The single most reason why your reels or short form videos don't perform are bad hooks. And I kid you not, fixing and understanding your hook game will get you views. Lots of them. So recently, thousands of creators applied to get their hooks analyzed by me and most of them make these simple mistakes that crush retention,
make people swipe away before they even know what's up, and as a result of that, make the algorithm
hate you. So today, I'll pick three creators and fix their hooks with some tricks and strategies that have helped my clients gain millions of views and that you can actually instantly implement yourself as well. Right. So the first issue is probably one of the biggest problems I see with hooks and it's this. Think of people swiping through their reels feed as being on autopilot and a lot of creator gurus talk about this but they never really explain the reason why and how to deal with this. So when people swipe, they basically have this automated muscle memory at this point. They keep swiping until something hits their brain receptors where the brain goes, that
is interesting.
And ideally, I've actually done lots of research on that. A lot of people recently actually swipe swipe swipe, and then it takes the brain a little longer to kinda process it, and then they swipe back again. And this is seems to be like a big major trigger indicator for the algorithm at this point. And because of all of that, this process happens so fast that you need to carefully
construct your hooks to basically hit those triggers as fast and as best as possible to get people from your target audience to basically do that. Stop and think and be like So essentially what you wanna do at all times is you wanna open loops and don't close them as long as possible. Basically, keeping them tangling at all times. And when you do close the loop, you wanna open another one. This is essentially what we can see clearly here with our first creator, Max.
Malgo.
Max. Let's just call her Max. So let's just take a look at this video right here. Things that don't do being lean over 40. So based on the cover, sounds interesting. But let's take a look first.
I definitely don't drink of anything. Okay. So at this point, we're already past the hook. And here's the thing. People at this point don't care. People don't even know what the context of the video is. And this is how you need to think when especially crafting your hooks. People sit, they swipe on autopilot, and then they see this frame starting with this. And somebody in the kitchen saying, I definitely don't cut out carps.
I'm like, okay. Cool. But like why? And why should you cut out carps? I don't get the context. Right? It's like going to a hardware store somebody and comes up to you and it's like, I never pull out. And you're like,
what?
But he's like, yeah. I mean, the screw's obviously halfway through a project. I always finish what I start. You already notice here. There's actually a very fine line from being borderline criminal
and getting people's scroll stopping attention. Right? And the fix to that whole thing is simply adding context.
As easy as that. So the first thing I would do here is slap that context right at the top of the screen. Let's just do this together. So let's slap
on the safe safe zone. The first thing you can actually see already from the the first sort of frame here, not really the the actual first frame, but the hook is that this sling right here
is actually overlapping
with the comment box. You can instantly see it's just way too big and honestly, it doesn't look good. So the first thing I wanna do here is literally remove
the caption just to show you how much cleaner that is. So we're just gonna hit the generative build. So boom.
Looks pretty looks pretty good actually. Looks a lot cleaner. Captions usually can be a lot smaller, but let's not even get into that. The second thing is, like I said, adding context to this whole thing. And by adding context, I wouldn't just say like the cover image of this video says, things I don't do being lean over 40. I mean, it's not bad, but I try to create even more of a curiosity gap with this whole thing to basically force people to watch even further. Because suddenly they have this whole, you know, open loop in their head and they're like, okay. Now I need to watch further. To kind of create that and be able to craft that, you need to understand your target audience in in an actual way. Right? And in that case, the content of the reel itself, if we watch the whole video, is a gold mine. Because basically she says, I'm lean, over 40, but I definitely do eat carbs.
And that in itself challenges a common belief, one of the strongest forms of creating hooks. Right? So remember that. In this case, just to make it a little shorter and a little snappier, I'd say lean at 45
and I eat carbs every day or something like this. So let's just
You know, I'll just do it here right in front of you so you can see because you know, the second part of this whole thing is actually making this look
better. But let's get into that. And I eat carbs every day.
K. So obviously, we're not gonna make this look.
Carbs every day. And if we have here a safe zone, we can already see it. It needs to be smaller. Way smaller than you might think. Also,
I might play around with
this. I mean, it doesn't look bad. Then you can make it a little bigger.
Carbs every day.
Just make this a little there.
And,
you know, one thing you can instantly see right there is
that the way this whole shot is framed, and it's actually a big part of why
people actually stop scrolling,
is that it basically overlaps with this part right here. And there's just no way there's basically clutter. This one is clearly a kitchen. This is a person. This one is
safe zone, safe space to put your text, but this is virtually unusable.
So, you know, there's almost no way of making this look good. One thing you could do at all times is just slap in some some background
thing right there. As we can see, looks a little too big, so make it a little smaller.
I eat carbs every day. Right? Already not that bad,
to be honest, if you ask me.
Few things you could play around with. Just a few extra lessons right here for you guys. Is that now you can play with font,
weight, for example, in I eat.
You put this a little smaller, like medium,
and carbs
every day, also like medium.
And suddenly,
it's just way easier for the eye,
basically.
You know, as you can see right here. So you kinda read this. I actually like it quite a lot. Right? But
just to kind of make you understand that,
yeah, the hook is cool. The spoken hook is cool. It opens up some sort of curiosity gap with what she says and what she has here. You know, this challenge is a common belief. But all of this is still pretty off. So let's actually try to fix that. And what I'm gonna do is I'll pull this picture into chatty bitty and actually try to create a nice looking frame
to just prove the point for you right here. Create a real shot where you put her into the frame. Nice lighting, natural. In a kitchen with a big bowl of unhealthy carbs in the bottom half of the screen. I wrote this because I want to create even more sort of a contrast because, you know, curiosity gaps and stuff like this. Girl stopping visual hook real. Aspect ratio nine by 16. Let's just see what it will come up with. Alright. So awesome.
This actually looks very close.
Man,
this is just insane. Let's just take this one. Just to prove a point, let me just put this right here. It kinda overlaps so I'm gonna flip the colors. A very easy way. Black and white, white on black. It's all the same. You know, if we overlay this, still pretty good. And you can just see basically difference,
right, of
a shot like this and a shot like this. Especially if you have some nasty carbs right there, maybe make them even crazier,
more unhealthy,
and suddenly people are gonna have a reason to stick around and be like, really? What's she doing? How does she do it? I love
noodles. Right. Next one, Stefan from Slovakia. His problem is actually getting reached and I can actually instantly see why. So let's go step by step right here. So first of all, the first thing the first impression that I have is amazing great pictures, especially these ones. And you can understand what's going on. Carousels are always better than actual pictures.
But here's the thing. Even with carousels,
you need you need a hook in some form. In this case, it's really
there there's no hook. There's just a picture, you know, and it's a different version
of the same picture. Now to kinda come back to the elements of every hook needs to contain is first of all, a, you know, like a setup of something
that makes people in your target audience actually care and ideally plans
some sort of picture in their high
Heinz hits. And that gives them a reason to stick around because they want that, you know, question to be answered at some point. Because that's exactly what they're interested in and something that they ideally identify with. So with that being said, the profile that you have also has to sort of pass this. It's exactly what I'm looking for. It's what I what's interesting for me, uh, sort of test. And that one is totally off here because this is the first part of the profile. By the way, you're from Slovakia and this is Bratislava.
I hang out there quite quite a lot actually. Most people who find you through reels actually come to this feed. And if you take a look here,
that is totally off. Right? There's a big mismatch between the photo feed and actually the reels feed. And here there's basically great pics but no hooks at all. And here's actually bad
reels if you ask me. If we just take a look at this one right here.
Honestly,
pretty bad reels. I mean, that's kinda funny.
Very very bad reels to be honest. And bad hooks.
Right? And that instantly takes away all the credibility that you have. So let's just take a look at this one. Who can relate?
Okay. Let's mute this here. But
basically, talk about the hook. Who can relate
and then this first frame right here. Looks pretty bland. Right? What is the need? Ask yourself. What is the need you fulfill your target audience with this? What is the question
that you wanna
plant in people's head? Who can relate is not a strong question.
Because I'm like, I don't know what this even is about so I'm gone. Right? So to me this kinda looks like it's trying to farm views like, you know, especially with this twist at the end there. But you know, it's not really serving a purpose. Not really talking to your actual target audience which is I guess people
who are into your photography. Right? And the thing is, especially about photography accounts on Instagram, seeing as this was the first big platform for photographers,
things have changed quite a bit. Right? It's not just about photos anymore, unfortunately.
Right? And I can kinda understand the frustration here. Lots of photographers have. But, you know, these days are over because there's just a million photographers
and, you know, taking pictures is a skill set, but there's just a lot of people out there. Right? So what you actually need to focus on with all these things is thinking about
the story within the photo, the emotional connection within the photo. Right? Making people relate with either the photo or the photographer ideally. Right? Again, why? Because there's a gazillion photographers out there and you're not special. That is until they get to understand your personality or your why or, you know, the emotions behind it, like I said. So, you know, again, just this one
take a look at this picture.
Like, just a bunch of pictures. Unfortunately, I don't understand what's going on right here.
Not even a voice over.
Oh, this one looks cool. Let's take a look.
I need to mute this.
But yeah. Pictures, cold pictures, but that's, you know, that's just about it. Now let me show you an example from a former client of of mine who was going through the career mentorship at basically from zero, and he's doing every all of these things obviously that I talked about right now pretty pretty well. This is Constanti. He's in somewhat of a different photography niche, but also a very very saturated one, the wildlife photography one. Let let's just take a look at some of his examples. Obviously, for example, my photos ten years ago
versus
now.
Right? And it's also basically just showing pictures, but suddenly we have a connection. First of all, we see where we we see him in some crazy gear with a crazy camera in some crazy setting. So a story instantly unfolds. And what is the question are in my head? First of what is he doing? Is he a very professional photographer and what's gonna happen? Because now I'm invested ten years ago. He's been doing this for a while. He's actually looks pretty young still. So, you know. Then continues to go, but we'll just talk about the hooks right here. Not bad photos, but some are kinda bad. And then again, my photos now.
Tada.
Better or not. And that doesn't matter in this case. Actually, the quality of the photos doesn't matter that much in this case because people are ideally, are gonna fight anyway in the comments and that would that's what makes people go viral. But it's basically
people getting brought on the journey. Right? It's suddenly you're like with him. He shows some emotion as well, smiling somewhere here, you know, for example.
And it's such a different frame if you ask me. Right? So people are gonna be like like, how can I create photos like you, man? Like, why did you how can you travel? How why where did you learn all of this and stuff like this? And then, you know, people ask you this, obviously, it's the whole monetization avenue
because you can teach people that and suddenly your life is just changing directions in in ways you've never basically thought about before. So whereas if we go back to Stephan's videos, zero emotional connection. Even with the cool like these ones are amazing. I love these. But even there,
right, the connection is just not there because, you know, we don't even get to the point of looking at the videos more closely because we just don't care because there's so many photos out there. Right? So to recap here, think about what major pain points your audience actually cares about and then make that first frame and hook so compelling that people just need to keep watching. Right? Try to figure out whether your hook makes viewers have a question or not. So go back to your hooks and think about what is the question you want people to pop in their head when watching this. And in this case, this is not even about photography.
I don't even know what's going on versus, right, something clearly, even at one that's not performing.
I mean, that's the same kinda example right here, but
something totally different. Now I'm anticipating what's the shot. You know, why why did it get a 100 k? Look, beautiful. Delivers on the promise right away. Actually, elevates it. Beautiful. Awesome. Alright. Last one is Ella, a morning coffee creator, and she says she struggles with views and a stagnant following. So let's take a look at one video from her.
I'm gonna put some different music in there because YouTube's gonna flag it. But remember this video by the way, we've kinda pulled her through the hook generator
already at some point in in one of our recent videos. Probably you don't remember because nobody seems to watch this damn thing. But essentially, have a free hook generator that where you could screenshot this whole thing, pull it in, and here's what the hook generator actually said. It gave this whole thing a hook score of three out of 10. It said that I would say this hook sucks, and I actually agree because
there's zero curiosity
and no emotional trigger in there. Remember? Very similar to the things we talked about before. And if we look here, first of all, everything looks kind of cluttered, So we don't even know, like, we're it's even so so cluttered here that there's no real focus on this latte,
and it doesn't kind of stand out, and this just clutters it too much. Plus the text overlays with all the other things as well as, honestly, this even makes me more confused here just because it's all like a mash of a lot of things coming together. Based off of all the principles that we talked about before, adding a picture, I need a question actually,
making the first frame decluttered
and actually opening some sort of curiosity
loop, curiosity gap, here's what I would do right here. And for this case, let's go back to our old friend Chatchubby Tea because I don't wanna go downstairs and create a coffee. I can't do that, honestly. Otherwise, I would have a coffee account. Well, let's just pull this in there, and I say create me an aesthetic instrument real first frame shot of a vanilla blueberry iced latte in a glass. I give some context, blah blah blah. Doesn't matter, but let's see what it comes up with. Here's what it came up with.
Looks pretty good actually. Honestly, it looks pretty pretty good. Man, it looks so real. But let's just pull this in to Photoshop and let's just compare the two examples right there. As you can see right here, it's a total difference. It's like night and day. And honestly, you might be like, this is way harder to create. I need like cameras and stuff like this. You actually don't. With your phone, if your phone is less than, let's say, four years old, you can recreate this shot basically without having any extra equipment apart from maybe a light, but then again if you have a window in your kitchen, easy to do. Right? Just notice that here like all the shadows coming together and in the wall, no depth in the image and stuff like this. Total difference. Right? Now, with that being said, this looks actually pretty cool. Looks actually a little similar here as well. One thing I can see is that this blueberry thing don't ask me if it really looks like this. Let's just say. The first thing I would add here is a visual hook, a text hook. Sorry. Text hook. This is this in and itself is a visual hook already. We don't wanna give away like she does here, vanilla blueberry iced latte, because maybe people in her target audience might be like, okay. This is something weird, but I would see this. I'd be like, it's not nothing weird. I just don't feel like it right now. I'm gonna swipe away. Whereas, you want people even like me, who are remotely interested on interesting coffees to think, that
is interesting. I I wonder what that is. I wonder how it tastes. Right? Thinking about the question. So the first thing I would do is basically open the curiosity
gap here and say something like, this coffee should not taste good, for example.
Not. And then, you know, same old spiel. We're just gonna create some background overlay that Instagram's gonna do anyway for you. Oh, let's make it white, for example. Should not taste good. Instantly better.
One thing from before,
instead of playing around with the font weight, we can play around with the color picker. Notice how if I use red, it instantly looks a little off and cheapish. It still looks cool.
But honestly honestly, it's see, in in this case, to make things cool, just play around with it. But not I mean, why not? Let's just use the red one. Why not? Put a bunch of dots here just to open it more.
There you go. Look at this. But now my friends, we're getting even deeper because that in itself is already a strong hook. Way better to this. Let's open the loops even more. Because if you look, coffee should not taste good. Cool. Opens a loop. But instantly we kinda see, okay, has something to do with blueberry. So I'm like, I already kinda get half the answer. So I solved it myself. So there's no need for me to keep watching. So here's what I would actually do. Sneaky little trick that I would do here to make this even crazier. First of take the blueberries,
blur them. Look at this.
And you blur them even more just so people kind of get a sense of what's going on. And then what I want is something like this.
Honestly,
I think yellow is better. But again, a lot of the times I would actually recommend you to do it with any with Photoshop or with whatever you have until you kinda get a feel for what looks good and how to kind of edit elements in there. You just play around with it. And you can see this one is actually See, I would have never thought about this color. I'd be like yellow, red.
But like just doing that with the whole composition here. Now I lost it. This looks actually pretty pretty cool. Let's do some outer glow
because I'm a nerd. There you go.
And suddenly you have a first frame where you're like, what is this?
And then you basically show what to do. And don't give away this thing until all the way at the end. But this is all part of another video but you could just see night and day difference. So if you wanna get your accounts and content reviewed for free, link is in the description. And if you implement these things and you're still stuck, obviously, it's because your whole content strategy is off and the rest of your video is off. So watch this video next and I'll walk you through a process that will make you go grow better than ever before.