Ep. 155 / How to Hook Your Audience in 3 Seconds or Less
SHOW NOTES:
Please leave a rating and review for the show!
++++++++++++++++++
Want to make videos that people actually click on and watch? In this episode, Kim Rittberg — award-winning marketer and media executive — breaks down the secrets behind a strong video hook. Discover the exact strategies you can use to grab attention right away and keep viewers engaged.
You will learn:
What a “hook” really is and why it’s the most important part of your video
The difference between visual hooks and headline hooks
Tips for writing curiosity-driven text overlays
How to use AI to generate clickable headlines
Easy and engaging ways to add visual interest without a big production budget
How to walk, move, or use props to keep attention high
Why it’s crucial to create for your target audience — not for everyone
Did you love today’s episode?
1. Take a screenshot and share it to your IG stories. Tag me @kimrittberg
2. Leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!
LISTEN BELOW! And don’t forget to ‘follow’ and leave a rating & review!
Click below to Follow, Review & Give a 5-star rating to Mom’s Exit Interview Podcast.
TRANSCRIPT:
Kim Rittberg: Ever wonder how people make videos where people are super compelled to watch it and they absolutely must click on that video that's called The Hook, and I'm going to show you how to make that. Nah, welcome to the exit interview with Kim Rittenberg. Do you work for yourself and want to supercharge your business while still having fun? Well, this is your go-to podcast, part MBA part to your squad. Every week, I'll be joined by top business owners who share the secrets to their success. After I found myself working during childbirth true story, I quit my executive media job to bet on myself fighting the fear and imposter syndrome to eventually earn six awards, an in-demand speaking career and features in Fast Company and Business Insider. Now, I'm here to celebrate all you rock stars betting on yourself, and I want to help you win. If you're self-employed, you're a founder, entrepreneur, coach, real estate agent, consultant or solo practitioner, and you want to learn about business development, revenue growth, marketing strategy, productivity, publicity, sales, social media, content creation, confidence and work-life balance, it's achievable. I promise this podcast is for you. Tune in every Wednesday to hear from remarkable founders and don't miss our Solo Friday episodes, a treasure trove of video and podcasting. Mini masterclasses with me. Exit the grind, enter success on your own terms. Don't forget to subscribe today and grab my free video tips at my website, kimrittberg.com.
If you've never heard the word hook before, now is the time to learn. Today I'm going to be teaching you all about how to hook people in to your videos. Hey everyone, I'm Kim Berg. I am a six time award-winning marketer, a former executive from Netflix People Magazine, and I spent over a decade in tea journalism and now I love helping people like you, business owners, people who are looking to have a bigger impact grow with video and podcast. So when we are talking about that word, the hook, it means exactly what you think it does. How do we hook people in to make them interested in watching our video? So when you step back, of course we're using video to connect with people, to build our credibility, to grow our impact, whether that's monetary or social, you just want more people to be connected to you.
So the idea of a video is even if your one minute video or three minute video or five minute video is super interesting, if you don't hook them in the first three seconds, there's no point in you making the video. Very few people are going to see it if you don't have a good hook. So depending on the type of content, you'll want to think about what does it mean to have a hook for my business, for my charity, for my social media content. But the main idea of a hook is really valuing the very first few seconds of every video and treating it like gold. It does not matter, even if your video is okay, if you have a great hook, people will watch it. But if you have a video that's awesome and you have a bad hook, no one will watch it.
(03:09)
So the very first few seconds of your video have to be awesome. How do you make it great? So crafting the hook, hook of the video is what hooks people in that can be visual. Something amazing, right? Ever watch a video and you see something happening and you need to watch it because it just looks cool. Maybe it's beautiful, maybe it's like a cliffhanger. Maybe it's an adorable dog. Maybe it's the most amazing house you've ever seen, whatever it is that is a visual hook and they're catching you. So when I worked in tv, one of the things that we had was like it had to be visual. Everything has to be visual. Nowadays on social media, you'll see a lot of the content that performs well isn't necessarily super visual. It's people sitting there and talking, but they lay in some more visual footage to keep your attention.
(03:58)
The very first seconds of a video has to be good, even if maybe your visuals are not super compelling, you're not skydiving, or your dog is not close to the screen, or it's a cute baby, you don't have something like that. You still also need a really good headline. So that's the text that goes on the first few seconds of the video. So for a video, for example, let's say you are making a video and you're a real estate agent and you're making a video you want to highlight of the home that you're talking about, you want to highlight something really incredible about that home. You don't just want to say address number. You want to say the fire pit that is going to make your s'mores dreams come true, or something like that, right? Featuring something awesome about the home instead of just the address.
(04:50)
If you are a coach and you're about to a leadership coach and you're about to advise people something about your framework and how you coach people, it's not just going to be like my framework. It's going to say how to avoid this leadership mistake or something like that. Something that makes people say, that's interesting. I want to know that that's peaking my curiosity. So when we're talking about hooks and headlines, that is really putting more thought and effort into the beginning. So we have the visual hook, which I will talk about in a second, and we're talking right now about the headline. There's two ways to craft it. Sometimes you'll get an idea for a video and you're like, oh yeah, I know what this video is going to be, be about, and this is the headline. But a lot of times we have sort of an idea, but we don't really have a hook.
(05:39)
I teach people around the country. I have this program called Video Bootcamp, and sometimes the students will come up with ideas, and the ideas are pretty solid thing. You need a little more work. I will recommend. AI is awesome for creating a catchier headline than you can. So you can go into whatever AI tool you want, chat gt, Claude, whatever, gr, anything you want. You can write my video is this, it is about this. Please come up with a few intriguing headlines for me to put on screen at the beginning of my video. So you're helping, you're telling AI to help you create that onscreen text with ai. As with everything else, you have to be very specific with what you want to make sure. You have to be the person who understands what should the video look like. AI is going to help you make it better.
(06:28)
So I love that for the headlines. I think it's super, super helpful. And again, you always really, when you're working with ai, you want to train it to know your voice, but getting an intriguing headline when you already have the content, you can just brainstorm on your own. You can use ai. The main question to ask yourself is, would this intrigue me? Would this intrigue the target audience? You're not trying to attract everybody. You're trying to attract the people who are interested in your topic. So don't get frozen by the idea of like, oh, well, I don't know. My friend wouldn't watch this, or, oh, my mom wouldn't watch this, or My cousin wouldn't watch this. You're only thinking about your ideal audience, whether that's a client or an investor, a friend, whatever your target audience is, that's who you're thinking about. Is this something they ask me a lot?
(07:19)
Is this something that would be interesting to them? So that's the headline. Now, when we're talking about the book, this can be really fun. So a lot of times you're making content, you're busy, you're a business person. You don't have all the time in the world to film all week long and then edit all week long. I get it. I worked in media where we had a team of people dedicated to making content, but just like you, I'm a business owner. I don't have time to make content all day either. So when we're talking about making the content, what are some ways that we come up with hooks that are visual but aren't super time consuming? That is a really, really important question to ask. What can we do for our business that will level up that video, make it visual, but won't take a million years or a million dollars?
(08:01)
I'll never ask you to spend a million dollars, but so one thing that we can do is when we think about the beginning of a video, so if you're talking about short form video, we're talking about a vertical video. So you can have some motion as you're coming into the frame that could be like this. So I am standing up and then I'm walking into the video as I start my very first point. So that could be really intriguing. People are like, where's Kim going? What's she doing? She seems like she's about to really dish something. So you can have this sort of thing where there's a little bit of motion, so you can be walking right into the video. You could be in the middle of writing something. You look up and you start talking. That's another idea, another great way. I love, love, love this.
(08:52)
If you can, without tripping and falling, don't hurt yourself. If you can walk around and talk to your camera, that is a very good hook. It's hard, not that it's hard to explain. It is one of the things that when people process videos, their brains are looking for cues that something interesting is happening. So as you're changing and you're moving, we're seeing different backgrounds, we're kind of moving with you. So that's a really great way and an easy way. So sometimes you don't have a lot of time. Maybe you're filming by yourself. Walking is a really, really good way to keep those visual cues, to keep the viewers interested in what you're doing. So just to recap, we talked about a visual hook being you can be walking into the frame frame, meaning the first second of the video, the frame is like the main screen of the video.
(09:48)
Sorry, that's a TV phrase. You could be walking into the frame. The second idea is you can be doing something, you can be writing a note. A student of mine had an idea which was about they bought a fridge for a client. I was like, okay, wine. You stand in front of the fridge with the door open. It's very intriguing. Why is this person going in? Are they getting ketchup? Are they showing me rotten milk? Whatever, something like that. I had a leadership coach talking about comparing energy to toiletries, right? You don't want to be squeezing the last bit out of the toothpaste. You don't want to do that to your employees either. So she kind of had that as a prop, like squeezing the toothpaste. All of these are good. They're visually intriguing. They're more interesting than just seeing someone talking on camera. So when we're talking about visual hooks, we have someone coming into the frame, someone walking into the very first second of the video doing actually doing something.
(10:47)
And then the third one is having you walk. So I really want to make sure, drop a comment into the YouTube video. If you're watching this on YouTube, make sure to drop a comment, message me on social media. Let me know which one you're doing, and if you use this tip, show me the video. So tag me in the video. I would love to see how you're using these tips. They do not need to be super complicated or super hard. They can actually be pretty easy, and I really want to see how you are putting this into practice for your own business. So my name is Kim Berg. I spent the first decade of my career in media at Inside Edition US Weekly. I launched their first ever video unit. I content for Netflix, and I love teaching people how to grow their impact through video and podcasts. It's really fun. I hope you get Confid on camera, get a sharper message, and then make great video and podcasts. So make sure to follow me. You can follow me on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and on a podcast, of course, the exit interview with Kim Rittberg. And I would love to see how you are using hooks and headlines to make better videos. Make sure to tag me.
Whether you're creating content for your brand, business, or passion project, this episode will help you stand out in a crowded feed.
Subscribe to Kim's YouTube Channel to Make Better Videos that Convert
FREE DOWNLOAD: Top 5 Tips To Be Confident on Camera Click Here
Follow host Kim Rittberg on Instagram & Subscribe to Kim's YouTube Channel to Make Better Videos that Convert