Intro or no intro?

[Juf Aminozuur]

I would not recommend intro. Yeah I know it can look cool and some of you may think how they are necessary and all of that stuff.
I work in marketing and I'm analytics freak. Videos without an intro have much better average percentage watched and all of those statistics that Youtube reward with promoting your videos.
Best way to blow up on Youtube is by having high click through rate and watch time/apw. Intros without any purpose are not making any sense!
EXPECIALLY if you are entertainment based channel! If you're something like Derral Eves kind of channel I think few seconds long intro will not hurt you.
But something that alot of small channels do wrong is they talk and talk and talk in the beginning and they lose big percentage of viewers because of that. You know what is really funny? They do stuff like that all the time, in literally every video.
No people don't want to listen your talk about subscribing and hitting bell notification, giving a big thumbs up and all of those things that many youtubers are saying. You lose viewers because of that and it will hurt your channel.

SHORT ANSWER : Just start with a freaking video without rambling to much!

The funny thing is that it seems my newest video is showing exactly this. I did start with a hook, line and sinker (maybe a bad one?) and then a short (2 seconds) intro. My views are higher than I have ever seen in this timeframe (217 in 36 hours approx) but the watchtime percentage is awful (6,6%) while most of my videos are around 25%.

The only thing I am not sure about right now, is whether the low watchtime is because of TikTok. I just uploaded a couple of tiktoks on there and maybe the people who just discovered me watched my newest upload and then realized it was not their level of biology education and left...

I am going to keep my eye on it. Will revert back to my old ways, with just immediately starting my video if it stays like this. It was fun designing an intro, though.

 

[RetroGamerzoid]

I used to think intros were professional. But the trend has changed I guess. Now a days people want to get to the point straight. I have 21 subs, super small and new youtuber. When I asked my sub, they said they will like without having any intro. So I have started taking out the intros. You can give intro with yourself talking about what's the video is going to be and what will it contain etc. I think that's what the most of bigtubers are doing.

 

[untemos]

I think you need intro for branding

 

[asburyboss]

I had intros that lasted about 30secs or more with various horrifying pics (it's a horror themed channel) to give a taste of what's to come but now after reading the various tips on this site I've cut them down to around 3 secs or so .
They're pretty much just the logo now for a few seconds to let you know which 'section of the channel it is .
I think shorts the way to go .

 

[Liana]

Honestly, I think whether you want to have an intro or not depends on what kind of content you create. Laid-back videos that viewers are in for the long haul? Absolutely, intros get you in the mood and create branding. Summoning Salt has like 30 seconds of intros on every video and I actually enjoy them. Without an intro, the video length might even seem daunting.

But if you create fun and short-term videos, especially with jump cuts, short highlights or a compilation-style editing habit? Viewers are usually watching your videos back to back and the intro will take them out of the pacing again, which makes them more likely to leave your channel. The mentality of "Just one more video" only works when they're really fast paced to keep attention.

So,
TL;DR: Use intros for long-winded, in-depth videos, don't use intros for shorter, fast-paced videos.

 

[MinPinGames]

I'm currently using a very small intro, and I kind of like it, especially when videos are around 40 minutes, it should be totally ok to use it. Very long ones tend to be very inadequate though.

 

[LandyVlad]

Just remember - first the hook, THEN the intro, then the main content.

 

[bombslowdownahead]

Of course Intro is cool and good to have!

 

[AveryMads]

Just remember - first the hook, THEN the intro, then the main content.

I think this has been the trend

 

[MusserBuze]