How to Write a PERFECT Podcast Intro (Impossible to Skip)

Now, let's find your strongest opening.

Something really important to note here is you might be the person who is saying the words that are gonna show up in your hook, or there's also something called a cold open.

A cold open is something that your guest might say on a podcast that you use as the very first line that your listener is going to hear.

So whether you're using your guest's voice or you're writing the hook yourself, these tips apply, okay? So let's say you've recorded an episode about relationships, and you have a guest on there, and her name is Maya.

You could start the episode by saying something like, "Today, I'm joined by Maya to talk about relationships and communication." That tells me about the topic and the person, but there are millions of podcasts out there that are talking about the same thing, so what is it about this particular conversation that is so intriguing that I actually need to stay and listen? Well, the way I set up the story might be what compels you to stay.

So I could say something like, "Maya and her partner went three years without a single fight, and then she ended the relationship." Now, when I propose the story to you in that way, I imagine part of what you're thinking is, "Wait, what? Going three years without a fight sounds like a good thing, so why exactly did she end the relationship?" Now, both openings are about the same topic, but the second option sets up a story that you wanna hear more about.

So for you, that's what you're looking for in your own recording or in your episode, a moment that makes you say, "Wait, wait.

Tell me more." And that is what you're gonna build your intro off of.

And we'll keep using Maya as an example throughout the rest of the episode.

So basically, Maya's someone who had communication issues in her relationship, and that's what we're gonna be exploring in our made-up episode.

In this example episode, Maya's gonna tell us about her breakup, her communication style, and what she wishes she had said instead of what she actually did say.

And we'll use those details to write her intro, starting with a technique called story first.