I Studied 100 Viral Hooks, These 6 Will Make You Go Viral

the biggest difference between winning and losing on social media is the hook this is the 8020 of video if you want your videos to perform better you need to focus on leveling up your hooks now I've studied thousands of videos and it turns out all of the best performers only use six different hook formats if you know these six you're set so in this video I'm going to break all that down first we're going to walk through all six hook formats with examples and then I'm going to give you a full playbook for how to

actually write winning hooks on your own I guarantee this this will be the best video on hooks you ever watch and I know this works because I've done billions of views myself using these exact same methods all right now first before anything else we need to understand the psychology behind how hooks work this is super important hooks are designed for one reason to create a curiosity Loop think of it like a rabbit hole in the viewer's brain we need to get them curious enough about the topic that they couldn't dream of doing anything else other

than watching our video now the best way to create that Curiosity Loop is with contrast the viewer starts the video believing one thing and then we introduce an alternative in the hook they believe a we show them B and the distance between A and B is contrast the bigger the contrast the more the Curiosity and the deeper the hook it really is as simple as that but the hard part is you only have 5 Seconds to make it stick so each of these six hook formats are specifically designed to create that contrast and build the

Curiosity Loop all right now the first hook format is called the fortune teller and it's all about positioning the the present against the future the Creator is using some scenario or question to build curiosity about how the future might change so this could mean saying something like that new microwave is going to change cooking forever or that little blue light is going to impact traffic moving forward here are a couple other examples of the fortun teller hook in action we're witnessing one of the largest breakthroughs in marketing this is the future of animation and this

fortune teller hook format Works super well because the human brain is designed to constantly think about the future so it's playing into that so the Tactical steps for using this hook format would be a establish what the current reality is B figure out how the future might change based on the video subject and C frame a question or statement teasing that new future as a possibility and this format is great for breaking news product Innovations really anybody that's trying to build Authority or interest around knowing the future of some topic and again I'm going through

all six of these base formats first so we can build that Baseline before going deeper tactically into how to actually write the hooks and I'll go through that in a minute okay now the second hook format is called the experimentor and this one is all about the Creator showcasing how something works using a demo or experiment and specifically this is angled as peer-to-peer it's one friend showing another what they learned or came across so the contrast that's being built is coming from I used to do something this way I figured out some method or format

let me show you how now I'm doing this thing this way and here are a couple examples of the experiment format in action does anything look weird about this shot to you I actually don't have have a camera in my hands I'm recording with these glasses on my face these are the rayan meta smart glasses and they're about to change the way that we create this right here is the brand new cha gbt agent that literally controls your browser and does tasks for you and this is an 11-step process and we're going to see if

it does it now I especially love the Colin and Samir one because Samir is actually showing how the glasses work in the hook as well he doesn't have to use the hook to Tee It Up in the future because the glasses camera is the subject itself and that video did 50 million views for a reason and a lot of Mr Beast videos fall into this hook category as well he doesn't always explicitly explain them as experiments but he's basically doing human experiments and then letting you watch in real time to see what happens so the

Tactical steps for using the experiment hook framework are to a establish the base pain point that needs solving B show that you solved the paino or tried some new method or tool with an experiment and then C walk through why that new experiment or solve is different and help solve the paino better and this format is great for product demos new Frameworks it's also great for B2B trying to Showcase how your tool or product works this is also the same hook framework where those people that make the elaborate outdoor structures camping or building a log

cabin by hand this the same format they're using as well and before we keep going if you like the way I break this content stuff down using the metaphors and the names to make it a little bit easier I actually did the exact same thing around virality how does virality work breaking into a formula you can actually grabb that it's a free 5-day email course called The virality Blueprint explains Concepts like this but in way more depth you can grab that there's a link below or go to virality blueprint.com and you can sign up all

right let's keep going now the third hook format is called the teacher and this one is similar to the experimenter except that instead of going peerto peer it's going more teacher to student and instead of showing things with a live experiment it's more showing them by Framing a lesson so it's kind of like I'm the teacher of this topic I just saw somebody who solved X with Y method let me break that down and explain to you how they did it again the contrast is coming from you're failing at this thing I found a new

way to do it let me explain how to do it so that you can start winning and here's a few examples of the teacher format in action three things you can learn from aritzia here's how I got this shot I made this Ecom brand a million dollar in 12 hours using something called the product drop method and again these are all teaching setups so it's either the Creator tried something and extracted the lessons and is now teaching it not like experiment but teaching the methods or they studied someone else who solved that thing and then

is now teaching those lessons back either way it's show by teaching and so the Tactical steps for using this one would be a establish the base paino B show that you have a solve through some set of learnings or method and then see walk them through why the process or steps worked because of your solve and this format is super good for anybody who's trying to build Authority in the category or become an expert to then sell that expertise okay now the fourth hook framework is a little bit different than the other five it's called

the magician and it can be used as a precursor or in combination with the rest of them now the magician is basically a stun gun it's strategically using visuals and or language like hey look at that to visually Force the viewer's attention to a specific thing in the visual and it's usually something outlandish or just rhythmic and Visually Pops to stop the scroll now there are a ton of amazing examples of people who do this China CH what's up mttv chis yo check this out so president Trump just ordered the Resurgence of a 1980s plan

for nuclear war in space let me explain so this can either be executed with some visual stun tactic like what Carl Shakur uses the kind of snap click or it could be the spoken words themselves like look at that crazy thing and really forcing the attention my favorite example of this is the neon sign guy who starts out as Trump with the wig makes a joke in the voice and then throws the wig off and immediately starts talking about the neon signs I've been using this on my own videos for the last 30 or so

where I start all the videos saying check this out really quick and I roll into the first line with it check us out this check out this check out this check out this it just gives that kind of unique signature pattern that people recognize audibly when they hear it another great way to achieve the magician is with something called a visual pacifier now this is an activity that the subject is doing passively which holds just enough of your subconscious attention to let you focus on the thing this could either be like Alex Earl doing her

makeup or this guy in this example stacking the cups it's the same psychological reason why people make those GTA Gam gameplay videos the split screen and you see the car driving through the course on one end and then the clip on the other it holds just enough subconscious attention to get you to focus and not churn on the main thing and I say this format is different because you can combine the magician with any of the other five a lot of people stack them so they use the magician immediately as a visual stun gun and

then layer on one of the other five below so tactically to do this you either want to find some visual some sound or some signature thing that you can tie to your videos to kind of stun that's atypical and stops that scroll all right now the fifth hook format is called the investigator and this one is super common with this format you're basically trying to create contrast against some unknown secret or some finding that you found in your research that nobody knows about so the contrast is today you don't know the thing I show you

the thing now you know the thing very simple almost all of my personal short form videos fall into this category it's kind of unearthing some tech or AI thing about the future potentially that people don't know about and there's a ton of amazing examples showcasing this format as well so this is one of the sneakier marketing campaigns I've seen Central sees brand sells out in seconds and what's crazy is that it's not just because he's a rapper Che out this is a secret Japanese City built at the base of Mount Fuji but it's not just

any City so the Tactical steps if you want to use the investigator would be to tee up the fact that there is some secret that they don't know and then frame it against their current reality which is not knowing and the communicated contrast in this one is pretty straightforward because the base cases they don't know and then you tell them something they know some of these don't have to be super cheeky they could be pretty straightforward but inherently they'll still grab and create that interest this format is great for people to use who are trying

to be at the Leading Edge of their field or showcase that in a research capacity they're finding the Deep insights that most people don't know okay and the sixth and final hook format is called the contrarian and this one is actually the easiest to understand where exactly the contrast sits the contrarian hook literally has the Creator come out specifically and say what they believe about the topic that is different than the conventional wisdom and the difference between this one and some of the others is that a few of the s kind of slightly try to

hide that contrast in the framing whereas this one immediately you come straight out and just say you're doing your branding wrong you should be doing it this way it's very direct here are a few examples of the contrarian in practice so I think this is probably the most important thing that you need to be doing if you run a brand that you are probably not doing and this is having one-on-one conversations with your customers you have no creative ideas because your space sucks to live in this guy is a multi-millionaire from his clothing brand and

the weird thing is they're best sellers are almost never in stock NOW of the six hook formats this one is the most direct at creating that contrast and it's really easy the Tactical steps would be figure out what you believe that most people don't believe and then say it explicitly this is great for the smarty pants expert use case or somebody that's trying to frame thems as a contrarian in a crowded space okay so there we have it those are the six hook archetypes the fortune teller the experimentor the teacher the magician the investigator and

the contrarian now I'm going to tell you a secret you don't actually have to to figure out which one of the six works for your video because the truth is every single video idea could be manipulated to use any of the six hook formats for example let's say I made videos reviewing backpacks and this new interesting backpack just came out that I wanted to make a video about how would I go about using all six of these in different ways so for the fortune teller I may say something like this backpack is going to completely

change the way Millennials travel for the experimenter I might say I just took this backpack 7,000 Mi across the world but it has three major design flaws for the teacher I may say something like if you're traveling internationally this summer this is the best way to pack your backpack for the magician I may do a rapid match cut with a bunch of different backpacks to visually stun them and then with the voiceover saying which of these backpacks is the best for a guy in their 20s for the investigator I may say something like I can't

believe this company isn't marketing this one flaw in their bag and then for the contrarian I may say something like everybody loves this bag but if you use it every day it is so overhyped and see so you can pick any of those hooks directions with every single video topic and so the real question is how do you decide if you're staring at the blank page and you're trying to write a hook which of these is the best one for you in any given scenario and this really gets into the second part of the video

which is tactically how do you actually write a banger hook that crushes every single time cuz that's where the sauce really lies so let's walk through that I'm going to break the whole thing down right now all hooks are made up of four components the spoken hook which is what you say the visual hook which is what you show on the screen the text hook which is what you write in text on the screen and then the audio hook which is the sound and sound effects that you play in the background and this is the

big secret right here the difference between 500 and 500,000 views is unlocking Max alignment between those four things so if you say one thing verbally but then the visual even slightly different that creates misalignment and then the hook is not as effective to nail the hook you need all four of these things to line up perfectly and the reason this matters is because because of comprehension comprehension is the degree to which the viewer actually understands what they're seeing and hearing you can't hook them unless they fully understand and are interested in what they're watching if

your verbal spoken Hook is different from your visual hook which is different from the music in your audio hook well that leads to confusion and confusion leads to comprehension loss which just makes it harder for the viewer to stick with the hook the way to drive Max comprehension is to make sure the visual and audio hooks are aligned and so how do you do this the way you do this is to understand exactly how the viewer takes in the video when they're watching and this gets to the Deep psychology which is my favorite thing to

do imagine a subconscious heat map when somebody's watching the video where are they actually focusing their attention I'm going to tell you this is what all viewers do the first thing they do is they take in the visual and text hook they see the visual they may read the text hook if it's obvious enough in the right place and then their ears catch up and they hear the spoken hook after and after they hear what you're saying they look back at the visual and they're seeking visual confirmation with what they heard so it's visual audio

visual that sandwich is how people actually take in videos at the subconscious level now why is this the case well the reason is our eyes process 10 to 100 times more information per second than our ears and this is essentially the speed of light vers speed of sound phenomenon so the viewer is seeing first then hearing and then looking back at the visual to match what they heard okay so tactically tying all this together what does this actually mean and why did I spend so much time going through those six hook archetypes what this means

is that the most important part of getting the hook to actually perform well is the visual it's not what you say it's the visual I call this the key visual so when you first have your video idea the very first thing you should do is figure out what visual or visuals you have at your disposal that you could actually slot into the first 3 to 5 seconds and based on that key visual you then need to decide which of the six hook archetypes will create the most contrast and perfectly aligned with what that visual shows

knowing the visual lets you set up the speech to then set back up to the visual this is the golden approach to hooks that nobody talks about at this level all right so now I'm going to say it again one more time but more organized so the very first step is you need to look at what visuals do you have the better the visual the more you can lean on the visual and the easier it will be to set up the contrast back to the visual if you don't have a good visual you need to

really think should I make this video and if you do want to make it how are you going to manufacture the key visual with Motion Graphics or some stock footage to create this interesting thing to look at step two is that once you have the visual you need to think about what are the most interesting fact sets or angles things about the story that you have to work with and based on those what has the biggest contrast whichever one has the biggest contrast will inform which of the six hook archetypes that you actually use step

three is that I would then write the spoken hook this is going to be two to four lines and it's going to follow the context lean contrast and contrarian Snapback approach that I detailed in my other Hook video I'll link that here step four is then what text can I put on screen overlaying the video to support that initial Visual and the reconfirmation of the visual after someone hears the speech and then step five I'm going to watch it back and gut check with myself does this achieve Max comprehension if the viewer goes visual speech

visual are they very clear on what I'm talking about in this video and does that align with where I think the rest of the video will go if not I will stop not move forward and rework the hook that is how important it is all right now really quick I just want to walk through a couple examples of my own content to illustrate what I mean by good and bad hooks we're going to show one of each the first one is an example of a perfect hook this video is about life-size floor plans which is

this really cool projected home floor plans in a warehouse this video did 15 million views so the first thing I want you to do is watch this video with no sound we're going to turn the sound off just watch the hook visually and I want you to think where do your eyes go what do you notice and what do you see so we're going to play that right now all right now the first place your eyes probably go is that sliding text that comes across that says the future of Home Design This first clip with

a split screen you don't actually see that well the girl with the arms going up that was more just a visual stun gun the actual hero visual the key visual that I saw in the idea that I knew I was going to build the whole video around was the next visual in the full screen with the people walking on top of the floor plans what I did is I put text that said life-size floor plans with an arrow enhancing the fact that your visual eyeline went directly to that thing I wanted to make sure you

saw that and so this was the visual shocker right there's embedded contrast here most people have never seen this before so the fact that it existed on its own created a large contrast I knew that visual was a great key visual to build off of okay so the next thing is I had actually pick which of the hook formats that I want to go with and then how would I actually write the hook itself so when I looked at the formats there were two that made sense one was the fortune teller this is the future

of Home Design and the second one was The Secret Keeper I found this secret about how people are designing homes that nobody knew they're close to the same but slightly different I went with the fortune teller one because which is easier to explain and creates more of a shock this is what the future of Home Design will look like right so that's what I picked and then step three was I had to actually write the hook so context lean contrast contrarian take so I literally said check this out that was my magician scroll stop thing

and then I said these are life-size floor plant you can literally walk through your exact Home Design before you build it right so that's context lean that is me literally describing exactly what you're seeing that is perfect alignment with showing the visual and saying the thing then for this one I didn't actually need a contrasting word I didn't need to say but here's what's crazy because the fact that it existed on its own was already contrast enough so my contrarian take which maps to the Future hook fortune teller was I think this is the future

of how people are going to design their homes right so it's exactly what I'm saying I picked the fortune teller I talked about the future I set up the context lean what you're seeing with pure Al alignment and then I framed this is the future of how people are going to design their homes that is tailor made how you build the hook with pure alignment and this one worked 15 million views now before we end the video Let's quickly go through one bad example where I made a video but it didn't work out that well

it got maybe 100,000 views or less and the hook was just executed super poorly so I want to explain what went wrong and what I should have done looking back okay so the same thing here I want you to watch this video without sound just watch the first 15 seconds and tell me where you focus your attention [Music] right away you see the tech sliding across again future of Storytelling and then you see a bunch of these rooms kind of like magically appearing out of nowhere just that alone is kind of misaligned future of Storytelling

is a bit of an abstract concept and so visualizing that with those rooms does that really mean future of Storytelling not really so already just in the visual and with the text there is comprehension lost then when you turn the sound on it gets even more confusing so I say this is the future of Storytelling it's called a generative World model it lets you turn a single image into a photorealistic cinematic World okay so if you really take that down future of Storytelling it's so abstract it's like what do you even show for that maybe

it's a book with a video or a robot coming out of it maybe I could have used that the problem is nobody knows what generative World model is nobody knows what photorealistic world so I use these crazy terms that I didn't have good visuals to show and you can tell immediately it's just a little confusing it's not as straightforward as the life-size floor plans one and so when you watch this yeah maybe you're like oh those are cool visuals but you're not actually hearing what I'm saying when you don't hear what I'm saying you have

comprehension loss when you have comprehension loss you're not purely tied and aligned with the video and so looking back maybe what I should have done has gone more explicit so these rooms are the future of commercials and if I had visuals of guys actually using those rooms to film commercials and I could show that perspective maybe that would have worked the truth is this video didn't have great b-roll that was easy to explain so what I should have done is probably canned the idea not made it in general and that's really what you need to

decide when you're going through this process what is the visual what is the hook format writing the hook is there Clarity and Alignment if there isn't you probably should throw out the video because there's always more ideas that you could make so that's really the process in a nutshell you have to have that Clarity and if you don't that's the difference between 10,000 views and 10 million views and look the reason that I can go so deep and I'm so nerdy on this stuff is because I live and breathe this content stuff all day long

and I'm making this channel because I'm trying to show my experiments and show my work to help other people grow with content but look if you don't want to have to worry about which hook format to use and how to exactly write it you don't want to take 60 minutes a day making videos that's completely fine I built sand castles which is a software to infuse all of these learnings and formulas and formats into it so all you have to do is put your video in and we'll do it for you we go through the

full diagnostic to figure out what is the right hook formula how should we frame it where is the best contrast it's all automatic so if you want to try that out sandcastles a have a free trial for you below that's the easiest way that you can close the gap on this without having to do all the work and guys if you like how I think about this stuff there is a ton more for free in the description I have a free contact Community called wavy world with over 13,000 people that are learning the advanced psychology

behind this stuff there's a free invite for you below make sure to grab that and keep me posted on what you guys want next keep the shares coming keep the comments coming until then we'll see you guys on the next one peace