How crazy is it that more than 270,000 hours of video are uploaded every day? But don’t worry, I’m here to tell you that you can still make an impact and stand out in this sea of content. The key is to grab your audience’s attention right from the start with powerful video hooks that stop the scroll.

Today, we are constantly inundated with content. It’s no wonder that our attention span has shrunk to lower than a goldfish. That’s why an engaging, memorable hook is key to generating more views. To stop the scroll and get the viewer to watch the entirety of your video, you need to hook them in the first 3 to 4 seconds. This is where you give the audience the reason they should continue watching the video.

It can be hard to come up with a solid video hook, especially for short-form videos.

Here is a list of powerful hooks to help your videos stop the scroll and grab attention.

THE SNIPPET

Every video should tell a story, no matter how long or short it is. But if you want to draw your viewer in, don’t start the video at the very beginning of the story. Instead, use powerful video hooks that stop the scroll and captivate your audience right away.

Have you ever started watching a video halfway in and spent a lot of time and effort trying to piece together the story because you’re missing some of the context you would’ve seen in the beginning? If you make the viewer feel like they’re missing something, some important piece of information, they’re more likely to stick around because they want to figure out the whole story.

This is a really effective hook for short-form video content for Tiktok, Instagram Reels, or Youtube shorts because it can hook your audience quickly and loops your video quite well.

What I mean by not starting at the beginning of a story, even if you’re not telling a story in your video, the structure of your video should be similar to a story. So there are several ways you can use this type of hook.

• Start at the end if the story has a plot twist
• Start with an interesting fact
• Start with a shocking sentence
• Start with an exclamation to trigger intense emotion
• Start your video as if the audience already knows what you’re talking about (this is great for educational videos).

After this you can rewind the story and start at the beginning or take the rest of the time to fill in the gaps.

You can see how I used this snippet hook in an educational video.

THE QUESTION

Start your video with powerful video hooks that stop the scroll by framing a pain point of your target audience in the form of a question. This will help grab attention because it’s something they want to know the answer to.

Do you want to learn how to grab your viewer’s attention from the beginning? Are you looking for powerful ways to start your videos?

See what I did there?

When you make a video you should always ask yourself a few questions; What do you want the viewer to get out of your video? What is the message of this video? What do you want them to understand by the end? How can your audience relate to this video?

Use an answer from one of those questions and put it into another question to stop the viewer from scrolling because you’ve asked a question that hits on one of their pain points.

This hook is even more powerful if the question includes both a description of the target audience and a hint about the problem that your video will solve.

Watch this example, I am targeting a very select audience with this question.

THE “YOU” FACTOR

Start your video with powerful video hooks that stop the scroll by leveraging something the viewer automatically associates with you.

Think of your favorite Youtube creators (but this isn’t just a Youtube creator thing) and most of them have a dedicated space where they film their videos. They film their videos so much in that one location that viewers begin to associate that background/ location with their videos.

But the you-factor of each video doesn’t have to be a background, it can be a greeting, an introduction, or a transition that you always use.

For all my short-form educational videos, I got in the habit of always starting my videos on the exact same action in the same location that I was able to make a compilation myself continuously sitting down in my chair to start the video.

THE QUICK CUTS

A way to hook your audience’s attention but also keep them watching the entire time is to keep your video moving by using quick cuts from clip to clip.

I don’t mean jarring cuts that jump around but if you’re constantly changing up your shot. This doesn’t mean that you have to change locations every shot, It could just mean changing angles. Using quick cuts means you are also cutting out the pauses, this can be particularly effective for educational/ informational videos.

This type of hook is something I utilize for most of my videos but this one, in particular, shows a lot of quick cuts at a rapid pace.

THE ON-SCREEN TEXT

Not all videos have to show your face or have you speaking at all. One powerful strategy to employ video hooks that stop the scroll is by utilizing on-screen text. Keep the text moving dynamically, synchronized with the shots behind it. The goal here is to engage the viewer in reading the text, ultimately capturing their attention and encouraging them to watch the entire video.

What I mean by this is don’t put up all the text at once, that could be overwhelming for the viewer so they don’t even try to read it. Every sentence you put on the screen should build on the other.

This is similar to not starting the video at the beginning but only done with text. This type of hook is great for product videos. For example, if you were to put “3 reasons why you need to be using x” on screen, the next 3 clips could be demonstrating those reasons with your product.

For this type of hook to really be effective, you should incorporate another hook I previously mentioned in tandem with this one because on-screen text works better if you’re not starting at the beginning and you’re using quick cuts.

CONCLUSION

Video hooks have always been important, whether it’s for TV, Youtube, Facebook, or Tiktok, you have to entice the viewer to make them want to watch. If your video isn’t watched past the first few seconds, you can’t blame the algorithm when the truth is you’re not giving viewers a reason to keep watching.

Every video needs a hook but hooks are even more important for short-form content because of the scrolling nature, viewers give videos less time to grab their attention.

Coming up with a “you” factor and hooks that make your videos memorable is something that we work on in your video strategy. We offer an all-inclusive video marketing package or simply a video strategy for a single platform. Book your free discovery call to discuss how we can help you get more views on your videos and ultimately grow your business.