how to start a youtube video intro when it's just you talking

how to start a youtube video intro, when the video is you talking to camera: decide what the first sentence is about before you press record, say the thing a stranger would stay for, then say what the video covers and hand off into it. most advice on page one is about animated intros, a logo sting and a template. that is the last two seconds. the part that decides whether anyone stays is the first sentence out of your mouth, and almost nobody plans it.

underway now plans it with you. on just chat, a walk-through and watch me work, the three kinds of episode where nobody asks you a question, the setup has a new screen, title and opening. you say in one line what the episode is about, and before you film it finds a title people search for and two prompts for how to open.

why the intro of a youtube video matters more when nobody asks you anything

in an interview episode the first question does the work. it is written so a natural answer names its subject, and the episode opens on that answer. on just chat there is no question. you press record and start talking, and the first thing most people say is a pronoun, a greeting or 'so, yeah'. a viewer who has never heard of you hears that and leaves.

the fix is not a script. a line written for you and read to camera sounds like an advert, and the moment you start performing the diary stops being one. the fix is knowing, before you start, what your first sentence is about.

how to start a youtube video intro: three prompts, in your own words

• the hook: what to open on. the result, the number, the problem, the decision, the thing that broke. 'open on how many signups the old page lost, and name the page out loud.'
• what it covers: one plain sentence so someone new knows what they will get. 'then say you will show the new page and what you changed.'
• the hand-off: into the substance, the way you would say it. that hand-off is where the intro ends.

they are prompts, never lines. underway refuses to write a quoted sentence for you to read out, and refuses anything written as you speaking. they sit above the camera while you record, on the first answer only, and you say it your own way, or not at all.

how to title a youtube video before you film it

the same screen finds the title. it reads your series and your episode zero, your last few titles so it does not repeat one, and what people type into youtube about your line. it writes three titles, each aimed at a different search, and checks each against youtube's own search suggestions. the one whose opening words youtube completes wins, marked searched. you can rewrite it.

while it works, a dark box shows every step as it happens: the series read, the searches asked, each title checked and what youtube said. it takes about half a minute. nothing in that box is decoration; each line is something it really did.

use this as the episode's title is on to start. kept, it is the episode's name, and nothing renames it afterwards. switch it off and the episode is named from what you said, after it is made, as before. knowing the title before you film has a second use: you can make sure the episode delivers what the title promises.

what happens to the intro after you film

on series, every episode opens with a build-up: your own intro, if you started by setting the episode up, or a short moment copied from later on, with music building under it, then your logo. until now the reader of the finished episode had to guess whether you did an intro. now it is told the opening you planned and looks for it first, so the build-up uses your own words as its intro far more often. if you did not open that way, it judges as it always did.

watch me work carries the plan to its own page. hours later, when you record your take in front of the time-lapse, your opening sits above the screen until the first flag.

what it never does

• it never puts words in your mouth. the prompts say what to talk about, never the sentence.
• it is never required. skip, just film goes on without a plan, exactly as before.
• it never moves anything. the episode is still what you said, in the order you said it.
• it is not on the interview, the co-host or a guest episode, where the first question or the host already opens the episode.