You will not get any views with a bad idea.
And you will definitely not get any views with a bad hook.
We will talk about how to generate great ideas in another letter.
This newsletter’s focus will be to help you find better hooks so that people actually watch your videos.
I started an Instagram page for my football podcast with some of my friends and the idea was to take good clips from our podcast and convert it to reels and post it.
When we started to post it on Instagram, we were only getting 1,000 and 2,000 views on the reels.
But then we started to focus on one thing, that helped it to go from 1,000 to 10,000 to 100K and 200K+ views.
And the thing we focused on is what we said at the beginning of the video to hook the viewers into our videos.
What exactly is a hook?
Hook simply means attention grabber. Anything you do when start your video (or when you writing your script) is the hook. It is generally what you do or say or edit in the first 3-5 seconds of your video.
There are a lot of videos competing with each other for your audience’s attention.
When your target audience is constantly scrolling through the reels shelf you don’t get no more than 2 to 5 seconds to capture their attention.
This is why we introduce a great hook at the beginning of the video. The whole purpose of this is to stop the scroll and get the attention. That is it.
If you understand the principles of human psychology and how the human brain works you can find different ways to capture people’s attention, that is beyond the scope of this letter but I recommend you learn these topics.
Since I was doing some social media for some time, I was able to catch up on this hooks issue on our page and act fast to make our videos better.
You may not be able to do this like me when you are starting, but there are some frameworks and scientific concepts that I will share to make better hooks.
Types of hooks
You can have three types of hooks: positive, negative, or neural hooks. These types are based on the tone of the hook and the emotions that they convey.
Positive hooks draw viewers in by focusing on uplifting, exciting, or encouraging emotions.
Negative hooks create a sense of urgency or fear of missing out (FOMO). This type of hook receives an average of 46,000 more views when compared to positive hooks. (This data is based on research on TikTok)
Neutral hooks are straightforward and don’t intend to evoke any strong emotions rather, the focus would be on facts or general interests.
You have to be careful of the type you use because not every hook suits all brands, especially the negative hooks.
Now let me explain one of the most used hooks frameworks on the internet called, the PAS framework or Problem-Agitate-Solution Framework.
PAS Framework
A post shared by @goharsguide
This video got 5.8 million views by using the PAS Framework of Hook.
In this hook there are 3 steps:
- you introduce a problem that your audience faces, this creates a desire to watch the video
- then agitate the problem by introducing all the issues they are facing due to this problem. This increases their desire and now they are fully invested in the video to find a solution to this
- give your solution for this burning problem so their desire is fulfilled.
If the problem is common among a large audience the chances of them watching the video is high. So if you reach a large audience with your videos the chances of it going viral is higher.
That is why choosing beginner and basic problems in the PAS framework and providing your creative solution works best.
There is also another famous hook that we frequently use in our football podcast reels that helped us gain more views.
The Controversy Hook
In the football niche, we had different kinds of audiences following different people and different clubs.
Some like Ronaldo and hate Messi, some hate Real Madrid and love Barcelona (I love Liverpool)
These people follow their clubs as a part of their identity. So if you question their identity they will get triggered.
The whole idea of the controversy hook is to start the video with a controversial statement. For example: “I don’t like Cristiano Ronaldo because of this“
This will offend some, some may even like it but it will surely lead to more engagement (in the form of comments and shares) and we will surely get a lot more views.
We don’t do this every time, only when a certain clip from our podcast demands such a treatment. If controversies are all you do, it can sometimes hurt your brand and your comment section would be filled with hate comments like X (twitter).
If you want to use this hook:
- use controversies in your niche and make videos about them.
- start with your take on the controversy so that people are hooked to your videos.
These are some of the most used hook frameworks on the internet. Now I have 100 such viral hook frameworks for you in my eBook: The 100 Viral Reel Hooks.
Good hook examples
We will look at some of the hooks and we will try to make them better. The choice of words is usually the difference between a good and a bad hook.
Including power words, numbers, stats, emotional and action words in your hook is a great way to start making them better.
Examples of making a better hook:
- 5 ways to make money using your phone
instead of this say: “99% people don’t know that you can get rich just using your phone.”
- Leg press can be bad for your back
instead of this say: “Here’s how Leg press is destroying your back in 60 seconds.”
- This is how you can cold approach any woman
instead say this: “This is how to talk to any woman like Andrew Tate” (Not many of the audience would be familiar with the word cold approach, also using Andrew Tate’s name can help get more reach as it builds authority)
These are some of the ways in which we can make the hook better and definitely, there is no hard and fast rule for this. You can experiment with different words.
Here are some key insights that you can use to come up with good hooks.
- hooks with 6 words or less perform better, the idea is to make it as short as possible, you can definitely make hooks with more than 6 words if the video demands that.
- negative hooks perform better generally
- need to be in simple language so that the majority of your audience understands it (grade 5 reading level recommended)
- adding humor helps gain more views
- showing something pleasant to the eyes/beautiful can increase engagement
- listicle posts are usually over-saturated and don’t perform well in general
That is it for this letter, if you found this helpful, here is the previous letter. Check out my eBook for 100 Viral Reel Hook frameworks.
-Sayar