Excerpt from: Podcasting at Work: 25 Questions to Ask Before Starting

Podcasts lose more listeners in the first 5 minutes than at any other time during playback - so a great intro is important. 

Unlike other parts of the podcast, we do recommend tightly scripting your intro and outro. Putting together these short scripts is more challenging than you might expect - but the process will help you distill and focus your thoughts around your goals for your podcast and your ideal audience. 

Podcast intros are typically broken into two parts, series level intro and episode level intro:

Series level intros repeat on every episode - they establish general information about the podcast series including perhaps the name of the show; a tagline or other quick description of what the series is about and who it’s for; plus the name of the host and why they’re an authority we should listen to.

Avoid the temptation to cram too much into these series intros. Your audience will hear it over and over again at the top of every episode - so keep it brief!

Episode level intros are uniquely scripted for each episode of your show. They introduce the topic or guest for the episode and give listeners compelling reasons to stick around. 

Both types of intros should sell the show to listeners without getting in the way of your amazing content. Keep them brief and remove anything superfluous - your audience wants to hear your content - not a 5-minute bio of your guest starting with what kindergarten they attended.

For more intro and outro scripting tips and examples check out our blog on this topic.