What I’m about to tell you is semi-interesting. It definitely should not be illegal. If it were illegal anywhere, you should not live there. That would be an awful place to live…
Now, it’s true. The first few seconds of your video are important. You can’t neglect that intro or people will quickly abandon your videos.
But I refuse to use some of these tired hooks.
You’ve heard them so many times that they’ve lost meaning. If every video starts with an aggressive hook, you’re going to stop sticking around.
I get it already, I’m not going to believe the hack at the end of the video that you totally won’t underdeliver. It should be illegal. Call the police.
The reason for these aggressive hooks is to get you to stick around. They’re often a staple of popular videos. But you can’t — or maybe shouldn’t — do this with every video. It’s exhausting and your audienceThis is the group of people who can potentially see your ads. You help influence this by adjusting age, gender, location, detailed targeting (interests and behaviors), custom audiences, and more. More eventually figures out your game.
While I don’t use aggressive intros, I do use soft hooks. A soft hook isn’t misleading or aggressive. It doesn’t exaggerate the value of what I’m going to tell you.
Soft hooks are for people who want to inform without manipulating. The only purpose of a soft hook is to tell you what’s coming. No mystery.
For example, I might use a soft hook like:
“Here are three ways to flush a toilet.”
It might be boring, but you know quickly what this video is going to be about. You know what you’re getting, and I deliver it. If that topic interests you, you’ll stick around. You won’t be manipulated to believe it’s something that it’s not.
It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
