85. Should My Podcast Start With a Hook or an Intro? | Podcasting Tips for Online Business

FAQ Friday answering the podcasting question of "Should My Podcast Start With a Hook or an Intro?"

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Transcript

Welcome back to Podcasting for solopreneurs and FAQ Friday, where I answer a podcasting question in 5 minutes or less. Today's question is, should my podcast start with a hook or an intro? This question comes from an anonymous listener. Hey there. Thanks for listening. This person added to their question saying, I noticed that you start with the intro, which made me wonder if I've been doing it wrong. This is a great question, and let me first say that there are no absolute rights or wrongs in podcasting. It's a medium that lets you do what's best for you and your audience. Let me also clarify the terminology a little bit here.

When we say intro, we're referring to the short segment that introduces you to the podcast as a whole. It usually has music layered with it, and then the same thing repeats in every episode. I have a mini intro here in these mini FAQ Friday episodes that's literally just one sentence. In my full length episodes, I have a full intro that gives a bigger overview of the podcast as a whole. I think what this person is calling a hook is a short 30 to 60 second segment that sometimes plays before that official podcast intro. Some people call that segment a teaser, which is how I will refer to it for the rest of this episode. Not that calling it a hook is wrong, but it can become confusing when we're talking about a hook as a noun, referring to the segment itself and also hook as a verb, as in to hook your listeners. So I'm referring to the segment itself as a teaser for the sake of clarity.

A teaser can be very useful for your podcast to peak your listeners interest. Give them a preview of what's to come and encourage them to stick around. AKA, it can hook them. So if you're doing that and it's working for you, wonderful. There's no reason for you to stop. I choose not to use one for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's a little bit of extra work, and I like to keep things as simple as possible. Also, my intro is pretty short, so it's not much to sit through before getting into the meat of the episode.

And then finally, speaking of that meat, when the episode starts, I intentionally get right into it. I don't generally start with a story or spend time setting the stage, so to speak. I just dive right in. So I don't see a strong need to hook them before the intro because I get to the point pretty quickly. That's my personal style. I like to be straight and to the point. And it seems that most of my audience appreciates that too, so I'm sticking with it. But your audience and my audience are likely not exactly the same, and your intro might be a bit longer.

Maybe you do some storytelling before you dive into the tangible content, and it makes sense to have a teaser segment at the start to hook them in and convince them to stick around. All of that to say, you can absolutely start your episode with the intro if you want to, or you can start with a teaser to hook them. Either way works just fine. There's no right or wrong. If you have a podcasting question, click the send me your question link in the episode description, and I'll answer it in an upcoming episode. Until next time. Happy podcasting.