How to Create Irresistible Hooks (and blow up your content)

Summary

In a video by Kallaway, he delves into the art of creating irresistible hooks for content, crucial for boosting video performance. Rather than listing viral hooks, he focuses on understanding their psychological impact and effective use. He presents a three-step formula: Context Lean, Scroll Stop Interjection, and Contrarian Snapback – techniques demonstrated through successful video examples. Kallaway further emphasizes visual elements, quick value delivery, and cultural references as essential for engaging viewers. He hints at upcoming software, Sand Castles, designed to automate script writing for creators.

Highlights

• Kallaway emphasizes understanding the 'why' behind successful hooks.
• His three-step formula ensures viewers are compelled and engaged.
• Visual and textual elements, when combined, make content irresistible.
• Cultural and contextual hooks enhance viewer connection and retention.
• He's developing 'Sand Castles' to automate hook and script creation.

Key Takeaways

• Understanding the psychology behind hooks is more effective than memorizing lists. 🧠
• The three-step hook formula: Context Lean, Scroll Stop Interjection, and Contrarian Snapback. 🚦
• Visual hooks and brief, staccato sentences significantly boost engagement. 🎥
• Cultural references aid in building common ground with the audience. 👥
• Upcoming software 'Sand Castles' promises to simplify content creation. 🏗️

Overview

Kallaway dives deep into the mechanics of building irresistible hooks for content creators. He stresses the importance of understanding the psychology behind why certain hooks captivate audiences and discusses tactical ways to use this knowledge in content creation. By doing so, creators can consistently attract and retain viewer attention, vastly improving video performance.

To illustrate his points, Kallaway introduces his powerful three-step hook formula: ‘Context Lean,’ ‘Scroll Stop Interjection,’ and ‘Contrarian Snapback.’ These steps guide creators in crafting narratives that compel viewers to stop scrolling and invest in the video, promising that mastering these will lead to increased engagement and shareability across platforms.

Additionally, Kallaway underscores the power of visual hooks and succinct messaging, advising creators to leverage pop culture and brief cultural references to establish common ground with audiences. He teases about his upcoming software, ‘Sand Castles,’ designed to automate script and hook creation, potentially transforming content production workflows.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction: The Importance of Hooks The chapter focuses on the importance of hooks in video content creation. It stresses that rather than providing a list of viral hooks, understanding the psychology behind effective hooks is crucial. The chapter promises to reveal six methods to improve hooks, aimed at enhancing video performance. The speaker assures these methods are effective based on their own successful experience with content creation, boasting nearly a million followers and billions of views.
• 00:30 - 02:30: The Mega Tip: Three-Step Hook Formula The chapter introduces the 'mega tip' which is a three-step hook formula designed to capture attention on social media. The analogy presented is driving down a highway and needing to stop to see something compelling. The hook relies on creating a curiosity loop, a fundamental principle in storytelling that ensures the audience feels compelled to continue engaging with the content.
• 09:30 - 13:06: Visual Hooks: Enhancing Engagement Visual Hooks: Enhancing Engagement features a strategy for capturing and retaining audience interest, known as the Curiosity Loop. The chapter describes a formula for generating curiosity in just three or four sentences through a three-step process. The first step involves providing clear context, ensuring the audience understands the video's topic, allowing them to decide if they want to engage further.
• 13:06 - 19:18: Building Common Ground: Psychology and Strategy This chapter discusses the importance of building common ground in communication, using psychology and strategy to engage the target audience. The author emphasizes not wanting to attract people who are uninterested in the topic, such as investing, to their content. Instead, they focus on signaling the relevance of the subject to interested viewers quickly. The chapter outlines techniques to engage viewers by providing immediate context, encouraging curiosity, and establishing common ground. Key strategies include referencing benefits or pain points relevant to the audience and using metaphors to simplify complex topics.
• 23:00 - 26:00: Compressing Speed to Value The chapter titled 'Compressing Speed to Value' discusses the importance of immediately connecting with your audience by presenting complex ideas in an engaging manner that resonates with them. It uses the example of a successful video about the impressive technological aspects of the Vegas Sphere to illustrate how quickly setting the context and engaging the viewer can capture their interest and attention.
• 26:00 - 30:00: Crafting Staccato Hooks The chapter explores the art of crafting staccato hooks, focusing on creating immediate, captivating interest in an audience. It begins by emphasizing the importance of understanding the audience and topics they care about, such as technology in venues, to draw them in. The chapter introduces the concept of the 'scroll stop interjection'—a powerful, single-line statement designed to grab attention suddenly, akin to running into a window, preventing the audience from moving forward without full attention. This technique highlights the strategic pause in communication to enhance engagement.
• 30:00 - 33:30: Conclusion: Get the Reps In This chapter focuses on the concept of setting up a powerful argument or statement, referred to here as a "hay maker." The initial steps involve using contrasting words such as 'but,' 'however,' 'yet,' etc., to prepare the listener or reader by first providing a contrast or contradiction. This technique acts as a setup line to engage the audience and make the upcoming major point more impactful. Using an example of technology in the 'Vegas sphere,' it illustrates how initial context and attention-grabbing statements (scroll stop interjection) can lead into a punchline or significant insight. It emphasizes the importance of stunning the audience with these contrasting or intriguing declarations to effectively drive home the central message or revelation that comes afterward.

How to Create Irresistible Hooks (and blow up your content) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 today we're talking about hooks if you want your videos to perform better you have to make better hooks but here's the thing I'm not going to give you a list of 25 proven viral hooks cuz that's not what you need what you need is to understand the psychology behind why those hooks worked and then the tactics for how to use that psychology in your own stuff so these are going to be the six best ways to improve your hooks immediately and if you do all of these I guarantee your videos will perform better I know this works cuz content is all I do I have almost a million followers billions of views and these
• 00:30 - 01:00 are the secrets for how I go viral whenever I want all right tip number one is actually the mega tip it's my full three-step hook formula and this is how I look at social media you are driving down the highway at 70 mph I need you to see something stop turn around and come back the other way so how do I get you to do that the way I do that is by building a curiosity Loop and this is one of the base Commandments in storytelling if you want to tell a great story you need the viewer to watch the first line and feel so compelled that they can't dream of doing anything else then watching the second line and the
• 01:00 - 01:30 third line and so on the domino effect this is the Curiosity Loop and the deeper the loop the more Curious you are The more I've hooked you so the question is how do I do that in just three or four sentences and the answer is that I built a formula that does this every single time it's three steps the first step is what I call the context lean in the first line or two I need to do two things one I need to be super clear about what the video is actually about topic Clarity and this is so you as the viewer can self- select in in or out
• 01:30 - 02:00 based on your interest if I'm talking about investing and you don't care about investing I actually don't want to trick you into watching the video because you're not my target viewer but if you do care about investing I want to Signal this to you as soon as possible so I need to give you immediate context about the topic the second thing I need to do is get you leaning in context lean the more you lean in the more Curious you are these are the easiest ways to get somebody to lean in establish Common Ground reference a benefit or pain point they may have use a metaphor to simplify
• 02:00 - 02:30 a complex idea or tell them something so interesting it blows their mind you need them to be connected and feel like what you're talking about relates to them in some way let's go through an example one of my videos this is the sphere video I made that got 8 million views I want you to just watch the first two lines the tech in the Vegas sphere is insane biggest screen ever built 20 times bigger than an IMAX right away I'm telling you exactly what the context of the video is the sphere and the tech inside and I'm getting you to lean in by talking about the SC screen showing it
• 02:30 - 03:00 and referencing to how much bigger it is than an IMAX something you may have known now this is taking the show you something interesting to blow your mind route of the options and of course not everyone is going to be interested in this video but if you heard about the sphere or care about tech in venues you're going to be leaning in okay so that's step one now step two is what I call the scroll stop interjection this is a single line meant to act like a stun gun I need you to start leaning in and then immediately I need you to stop being able to move forward like you ran into a window and the best way to do this in practice is is by using a
• 03:00 - 03:30 contrasting word I like to use the word but but you could use things like however yet although therefore on the other hand things like that and this is more just meant to be a setup line for the haym maker that's coming in step three but in order for them to accept the hay maker you need to stun them first now back in the sphere example let's watch both the context lean and the scroll stop interjection together the tech in the Vegas sphere is insane biggest screen ever built 20 times bigger than an IMAX but get this the screen is actually the least impressive
• 03:30 - 04:00 part of the whole thing so at this point I've kind of stunned you right I first established context and got you leaning in about how interesting the sphere is talking about the TCH and the screen but then I stunned you and told you the screen is actually not impressive at all at this point you're like what could possibly be coming next I the screen looks huge I can see it in the visuals and this is the Curiosity Loop that is building you wondering what is coming next is replacing any thought that could be distracting you and send you anywhere else all right time for step three this is the haym maker I call it the contrarian Snapback now the contrarian
• 04:00 - 04:30 Snapback is a sentence that goes in the opposite direction of the initial lean it's still on topic but it snaps the viewer back on a different path and the bigger the shock the bigger the snap the better the effect so let's finish the sphar example now with all three parts the tech in the Vegas sphere is insane biggest screen ever built 20 times bigger than an IMAX but get this the screen is actually the least impressive part of the whole thing because the most impressive part is the audio this is going to blow your mind at this point I've got you hookline and sinker I
• 04:30 - 05:00 established context immediately I got you leaning in the case that you were interested in something about the screen or something new you hadn't seen before then I stunned you and played the Uno reverse card snapping you back in a different direction instead of talking about the screen now I'm talking about the audio that is the Snapback at this point you are fully hooked and fully curious about what comes next you can't dream of doing anything else other than learning how this audio is more impressive than the biggest screen ever built that's hookline and sinker now it turns out if you go back and you analyze
• 05:00 - 05:30 best performing content from any Creator across any medium a lot of it follows this exact same formula and it doesn't just have to be the big new style entertainment Style video type content if I'm making content as a real estate agent and I'm purely looking to drive leads to my real estate practice pure B2B I could say something like this there are three massive mistakes people are making with their mortgage the average person pays an extra $122,000 per year now most people think it's because of high interest rates but it turns out it has nothing to do with that because the biggest waste of money is actually coming from see what I did
• 05:30 - 06:00 there now I don't know anything about real estate I don't know what the right answer to that is but just that hook setup even without me knowing any context I can get you leaning one way and then the other and if you're a real estate agent and you make content in that format I guarantee that would drive so many leads it would build you as Authority in your category that's what you want to do that hook format works every category every space and if you don't believe it works I'm going to do a magic trick because I use the same psychology formula on you for the hook in this video and if you're still
• 06:00 - 06:30 watching that proves it worked let me show you exactly what I did so I started off by saying this today we're talking about hooks if you want your videos to perform better you have to make better hooks so right away this was me giving context on exactly what the video is about hooks but also creating common ground and getting you to lean in around the benefit of making better videos If you figure out how to make better hooks this started building the Curiosity Loop in your mind now if you watch just those two sentences and you don't really care about making videos or making content
• 06:30 - 07:00 then that didn't really apply to you and you've probably bounced anyway but if you're at this point right now I guarantee it's because you're trying to figure out how to make videos to perform better so this built common ground with you which is my target viewer okay so that's step one so context about the video and I got you leaning in so now what's next the next thing I said was this but here's the thing I'm not going to give you a list of 25 proven viral hooks cuz that's not what you need this is the scroll stop interjection the stop sign the red light the stun gun and this stops you in your tracks because I'm reiterating what you've ially heard in
• 07:00 - 07:30 the past typically you see creators talk about the list of the 40 best proven Hooks and then they give you the list but you know this isn't the answer I know that's not the answer so I'm using that embedded belief in your head that you know it's not the answer to stun you into waiting to see what comes next this is just the setup line to give the contrarian Snapback but it works especially well here because you and I both know that conventional wisdom doesn't work and so I'm playing on that embedded subconscious belief okay so so far you've stopped the car and you've exited off the highway now how do I get
• 07:30 - 08:00 you to turn around that is step three so what did I do next this is the last thing I said what you need is to understand the psychology behind why those hooks worked and then the tactics for how to use that psychology in your own stuff and this is the contrarian Snapback because most people have heard the word psychology whether you study psychology or not you've heard the word psychology and you have a suspicion as I delivered it that that actually would result in some surprise or secret information that's way deeper than the conventional wisdom you hear that and you believe that to be true so I've
• 08:00 - 08:30 snapped you back off the conventional wisdom back to this psychology frame which is what I'm talking about so when I say hey if you want to achieve X don't do y do Z and if you want to achieve X you're going to listen it works every time the key though is that you need Z to actually be compelling which in this case I think it is this is actually the formula I use and I know it's proven to work if you just do this game but then you don't actually have anything at the end of the rainbow people would just churn and you're a fraud so this formula Works in all types of videos it's not just short form long form and it works everywhere else anytime of content in
• 08:30 - 09:00 conversation in life this is BAS psychology 101 context lean scroll stop interjection contrarian Snapback now implementing this in every different video and every different use case that's what takes reps in practice that is not easy and because it's so hard I'm actually building a software that's going to do all this for you automatically not just the hooks but the entire script you'll just put in the topic and I will take all the content Frameworks and psychology baselines that I understand and we'll just write the script and the hook for you to make the video compelling 60 Minutes of script writing work distill down into 60
• 09:00 - 09:30 seconds that's what we're going for it's called sand castles now we haven't launched it yet it's coming soon the beta is going to drop soon we have a massive weight list make sure you're on that weight list because we're going to have a launch price that's going to be lower than we ever offer and anyone on that weight list is going to get it so sand castle. we're going to help with all this automated script writing and hooking all right so now that we walk through the base psychology and the formula which is really important to cover up first let me go through some extra things that will really help you sauce up your hooks on top of that Foundation cuz I promised six and that formula was technically one so here's
• 09:30 - 10:00 the other five all right the second thing is visual hooks I say this a lot but visual hooks are so so so critical in the video I cannot overstate the importance visual hooks are probably 100 times more powerful than just spoken word Hooks and it's because people read faster than they can hear or that they can visually comprehend a full video scene I've said this on many other videos but if you just put title text your videos will do so much better so Step One is put three to five words on the screen in a big bold font that helps build that context lean if you can speak
• 10:00 - 10:30 it in one to two sentences can you write three to five words and distill that message down a good example of this is in my video about life siiz floor plans this video got like 15 million views check this out these are called life-size floor plans I use the text future of Home Design and life-sized floor plans with arrows to quickly establish the context and I used future of Home Designs instead of Life-Size floor plans at the beginning because lify floor plans is kind of the name of the thing and I didn't want to risk misunderstanding that is how critical and in detail I get get with these visual hooks that's how important they
• 10:30 - 11:00 are now the second piece of the visual Hook is the visual itself you want the most compelling visual possible with enough motion to hold their attention it's like when a deer sees something out of the corner of their eye in their Woods they're going to stop and they're going to look and they're going to see it you want that same effect with your visual too much motion and you're going to overwhelm them and it'll miss the context too little motion and you're going to bore them and they may churn you need just enough motion sometimes this motion could be a girl in a get ready with me putting their hair up kind of leaning forward and leaning back that sometimes is just enough motion to stun
• 11:00 - 11:30 the viewer into holding and watching for more this famous Colin and Samir video about the Rayband metas this has 60 million views the reason this went so viral in my opinion is because the initial clip has the perfect amount of Rapid motion and then him in the mirror that motion holds and allows them to talk about the point which eventually convinces them that the ray band metas are cool so motion is so critical in the visual hook the combo of text on screen plus the motion in the video plus the spoken word that combo is way more power F than just a spoken word now the third
• 11:30 - 12:00 and fourth tips are about helping you build that common ground that I talked about in the context lean the third piece is also based psychology it's that people like hearing things that they're already interested in but they're open to hearing New Perspectives on it if they think that New Perspective will unlock a benefit or solve a pain point that they have in the category so if you make a video about magnesium as a supplement an average way to write that hook would be something like you should be taking magnesium because it's one of 21 core building block minerals it's kind of decent but it requires a
• 12:00 - 12:30 previous understanding about magnesium and doesn't really talk about a benefit or pain point a better context lean here would be something like if you want better sleep you need to be taking magnesium this leads with the benefit of talking about better sleep and then introduces magnesium as a potential solve even if someone is against supplements or against magnesium they will likely wait and hear you out because their desire to solve the pain of not sleeping well is so strong when you're riding hooks you always want to think about what the benefit fit or paino solve is to the Target viewer and
• 12:30 - 13:00 then work that in if you can all right now the fourth piece to building the common ground is cult hopping and I've talked about this before when people hear something that they've heard before it unlocks a comfort in their subconscious and the opposite is true it sounds weird but if you hear a bunch of stuff You' never heard before you start to feel dumb and you don't like that feeling so you bounce away this is why if you tried to listen to an advanced physics lecture and you've never taken a physics class you would likely feel super dumb and not want to listen to it so when you're making videos about com complex or Niche topics you need to find
• 13:00 - 13:30 a way to wrap the unknown idea in something that is known some common layer and one way to do this is what I call cult hopping this is taking a known brand or a celebrity or a movement or some cultural reference and using it as a metaphor or a comparison around your point for example if you make videos about complex tax planning maybe you talk about how Taylor Swift's financial advisor would plan her estate around the arist Tor earnings she just made or maybe you just reference her in a group of celebrities when you talk about the
• 13:30 - 14:00 elite level of wealth that you serve using these references is a really easy way to establish that common ground and it's subconscious but it creates comfort for the viewer and you don't need to make your full piece of content around that celebrity or brand but this will help you draft off The credibility and the popularity of something that already exists when you're still smaller and growing all right tip number five is to compress speed to value and this is a say I use a lot especially when I'm talking about short form video when you make a piece of content you should feel like you have a timer Counting down in your head before that content explodes
• 14:00 - 14:30 and no one pays attention to it for short form that timer is about 4 seconds for YouTube videos that timer is maybe 1 to 2 minutes so you need to find a way to compress the time to demonstrate initial value to before that explosion line and that applies to both educational and entertainment content the best way to do this is to give a little hit of value right at the front either in the hook or right after the hook because you don't want to bury your best stuff think of it like this anything you make after they click off might as well be a black screen cuz they're not going to see it you should frontload the value as much as possible
• 14:30 - 15:00 you're not going for full completion your super fans will watch the full video you want to frontload the value as much as possible to eek out an extra 30 seconds at a time now I find that as long as that first hit of value is unique and helpful they will typically stay around long enough to give you a chance to show your second hit of value that same logic that we apply with a curiosity Loop should apply to this value Loop give context immediate value give context immediate value frontload that as much as possible ideally you can inject that first hit of value within the hook that's when you're really masterful but if you can't do it in the
• 15:00 - 15:30 hook do it right after the hook to keep them all right now the sixth super tactical tip is to make your hook sentences staccato and if you don't know what staccato means staccato is a type of note in music that is short T that's staccato now I talked about in my storytelling video which I'll link at the end of this how it's good to vary the length of your sentences to create a diverse Rhythm and that is true for the whole video but for the hook up front you want to compress short sentences as much as you can and the reason why you do this is because shorter sentences force you to achieve Max Clarity it
• 15:30 - 16:00 increases the density of value per word at the beginning and when time is at a premium at the beginning of the video you want to increase density value per word as much as you can go shorter initially and then expand to medium and longer as the video extends all right as you can tell a lot of this is just getting the Reps in and continuing to iterate and learn how to do this make this subconscious there are dozens of other tips that I didn't have time for in this video that I also try to infuse as well it's all about the Reps now this takes time I've spent thousands of hours
• 16:00 - 16:30 doing this myself what you really need are reps and then guidance from somebody who has more reps than you and this is the type of thing that I help people with in short form Academy right now the academy is closed but make sure if this is the thing you need help with and you're interested in be on the wait list short form. Academy we'll let you know first when we reopen and also guys check out all the free resources that I have in the description I'm not lying when I say this I put almost all of my best stuff out for free it's all in the description you just have to click subscribe and I will send the stuff to you so make sure to check that out if you're you're struggling make sure you're on the wait list for sand castles
• 16:30 - 17:00 and we'll see you guys on the next video peace