You will be able to write several hooks for one idea using a small set of patterns.
Most people write a hook the way they write a text message to a friend: the first thing that comes to mind, sent quickly. For a video that matters to your business, that first thing is usually a description of the product. "New in: the long-sleeve office blouse." It is accurate and it gives a stranger no reason to stop.
The way out is to stop relying on inspiration and use patterns. A pattern is a shape that has worked many times before, into which you put your own idea. Writers have used them for headlines for a long time, and they work just as well for the first line of a video.
This lesson gives you five patterns. Take one idea from your backlog and you can write five different hooks for it in ten minutes.
The first pattern names the person the video is for, so that person recognises themselves at once. "If you run a home business and still do your own accounts, watch this." "If your child knows the work but goes blank in exams, this is for you." "Parents planning a party for more than twenty kids."
This pattern works because it filters. The people who match stop, and the people who do not scroll on, which is exactly what you want after lesson 3.1. It also tells the feed early on who the video is for.
Keep the call-out specific. "If you are a busy parent" fits almost everyone and stops no one. "If you are a parent who just found out the party is next Saturday" stops the right person.
The second pattern starts at the end. Instead of building up to the interesting part, you show it first and explain afterwards.
Open on the mistake: the collapsed cake, the blouse gapping at the buttons, the worksheet covered in red ink. Viewers stay to find out what went wrong and how to avoid it.
Or open on the result: the finished cake being cut, the blouse looking sharp in a meeting, a student working through a problem confidently. Viewers stay to find out how you got there.
Either way, the video then goes back and tells the story. This works because the viewer already knows why the story matters before it starts.
The third pattern states a view that your audience suspects might be true but has not heard said out loud. "Most tuition is too much practice and too little checking." "Expensive fabric is not why your work clothes look tired." "You do not need a new cake design for every party."
The viewer half agrees, so they stay to see if you can back it up, and the people who disagree stay to argue. Either way they keep watching. The opinion has to be one you actually hold and can support from your own work. An opinion invented for attention gets found out quickly.
The fourth pattern asks a question in the viewer's own words. "How early do you really need to book a birthday cake?" "Is it worth sending a P5 child for tuition if their marks are fine?"
This is where your voice-of-customer file and the customer questions from lesson 2.2 pay off. When the question in your hook is the same question a viewer typed into a search bar last week, they stop because it is literally their question.
Avoid questions with an obvious answer, such as "Do you want a beautiful cake?" Nobody says no, and nobody stops.
The fifth pattern makes a clear promise about what the viewer will get. "Three ways to wear one blouse from office to dinner." "The one thing to check on your child's worksheet tonight." "How to get a cream cake home in a hot car without it melting."
The promise must be specific and the video must keep it, and keep it reasonably soon. If the hook promises three ways and the video spends most of its length on a story before showing one, viewers feel cheated. Do it a few times and your audience learns that your hooks cannot be trusted, which costs you more than one weak video.
Every pattern carries this rule, but the promise pattern makes it the most obvious. Whatever the hook says the video contains, the video has to contain.
Here is how Farah used all five for one idea from her backlog, a blouse cut so it does not gap at the buttons.
Call out: "If you have ever put a safety pin between your blouse buttons before a meeting." Mistake: the opening shot shows a blouse gapping as she sits down, with the text "This is not your size." Opinion: "Most work blouses are cut for standing still." Question: "Why does every blouse gap when you sit down?" Promise: "The one detail that stops a blouse gapping, and how to spot it in a shop."
Five different openings, each reaching for the same viewer by a different route. She ended up choosing the mistake version, but writing all five is what showed her that one.
In the activity you will do the same: take one idea from your backlog and write five hooks for it, one in each pattern.
Take one post idea from your backlog and write five hooks for it, one in each pattern.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).