’ve been podcasting, Tracy. Wouldn’t you agree?

Yeah. Before, it used to be a lot longer and much more acceptable. For a while there, it was a little more media-like. It was copying what people do on television series or things like that. They were modeling that traditional broadcast media model, things that they do on the radio already and stuff like that. It has evolved into its own thing.

Because it’s audio-only, it’s not like video bumpers either. Video bumpers have their own dynamic animations and other things that they do. That’s a little bit different animal as well. We like to use both overlapping. We’ll talk a little bit about that towards the end here. We’ll tie that into how it might be a little bit different with video.

That’s a good idea. Let’s do that. Let’s talk about podcast intros. Maybe we should start with the ultra-simple, which some people do. It’s like, “I don’t want any voiceover or any talking. I just want a little music at the beginning and then fade into me talking uniquely every time.” Some people do that. That’s okay.

It’s perfectly fine. The transition music is best because we want to make sure that we have that transition music happening for us. We don’t want episodes to run together. This is what happens. When people binge listened to your show, they go from one episode to the other and auto-plays into the next. Without the transition music, it can be a little disruptive. You don’t know and they’re confused. You don’t want to start an episode confused. You need to have that transition between the two. I’ve noticed this is happening to us. We’ve been binge-watching some television.

 

It would be like all of a sudden, we’re on the next episode and Tom will wake up because sometimes he falls asleep in the evening. He’ll wake up and be like, “We’re in a new episode?” Because the intro in television has a big introductory scene that’s drawing you in, and then they play the music. You don’t get to that until you’re a couple of minutes into the show or maybe five minutes in some shows. If you run from the previous episode to the new episode and they didn’t have closing music, in that particular case, you would have no indication that you’ve moved on to the new one. That happens sometimes.

That happens in podcasting too.

That’s why the transition music at the beginning of the episode is a good model to run because it gives an audio cue to your audience that the new one has started. That helps move the attention. There isn’t this point of confusion. When we get confused, we stop. We don’t want them to stop. We want them to continue to listen. When we get confused, we pause it and we’re like, “Did I hear that right? I don’t have time to rewind.”

The confusion caused them to leave. We lose 20% to 35% of our listeners in the first five minutes of every podcast. That’s the statistic. Keep in mind, that is way better than video cast. Video casts lose 70% of their viewers every single minute it goes on. Podcasts are doing way better in terms of that capture. Part of it is this passive rolling into the next one, but you don’t want to confuse them and give them a cause to drop out.

Those numbers do emphasize the point that sometimes less is more when it comes to your show intro, and there are exceptions. I am the first person to admit that there are exceptions. Have some music that’s familiar, that people recognize and wakes them up. You’re right. I would binge through them. We haven’t done it in a while because things changed in 2020 and 2021.

We haven’t been driving on long drives anywhere.

We used to drive to Las Vegas 4 or 5 times a year for an event of some kind. That would be a great four-hour period of time where I would binge-listen through a whole bunch of podcasts. That music transition is important not only because you should be concentrating on the road, even though you’re listening passively. I always was but if you’re a little distracted, that music wakes you up. It’s like, “Here’s the new episode. What’s this one about?” It catches your attention. It demands your attention in many ways.

 

A good podcast is getting you to reflect at the end of that podcast, especially if it’s an edutainment one. It’s educating you as well as entertaining you. At that point, you’re reflecting on, “What did I hear? What are my takeaways?” You’re reflecting on those things. If you then immediately roll into the next one and you’re still thinking, that audio cue of the music can move you out of that and into the next thing. Sometimes that audio cue is a perfect time for me to pause it and write something down because I want to retain something and make a note to myself, go back to this episode or whatever might be that note that I want to make to myself. I’ll do it at that time and then go on and start the new episode if that’s what I’m going to binge listen like that.

The thing I want everyone to think about here is there are two listener profiles. You have tons of different listener types and all kinds of that thing, but there are two different listener models that you want to think about that have to do with your intro specifically. That is your binge listener who is already subscribed to you and coming back again and again and a brand-new listener who has never listened to your show before. When you have a musical cue and only a musical cue, you’re not serving the listener who’s brand-new to your show. That’s the difference.

There are arguments in both directions that your binge listeners are the most valuable. They’re the only ones you should care about. That’s an argument that you could be making there, or your new subscribers are your new fans and they’re extremely important to you. You could go both ways on that. I like to serve both, which is why we recommend all of our clients and why we do want all of our shows a short intro that has actual words to it and the music. The music is more of a binge listener effect. It has a purpose or a movement through to the next episode, but it’s because your listeners already know you.

I am in agreement with you on this, Tracy. I tend to think it’s more important to make it easy for the new listener, which you should always be attracting hopefully, and that they get it. They are put in the right frame of mind. There’s some anticipation built up. They get more curious and energized, “This sounds great. I’m ready. Let’s have it. Give me the goods.” That’s what that intro can do.

For most professionals, it’s some appropriate music. Just to put it out there, music is completely a style choice. There’s no right or wrong answer. People ask me all the time, “What type of music do you think the listeners would rather hear?” Honestly, it does not matter. It is all over the map. Everybody has such different music tastes. There’s no way you can ever predict what they’re going to prefer or what they might not like. Pick something that you’re comfortable with. It’s your show. That’s a personal choice.

It is a personal choice but it should have the tone match. The only requirement that I have is that it has a tone that matches your show and audience. I talk fast and I have high energy. If I had Zen music that then led to me, you would be confused. You would be like, “That is not the show I was expecting.” Let’s think about it that way. Make sure that there’s some tone stylized match to the energy of your show. That’s the best way to look at it. I’m personally not a fan of popular music. There are places where it goes great.

I could watch CSI all day long to hear the intro music again and again. Who doesn’t want to listen to The Who? It’s awesome. The clip that they used is perfect. It sets up the tone. I could do that and I get why people would want to do it. The reality is it’s a little distracting too. If you want to set them in and you’re setting more of a business tone for your show, having music that they don’t recognize is psychologically a little bit better.

 

They’re not caught up in, “Do they identify with that music? Do they like it? Do they not like it?” That won’t happen on something they’ve never heard before. That’s my reason for saying it. It’s like you have lyrics to something. It can be distracting if you’ve got a voiceover. You don’t want to have lyrics in a voiceover. It’s layers of confusion that we want to avoid.

I’m in agreement with you on the music thing. That’s good. Having a voiceover script or a professional announcer is one option that we tend to recommend and use. Some podcast hosts use their own voices. That’s okay too. How do we make that compelling, Tracy?

Here’s the thing. Do you remember those two models of audience that I was talking about? The binge listeners know you. The ones that are new to your show don’t know you. They don’t trust you yet. You don’t have the authority. You haven’t gotten that. The purpose of a voiceover artist is to give a transfer of authority. If you’ve ever done a trade show or a speech where no one introduces you, it is the most uncomfortable odd thing in the world. I never do it. I can’t stand it.

If they don’t do that, they don’t transfer the command authority to the audience. You now have to do the job of getting their attention. It’s like corralling kids in front of a classroom or something. That’s the model of what they set you up to do. Instead of giving an authoritative speech, you’re giving a lesson plan. That’s not the model and the role you want to play as a host of a show. You want to be an authority. You’re the interviewer. You’re the host. You’re the authority in your subject matter and/or the guide in your subject manner. That’s okay too, if you’re not the most experienced, but that requires a level of authority.

A voiceover artist instantly does that for you because they’re not your voice. They’re transferring authority. They’re saying, “Now, here’s your host.” They set that up. “Now, let’s hear from Tom.” They’re setting up that Tom is the voice you need to listen to. That’s the tone of what they did in that transfer. The compelling subliminal message is, “Listen up to Tom.”

That’s tremendously important. That is probably the formula that works best for most people.

Let’s recap that, some transitional music that sets the tone combined with a voiceover that is authoritative transferring authority to you. The third piece is, what are you going to say?

 

To finish my thought there, what are you going to say? We can’t emphasize this point enough, Tracy. It’s not for the people that probably know and have heard us before. It’s for the new people who haven’t heard us much before, much like how we’re talking about how that intro is more important for you.

We might be a broken record on this subject. Is that what you’re saying?

Broken record is probably not how I would put it.

That’s an old term.

It has come back. Vinyl is big now. I cannot tell you how many audits I do of existing shows that have these incredibly long intros that when I’m listening to the show to check it out, I’m like, “Get on with it already.” A minute-long or 90 seconds long, it’s like, “Come on. No. This intro is not the place to communicate your bio or your resume.”

There are podcast coaches out there who are telling you to put your pitch at the beginning. They’re telling you that because you’re going to lose your audience. That’s the case on video. You’re going to lose your audience. If you don’t pitch them, they’re gone. That’s what they think they have to do to get them in. The reality is that podcasting is a long game. It doesn’t work like that. If you pitch at the beginning, they’re not even going to give your show a chance. When I listen to a show to decide if it’s going to become a subscription for me, I will tune out if I hear a 90-second intro and they’re selling within that intro.

If it’s all about the host and not about the show, that’s also another indicator. It’s too narcissistic for me. I don’t know how else to say that. It’s too much about them and not enough about me. I can’t possibly gain enough. That’s the message that I’ve taken away from a long self-serving intro for the host. I want to hear a little bit about the host. They’re an expert in this or mindsets from an Inc. columnist, that’s great. It’s authoritative praise, but that’s it.

The introduction is the start. It’s the teaser, the tie-in. It’s the “Hey, am I in the right place?” Click To Tweet

It doesn’t say more than that about me. Everything else, you’re going to find out and learn from the show. The main point of that is to say, “You’re in the right place. This is what you’re going to get from this show. This is its purpose and mission. Here’s your host.” Those three things are simple. Break it down like that and do it in 15 seconds or 30 maximum.

Twenty seconds is somewhere in there as the sweet spot.

I agree because you’ll have five seconds of music somewhere in there that’s a little bit of music. You can’t abruptly stop speaking and not trail a little bit. It’s somewhere right around twenty seconds. That is the perfect model for it. It gives enough to a new listener. It doesn’t bore binge listeners. You’re on and you’re speaking into your content.

Tracy, is there any condition where you would not want to use a podcast intro?

There have been some shows out there that I have interviewed where they don’t do it and it works for them. Some people do a preamble. They have the preamble, which is that model of serial television, where you get action happening. You then have the intro and then you have the show. I don’t love the preamble if it doesn’t have transition music too. I like a little bit of transition music before the preamble only because it is confusing like, is it from the last episode to the next episode? It’s confusing whether that is a recap comment because you just heard somebody’s voice.

That could be a short bit of music or that preamble could be some other sound to catch your attention. It doesn’t necessarily have to be music per se, but some auditory signature.

I mean a preamble where you’re taking a cue or something like that.

 

You mean a hook line. I’m sorry.

Some people call it a hook line. I call it a preamble because that’s what it is.

I thought you were talking about something else.

It’s a hook line or a quote. You’re taking out a clip from the episode itself. A lot of them are way too long. That’s the one thing I know on the hook lines. It should just be a sound bite, 30 seconds in and of itself.

It can confuse people otherwise. It’s like, “Did I get the right show? Did I click the right one?”

Keep it nice and short and there’s a little transition sound before it, the quote, and then your intro. That’s okay if you’re going to do that. I do see shows that do it, but most of them do it way too long of a clip. That’s the problem because when you interview somebody and they answer the whole question, you’re trying to give the whole answer. You just need to capture the sound bite piece. That needs to be 30 seconds or less. Think of it like a TikTok. If it’s longer than a TikTok, you don’t want to do it.

The reality is, it’s okay if it doesn’t make complete sense. The point of it is to build anticipation and say, “I get to hear the rest of that.” They wanted to hang on. If you give them the whole answer right then, it defeats the purpose.

There are two listener profiles: your binger listener who’s already subscribed to you and coming back again and again, and your brand-new listener who’s never listened to your show before. Click To Tweet

Doing that is okay on certain shows but keep in mind that it’s confusing to new listeners because they don’t know your style yet. Those new listeners are a little bit confused by it. That’s why that phrase needs to be impactful, but your binge listeners love that because then they’re like, “That sounds cool. I got to listen to this episode.” You’re hooking them in. That’s a good thing.

Those that start immediately in and start with their own voice as a part of the intro, assuming they already had the music transition, so they’ve already done that right, and then they start into their episode, it’s fine. There are some shows that do that well. You do need to remember to put some comfort words in there. You’re going to say the same phrase every time, just like you might sign off the same way every time. You want to open the same way every time because there’s comfort in that for your existing audience. The new audience knows they’re welcome.

We always do that here. We say, “Welcome to Feed Your Brand. Thanks for being here.” Whatever that might be for you, do that one little phrase. Make sure you’re repeating that. You’re then like, “I can’t wait to dive into this topic today.” Dive into it but hook it. Thinking about capturing them in and pulling them in with what you’re going to say is great. Don’t forget that you haven’t been introduced. Along the way, this is part of a reason why you might say, “I’m Tracy Hazzard along with my partner, Tom Hazzard.” I need to say that there so that they distinguish the voices.

If you’re new to the show, I don’t know yet if you’re the guest or you’re the host. You haven’t done that. You haven’t given me that. Those of you with complicated names to pronounce, do you know how many times I’ve tried to listen to a show to find how to pronounce their name before I interview them? Sometimes it never happens that they say their name.

That’s incredibly difficult. You need to make your audience comfortable, not uncomfortable. They need to get to know you. If you’re not going to have that on the intro, you need to do that in the introduction piece that you’re doing or in your custom piece that you do at the beginning of each show. What I’m not a fan of is doing your intro canned with your own voice.

It’s prerecorded, you mean?

It’s prerecorded the same way every time and it’s your own voice. You’re prerecording it and it’s not custom. I’m talking about doing custom every time.

 

That’s what you’re talking about. That the transfer of authority is the reason you have another voice of authority with that prerecorded one. If it’s your own voice every time, it is repetitive in some ways. I hear it, especially with people that say the same thing every time when they start the real unique episode every time.

You’re doing it anyway.

It’s unnecessary.

Here’s the thing. You may think that with a canned introduction or with an introduction that’s prerecorded, that’s your voice saying, “Welcome to the show. I’m this and this.” You’re doing it so you don’t have to repeat yourself when you start a new episode next time. The problem with that is if you were doing it live each time and it takes 30 seconds, it’s not like it takes a tremendous amount of your time to add that on to recording in your episode, your energy will be different.

The difference there is the repetitive one has its own same energy each time. That’s great if it’s grounding and authoritative. That’s its purpose. If it’s you, it doesn’t do either of those things. It feels repetitive and it’s not authoritative. That’s why I’m not a fan of the canned version of that. I feel like you should have a custom if you’re going to do your own voice.

Tracy, do you have any intros that are your favorites? Do you have any that you know of that you could share?

It’s podcasting made simple. I interviewed Alex Sanfilippo. His show does this. He does his own intro each time. It’s a custom intro. It has a lot of the same elements in it where he’s introducing himself. He’s saying something about his show. He then goes on to the topic that they’re going to discuss. I like the way he does it because every time you listen to the episode, it’s different.

Less is more when it comes to your show intro. Click To Tweet

You need to listen to his most recent episodes to get that because his earlier show was a different brand. Listen to some of the ones from 2022. That’s when this change happened and you hear this. He does a great job of it. Dr. Nikki Siso is another one to check out. She does a custom intro on hers as well and it’s her voice.

Every time it’s unique is what you’re saying.

Dr. Nikki likes to start from a place of love. She transitions that in a great way in her particular case because the tone is significant to the show, which is Elevate to Legendary. When you do that, you need to have the tone match. She’s the only one who can do it.

That’s interesting. That’s a little different than the prerecorded one.

It’s not prerecorded. It’s your voice.

That makes sense. Interestingly, I liked the ones that actually are prerecorded, not the host. There’s familiarity and comfort. I agree with the energy. My favorite is a different one than what we’ve talked about admittedly. You may not be happy with me for throwing that one in here. It’s different because it’s a different kind of audience the show has.

You’re talking about a prerecorded one. I was talking about the two that are not prerecorded. That’s okay that it’s different.

 

Should I ask you about your favorite one that’s prerecorded?

Go ahead and you do yours first.

Admittedly, this is a different format of the show. The audience for the show could be anyone in America who is exercising and uses the Peloton bike. To me, that’s a tougher one because you have this huge potential audience. Everybody has maybe one thing in common. It’s their interest in the Peloton bike. These are people all over the map from all different walks of life. You know ahead of time about these people and probably not a lot of common traits. The show is called The Clip Out. It’s somebody we work with at Podetize. It’s one of the best prerecorded ones I’ve ever seen.

They do a video podcast. We created the video portion of their intro for the episode’s videos, but the audio existed before they came to us. This is not for the typical podcaster though, because it is not cheap to do. What they did was have a custom theme song written and performed for their show. The reason why that gets so important for their show is what I mentioned before. It’s the wide variety of their audience and the common interest in getting fit using the Peloton.

It’s a Peloton fan podcast. When you talk about energy, Tracy, this one sets the tone and the energy level just what you want it to be. It’s perfect in many ways. To me, I enjoy listening to it every time. It doesn’t get boring or repetitive. It gets me excited. It’s like the way The Who gets you excited for CSI. Go check out The Clip Out to listen to the intro. If you’re not a Peloton fan, just listen to it.

That makes my top list too, Tom. It’s unique and great. The other one that I liked is a custom one, but it’s done in a fun way. She had a different one earlier, which was still good. The one that I like is Better Call Daddy, Reena Friedman Watts. I love her intro. It got her kids on it. They’re like, “We can hear from my mom.” It’s Better Call Daddy, so it’s like a family show. It’s a nice way to do it. She had a different one at the beginning of her show and then transitioned to this one. I love it. It’s sweet. It’s funny. It’s odd. It fits her show perfectly. I was lucky enough to be her guest. I was on her show.

That’s a great example. I like ones that have fun with it. Admittedly, not every show has an opportunity to have fun with it. Let me use our first show as an example, WTFFF?!. We did two things there. We have a prerecorded intro. It’s a geeky show about 3D printing. It’s a niche audience. That was a big audience in its time. We sampled some of the noises that a 3D printer makes, which are unique sounds.

You need to make your audience comfortable, not uncomfortable. They need to get to know you. Click To Tweet

It’s a little R2D2-like.

We use those as the opening to the music, then there is music and voiceover. Some of it is unique every time, but we also would give our voiceover artist a script. He recorded a unique one for every show. Now that doesn’t happen every day either.

We stopped doing it because it got to be a lot of effort to write that each week and make sure that happened on time for the production of the episode and all of those things. It got to be cumbersome and time-consuming to do it. We stopped doing it after a while, but we did do that in the beginning. Our thing was we weren’t doing it in four months. We were doing one a day. We were doing five a week. It was a lot of interest.

It still was on the short side, which made it unique. There was a little bit of the script that was the same every time. The announcer would say, “Today, Tom and Tracy Hazzard discuss this. Today, Tom and Tracy Hazzard meet with so-and-so about this.” We spent a lot more money than your typical show does on voiceover work. We had a monthly retainer with our voiceover artists because we were giving him twenty a month to do.

Blue Diamond does this too, but he has his interns. His interns’ job is to create a unique intro each time. They’ve done things like go by a celebrity to make the announcements. Some of them have had some creative solutions there.

That’s fun. It’s almost like Murphy Brown changing her secretary every show.

It’s fun but it is time-consuming. He’s got an intern whose sole job is to manage this. They’re on it. They have the time to do it and devote to it. Not everyone can, but these are some unique things if you want to play with them. Tom, what I want to talk about is one thing that happens again and again. It’s a technical problem that we set out to solve with Podetize because we needed to. It was our own problem as well. That is what happens when you switch your show and now your intro is wrong for all the other past episodes and everything. What do you need to do? You got to take those intros out and re-edit them.

 

It’s a complex thing. It’s like, “What do I do? Do I transition?” Here’s my rule of thumb. If it’s going to cost you to edit your back episodes, create a transition episode that announces to your audience the change. Label it clearly in the title that this is the shift from whatever the show name was before to the new show name, “This is why I shifted such and such to such and such,” change the show name. We used to call Binge Factor Center of Influence. “Why Center of Influences is now Binge Factor,” and do whatever that is. Have that clear in the title so someone can find it easily in the list. Make a transition show and explain why you’re changing things. From that point forward, use your new intro.

If it’s going to be costly and time-consuming for you to change your intro, I don’t want you to bother to do it. During the show, you’re going to mention your show name. You would have to edit the whole thing and it’s not worth it. Your audience will understand if you’ve created the transition episode. Someone who finds your show is going to binge listen and go from the beginning and listen all the way through. They will be along for the ride.

Anyone new who only listens to the most recent is only going to know what it is now. It’s not going to matter to them what it was before. You’re going to cover your bases by doing that. However, we decided that we didn’t want to have that problem for our clients. We didn’t want the ones who were the perfectionist out there who wanted brand integrity through everything and change it all to have a problem, so we created a system. Tom, would you tell us about that?

Here’s another good example of a good reason why this is something that people don’t plan on. They either regret it because it’s so much pain and cost in changing it and then understand, “I’m so lucky. I’m glad I have the ability to change it.” Despite our recommendations and our certified podcast strategists’ advice, who are master podcast strategists with a lot of experience that less is more in your intro, a lot of people end up with a 90-second intro. After they listened to a few of their own episodes, they’re like, “Maybe we should shorten that up.” What we decided when we built Podetize hosting platform is we’re going to give our customers the option to make this easy.

On Podetize, you have the ability to upload your prerecorded intro and outro, even though this episode isn’t about outros. You have the option to upload both, but we’re sticking with the intro for now. You don’t edit your intro permanently to the beginning of the MP3 file for every episode. If you’re using a producer that’s not us and you’re still hosting on Podetize, that’s fine. Your producer doesn’t need to put that intro on every episode when they edit. They just edit the middle part of every episode.

You upload when you’re going to publish an episode or are scheduled to publish. You fill out the form, add your title and description, whatever else you need that’s unique there, and then upload your MP3 file. There’s a little checkbox there that says, “Add intro and add outro.” Our system will add that on. It will even do it with a crossfade if that’s your style and you want to crossfade from the prerecorded part to the unique part. The music can be fading down as you’re starting to speak fading in or up as the case may be.

It’s not only convenient but you also don’t have to do that repetitive work editing every episode. The real importance of it is if we decide we want a new intro for Feed Your Brand, we have it recorded and mixed. We upload it to Podetize. We have the ability with the push of one button to retroactively, meaning after the fact, all the previous episodes that have been published can all be changed to have the new prerecorded intro. Even the older episodes, but that’s a choice.

We wanted to make it painless. We wanted to make it just be a choice, not a hardship or a burden financially or otherwise. Click To Tweet

Somebody who starts out of the gate, they’re maybe a dozen episodes in or twenty episodes in, they have regret or remorse over that intro, “Now that I’ve been doing this a little while now, I understand it better. I wish it were something different.” You don’t have to live with that decision forever. When you’re hosted on Podetize, you upload that new intro and it gets replaced on all the episodes with the push of a button. Within ten minutes, it’s all reprocessed. Next time anybody streams an episode, it’s going to have the new one.

Sometimes it takes 24 hours to filter through all the directories.

It depends on the app.

Within a day, everything is fixed across the internet. You’re going to be listened to with your new intro.

With our system now, let’s say you don’t want to replace everything in the past and you want to start from this point forward. The system gives you the option to do that. You’re not forced to replace it for all the past episodes. You can make a strategic choice and do it with these new episodes going forward.

Some people do this. They put more timely messages or do something. We had a show called For Love and Music. During the pandemic, she added a special intro. It was her own voice that she did this. “I’m saddened by the fact that COVID has hit the music industry and there are no live venues right now. Please, understand that this episode was recorded at a prior time. We look forward to getting back to seeing people in person at concerts.” It’s something like that.

She replaced that at the beginning of it and then the rest of her intro played. That was an option too that she had the ability to do. When live events are happening, now she can take that off. It is no longer in those episodes because if I’m listening now, I’m going to live concerts. It’s no big deal. It doesn’t need to have that reference point as it did in 2020.

Based on our own needs and desires as podcasters, when we created our platform, we built this capability into it because we felt it was important.

We got a lot of requests from clients to revise things. It got to be a lot of editing and we were going to have to charge them for it. We found a way not to charge them for it. That’s basically what we did.

We wanted to make it painless. We wanted to make it be a choice, not a hardship or a burden financially or otherwise.

This is where tools and strategy combine. That’s what we are all about here at Podetize and what Feed Your Brand is about. It’s bringing you the idea of putting tools, tactics and strategy together to do something powerful for your show. If you take away anything from this show about intros, we want you to take away that thinking about those two audience models, the binge listeners and the newbies, and think about how you are presented to both of those.

Is it working for you what you have now? If it’s not, switch it up. Change it up. Now is a great time to do that model. If you’re just starting as setting out your show, think about the fact that you’re going to have these two audiences that you may not have realized you were going to have before. Take away that because that’s going to help you be more cognizant of the best type of intro for your show and for what you’re going to do going forward.

For an admittedly shameless plug, if you’re going to be starting a show, we highly recommend you host on Podetize, so you leave yourself the flexibility to be able to pivot and not have it be painful, whether you’re editing and publishing your own audio, or you using your producer. Either way, you can do it. In fact, even if you have old episodes, our system allows you to trim the front, the beginning of it off, and even the end. Let’s say you have all the episodes. Depending on how the transition is between that intro and the main episode, you can trim off the beginning easily within the system and then have it add the new intro for you.

Anyway, consider that. There are reasons why different hosting platforms exist and have unique features and functions. We think Podetize is the best but regardless, we want you out there podcasting, publishing more episodes, serving your audience and your community, and getting more value out of your podcasts. That’s why we’re here sharing this information with you.

We need to end this episode, Tom because we have to get onto our coaching call, which is offered every single week to our Podetize clients. We need to get on the coaching call Q&A side of things and let them ask questions about anything pressing and anything that’s on their mind.

We should mention that even if all you’re doing is DIY hosting with Podetize, you get invited to participate in the weekly customer-only coaching calls. Thanks so much, everybody for reading. We’ll get onto that right now as you suggest, Tracy.

 

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