Whether you’re trying to make an intro for your YouTube videos, an intro video for your YouTube channel or your website, there’s no doubt that intros are incredibly important. First impressions count, especially on the internet, where the competition is always one click away, and your intro video is by definition the first thing someone sees when they come in contact with your brand.
The difference between a video intro and an intro video
Before we dive deeper into how you can make your own captivating intros, we need to establish an important thing first: there’s a difference between a video intro and an intro video. The video intro is the first few seconds of an online video. It’s purpose is to let the audience know whose video they’re watching and set the expectations for what’s about to happen next. An introduction video, however, is a stand-alone video meant to introduce people to your channel, brand or product. You can find these when visiting YouTube channels or on various companies’ websites.
How to make a great video intro
If you’ve been on YouTube long enough, you probably remember the days of lengthy, flashy video intros. Back then every channel had some sort of elaborate animation complete with sound effects that would play at the beginning of every video.
Nowadays, things have changed. With people’s attentions getting shorter and shorter and YouTube as well as other video sharing platforms making it easier for viewers to skip over to the next clip, it’s more important than ever to hook people in the first few seconds of your video.
That’s why more and more channels have ditched the traditional intro format in favor of starting their clips with a short teaser of what’s about to happen in the video. The video intro itself usually plays after this teaser that’s meant to hook viewers and it’s only 5 to 10 seconds long and meant to enforce the channel’s branding and bring viewers a sense of familiarity.
If you want to create a video intro easily, you can use an intro maker like Flixier. The tool is easy to use, runs in your browser and gives you access to a library filled with professionally animated motion titles that you can customize for your purposes and use for free.
You can also upload your own logos and clips to Flixier in order to create nice custom intros for your channel. Even though it runs in your browser, the Flixier intro creator features an intuitive and simplified keyframes system which allows you to animate your logo and background individually in order to create short, unintrusive intros which will strengthen your brand and make your videos look professional.
How to make a professional introduction video
There are a few key things to keep in mind when making an introduction video. First off, your intro video shouldn’t really last any longer than a minute. No matter if it’s on YouTube or on your website, most people aren’t going to stick around to watch the whole thing anyway, so you should try to keep it as short and informative as possible, with the most important information being at the start of your video.
Second of all, it’s very important that you make an introduction video that feels authentic and conveys your (or your brand’s) message. Don’t use it as a sales pitch, use it to describe what you do and why you do it. If you make it easy for people to resonate with you, they’ll want to continue exploring your website or channel.
Lastly, you can use an online video editor like Flixier to make your introduction video look professional. It’s fast and easy to use, and it gives you full control over the colors, text and other graphical elements in your video so you can make sure that everything fits in with your brand identity.
You can also search through a full library of royalty-free music and add it to your videos for free, in order to set the right mood and make them a little more engaging.
Now that you have a better understanding of what makes video intros and introduction videos great, feel free to head over to Flixier and start working on your own videos using their online intro maker and video editor.