My wife had already fed our dog. Undeterred, the dog sat by her bowl with an innocent yet hungry look. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker and gave her a second meal.
See what I did there?
I used a hook to grab your attention and encourage you to keep reading. If you’re reading this, it worked.
Liz Willits defines a hook as the first thing that catches your audience’s eye. It should motivate your audience to read or view the rest of the content. Chief copywriter and owner of Content Phenom, Liz, shares this advice in her Content Marketing World talk, Hook Your Audience: How to Grab Attention in a Crowd of Content.
Importance of a great hook
A strong hook is the most important element of copywriting, says expert Joseph Sugarman. “If you can’t capture your audience’s attention right away, you’ve lost them,” he notes.
Liz says without a great hook, the amazing content assets you create might never be successful. She explains hooks have many variations, including:
- Website headline or hero image
- First line (or first few lines) of copy
- Video thumbnail
- First few seconds of dialogue in a video
- Instagram image
Think about the papers you wrote in school. Your hook operates like a thesis statement. “Every line of text, every image, every video around your hook or your headline should prove your thesis statement, your hook,” Liz says.
Hooks should captivate, grab attention, and be unique. They should also be true. “Bad and unethical hooks are lies. They’re manipulative; they grossly exaggerate. They don’t deliver on what they promise. It’s all sizzle and no steak, and they feel icky,” Liz says.
Liz says while bad hooks could produce short-term gains, they have long-term consequences, including:
- Ethical challenges (it’s just wrong)
- Legal risks
- Reputation damage
- Negative brand association
- Loss of trust
- Loss of engagement
MrBeast uses hooks effectively
Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, knows the importance of great hooks. He has one of the most-followed channels on YouTube. Ten months ago, MrBeast had 186 million subscribers. By July 2024, it was 289 million.
Liz says MrBeast’s hooks start with his video titles. She shares some examples:
- Lamborghini vs. World’s Largest Shredder
- Every Country On Earth Fights For $250,000!
- Ages 1 to 100 Fight for $500,000
- 7 Days Stranded At Sea
- I Got Hunted by the Military
- I Built the World’s Largest Lego Tower
I find the titles outlandish (in a good way). I’m curious to find out which country won the $250,000, how MrBeast found his way from sea to land, and what the largest Lego tower looks like.
Liz says MrBeast’s thumbnail images serve as great hooks, too:
“They’re very interesting, they’re very colorful, and they stand out on YouTube. He puts a lot of effort into these because he knows that (the thumbnail) is an important part of his hook or his headline,” says Liz.
The opening lines of dialogue are also important. When I see a new selection on my favorite streaming service, I usually decide in the first two minutes whether to continue watching. Liz says that MrBeast’s opening lines are intentional and scripted to hook viewers.
Here are two examples:
- “Behind me is an assassin, and if he stabs me with this rubber knife by the end of the day, he wins a hundred grand.”
- “We are now stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean. And there goes our boat. We are now stranded for seven days.”
You don’t need to copy MrBeast, but Liz says your brand can take ordinary ideas and frame them in extraordinary, unique, and appealing ways. Let’s consider an example.
Devising a new hook for a SaaS company
Liz worked with Motion, a software company whose product helps users with time management and scheduling. It builds to-do lists to schedule meetings at optimal times and block times on your calendar for work. “The result is you stay focused and know exactly what you should work on next. Don’t forget about deadlines; spend less time in meetings,” Liz explains.
Before getting to her content hooks, Liz did customer research, interviews, user testing, and market research. She learned why users loved Motion, how they used it, and what value it provided. This research guided her approach to hooks and helped her develop new and unique copy ideas.
The original homepage opened with this headline:
“Not another productivity tool that makes you do more work. We help you work less by cutting distractions by 70%”
The supporting copy noted that Motion saved users two hours per day.
Liz’s research found competing products used similar messaging. So, she reframed those ordinary ideas in a unique and appealing way. Here’s what she came up with:
Headline: There are now 13 months in a year.
Subhead: Motion increases productivity by 137%. With automation and AI that intelligently plan your day, schedule meetings, and build the perfect to-do list.
“It’s intriguing, it’s interesting, and obviously, a 13-month year does not exist. And so, we’re creating some cognitive dissonance here that gets people to keep reading and gets people to continue on down the page. And that was our primary hook,” Liz says.
A great headline creates a sizzle, but the supporting copy is the steak.
Liz ensured that the remaining copy proved the headline statements true. She also updated the page with user-interface-forward imagery with a fun look. She used vibrant colors to stand out from competitors.
3 hook ideas you can use
Liz offers three prompts with examples to create hooks for your content. They tackle approaches for fear, contrarians, and numbers.
Fears (and resolving those fears)
Prompt:
[Audience] are afraid of [specific fear]. But they shouldn’t be, because [why the specific fear isn’t something to worry about].
Prompt example:
Content marketers are afraid that ChatGPT is going to take their job. But they shouldn’t be because content marketing is so much more than writing content.
Use case:
Liz shows a LinkedIn post she published. It begins:
ChatGPT won’t replace your content marketing team.
Here’s why:
The opening line hooked the readers’ fears about generative AI taking their job.
Contrarian or counterintuitive ideas
Prompt:
Everything I know about life says otherwise, but [almost-unbelievable statement].
Prompt example:
Everything I know about life says otherwise, but coffee is dead. Nobody drinks it.
Think about your industry. What could replace “coffee is dead” with a seemingly unbelievable but true fact about your industry?
Numbers
Prompt:
Use specific numbers.
Prompt example:
I have an 84-page Google Doc.
Use case:
Liz used the 84-page example in a LinkedIn post. The number prompted readers to wonder why she had such a long document. They continued reading to learn why.
TIP: Extend the decimals in metrics, such as 99.98274% for uptime or 215.1223% for a product ROI.
Hook, then reel in the catch
You reached the end of this article — the hook worked. What caused you to click through and read the article? It could have been:
Or maybe it was something else.
To use a fishing analogy, the hook is essential in getting initial engagement (that is, taking the bait). The surrounding content reels the person in.
What great hooks will you create, as Liz says, to take ordinary ideas and frame them in extraordinary, unique, and appealing ways?
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute