I Am That Content Creator Podcast

Ep#84 Crafting Hooks That Convert: Why People Scroll Past Your Content

• Kristen Werner & Mia Steel

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Ready to stop watching your carefully crafted content disappear into the digital void? In this episode, we tackle the number one reason your videos aren't performing: weak hooks that fail to stop the scroll.

The hard truth is that you have just three seconds—often less—to capture attention in today's hyper-stimulated social media environment. We break down exactly what makes an effective hook, exploring the power of layering visual elements (camera movement, bright colours, unexpected actions) with compelling text and spoken words. This combination creates an irresistible invitation that transforms passive scrollers into engaged viewers.

One game-changing strategy we share is how to test multiple hooks with the same content. Rather than constantly creating new videos, we show you how to download existing content, replace the hook, and repost—effectively 10x-ing your chances of going viral without starting from scratch. This approach mirrors professional ad testing methods and can dramatically improve your content performance with minimal additional effort.

The most valuable tool for improving your hooks? Study what stops your own scrolling. When content captures your attention, analyse why it worked and add these insights to your creative arsenal. Think of your hook as a party invitation the difference between...

"If you're not busy, maybe stop by" versus 

"First 10 people get a free...." Which would you respond to?

Want to skip the learning curve? Comment "Val" on our socials to access our viral hooks generator that we've trained with over 250 high-performing hooks and our expert knowledge. Start creating content that converts today!

💸 Join our FREE Workshop - Want to Know What it Feels Like to Get Paid as a Content Creator (even as a beginner)?

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Get out VIRAL Hook Generator & Social Media Content Creator Val & Betty 👉HERE

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Speaker 1:

Are you ready to master the art of creating content that converts?

Speaker 2:

Hey, I'm Mia, a mum of two who went from being a burnt out ambo to six-figure content creator in less than a year, all while navigating a late ADHD diagnosis.

Speaker 1:

And I'm Kristen, also a mum of two and a former corporate branding queen turned entrepreneur. My dyslexic brain sees marketing very differently, and that's my superpower, and together we're showing women like you how to master video marketing and create content that generates income, Whether you're just starting out or ready to scale. We are breaking down everything from landing brand deals to building your own empire.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to. I Am that Content Creator podcast where we turn scroll, stopping content into serious income.

Speaker 1:

No filters, no fluff, just real strategies from two neurodivergent mums who get it.

Speaker 2:

So let's turn your phone into a video marketing machine and let's go.

Speaker 1:

Let's go, guys, be professional guys, let's go.

Speaker 2:

Okay, there's that intro done.

Speaker 1:

Let's do what we do best. Welcome to the I Am that Content Creator Podcast. We're cutting through the noise to show you exactly how to create scroll-stopping content, land premium brand deals and build a thriving online business. No bullshit, just proven strategies to help you scale. I'm Kristen Werner. I'm joined here with Mia. How you doing?

Speaker 2:

Hello, hello I feel like we got there. We got there in the end. Yes, what's going on this week?

Speaker 1:

What's going on this week. This week we thought we'd dive into some practical things, a little hooky McHookster episode for you today. So why are people scrolling past your content? We're going to share with you why we think and usually you know, I'm sure you've all seen it, you've all gone I want the hook prompts, all of that. Hooks are massive. Like getting the right hook is everything, and we've got some ideas and some examples for you. So actually understand it, because I think it's all well and good to talk about hooks, but then getting an actionable example is really what we'd like to do with you today, because I know from watching very quick reels and TikToks they're fantastic.

Speaker 1:

But at the same time, actually getting in and understanding what it means to create a good hook I think is important, because a lot of the viral content that you may see with a good hook they say you know, the reason that you're still here is because of the hook, but you're still kind of like trying to unpack. Well, wait, wait, what do you mean? How did you do that? And it takes a lot of different. It's a bit of a formula, a bit of a little. If you make it a cake. Imagine you make a cake and you forget the eggs. We forget the self-raising flower it's not going to raise. So we're going to give you a couple of actionable tips for hookeroonies.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's very easy and I used to do this a lot too. I probably still do. Here and there I'll jump on tiktok to create a video, just off the drop of my hat, and I won't even think about the hook, and you know, the video flops. So most of your thought before you post a video, and in your scripting as well, is that you've got to hook them in. Spend more time concentrating on the hook, because then if the hook doesn't work, the rest of the video, no one's going to see it anyway. So you may as well put more effort into that hook.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so what does a good hook look like? There is visual hooks, so should we explain just a couple of visual hooks, what that actually means when it comes and there's lots of different ways to do it We'll just give you a couple of examples of what a visual hook can look like. And when it comes to a social media video, you literally have three seconds, even less than that because we're so time poor and so stimulated visually. So what could a visual hook look?

Speaker 2:

like Mia. So you're thinking of social media as the visual platforms, right, it's all about what people see, and so having a visual hook, lay it on top of a written and a spoken hook as well, is really important. Because if you don't catch them with your words in those first couple of seconds, then at least if you've got a visual hook, you've got that as well. And so visual hooks it doesn't have to be crazy fancy, big, bright colors. It could just be as simple as camera movement or putting on lipstick or doing something with your hands, because that's making people look at oh, what is she doing? It could be you're in a weird, unusual place or you're wearing a bright yellow jacket. It's all about the visual. And once you layer on your written and spoken hook as well, then you've got that sort of mixture of three hooks happening all at once.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so that could be. You know that calling out your audience text on screen. So instead of saying your audience, you might have it written text on screen. It might be you know speaking to. For example, if we just think about us, it might be mums 40 plus or women 40 plus, small business owners, content creators. You know, actually calling out your audience in the text.

Speaker 1:

Potentially it might be you walking into a room or there's some kind of movement with the camera as you're doing that and, like Mia said, with a bright colored something or um, you know one that's on TikTok and I know we've done it, Mia and ours is um, having something unusual, Like in one of our ads, Mia was pouring dishwashing liquid into a coffee cup, just creating something that then somebody's like hang on, and I think there's a few comments of people saying that. And I one day had a um, um, my little road mini mic on a spoon and there was comments like, oh my god, I love the spoon thing, and I was like, let's see, so it's, it's catching people because you're doing something that's not normal to them.

Speaker 2:

that's all part of the process yeah, and when people are scrolling on social media, if they, if you can catch their eye, you know they'll stop. And then, with the text on screen and calling out who your video is for is really, really important, because if they don't, if they can't relate to that video and understand that it is for them in those first three seconds, you're going to miss them. Yeah, you know we scroll really quickly and you hear the first couple of words. Do I want to listen to that? Does that resonate with me? Do I want to watch this? That decision-making process is so quick.

Speaker 1:

I think yeah, sorry go.

Speaker 2:

I was just going to say so. Calling out who this video is for works really well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and if you think of your hook as an invitation, you know you're sending an invitation to invite somebody into your content and so you know if you send out an invitation. You know you're sending an invitation to invite somebody into your content and so you know if you send out an invitation, then somebody is going to come to your party and enjoy your party. So you're putting an invitation to like, hey, come in. And then, once they're in, that's when you get to enjoy sharing your story, creating that bigger piece of content.

Speaker 1:

And I think what is lacking is you know when you create the piece of content and starting with the hey guys, just wondering if anybody here feels like this, are you someone that might not do this? Like those kinds of things, you've lost me instantly. And you know, with that, sometimes even I will create a TikTok or something and not have the hook in my head or not have that exact thing that I want to say in my head. But I kind of get it out and all of a sudden I'm editing it and then halfway through my video I'm like, oh there you are.

Speaker 1:

And so you can go back and often I'll do that and cut there and then take that clip to the front. Now, it doesn't always then make sense as a free-flowing thing, but what you do then is you're also creating a space where somebody comes in partway through your conversation and they're like what did they do?

Speaker 2:

Hang on.

Speaker 1:

that didn't make sense and that's another way to hook people in is to kind of disrupt the thought pattern and not give them a start to finish story, but give them a highlight and then you can go into your story.

Speaker 2:

It's like they're walking into the room mid-conversation like, oh, what are you talking about? Yeah, that's a really good one. And you know what you can do. If you had a video that you put a lot of effort into and you're really proud of it and it was really, really valuable, and you posted it and it flopped, try it again, take the hook out and replace it with something and chuck it out there again, and you just never know. And that's what you do when you're running paid ads as well. You do hook variations, so you test out maybe five, six, seven different hooks with the same video and you'll see a clear winner, and then you double down on that. And so you can be doing that with your organic content as well.

Speaker 1:

And so for people that might not understand that, mia, in terms of they might be newer to content creation or they're just in the jam of it Can you just explain? You kind of did them, but I really want people to see this clearly. So you're not creating content over and over again, all new, brand new ideas, but you've got to take that piece of content and then you're going to create different hooks. Do you want to just explain that a little bit further so people can really get it, because I don't think there's not a lot of people doing it. Well, but when you do, then you see results.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. And so when you think about mainly TikTok Instagram is moving this way as well your videos get pushed out to a For you page of new people. So you know, I just had a perimenopause moment.

Speaker 1:

We're all pausing for Mia's perimenopause. So that was your face. It's not up to your face. It's kind of like just completely went uh, yep, totally lost it.

Speaker 2:

It's not good.

Speaker 1:

I can take this to my doctor as proof. Yes, so this one time I was doing a podcast and my brain just actually stopped mid-sentence literally stopped was about.

Speaker 1:

If somebody takes, like, how do you take your piece of content and then give it three or four more hooks, like how do you do that? But I think there's a lot of people that don't that wouldn't think, oh, I could take that piece of content that was really good, I could download it and then I could add a new hook. What? So that? I think we need to make that really fucking clear.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. And so, as I was saying was yeah, all your content is most of your content is going out to new people, so they're not going to know if you post very similar videos, so don't worry about posting out the same type of content over and over and over again. But if you can test content and change the hook every time, then there's going to be more chance of that video taking off. And so what essentially you're doing is you've got your video in CapCut or if you edit it in TikTok, you just cut out the hook and just splice it and then you record another one and edit it in that to the front of the video. Doesn't matter if you're wearing something different, what have you? Just play around with the hooks and keep posting that video with a different hook each time and you'll yeah, you could 10x the chance of more people seeing that video just because of the hook.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and there's you know there's hooks and things that people have done the same video and personally I've done the same video a couple of times and changed things out and the results have been huge. And sometimes they are not as good as the first time. Sometimes they're better. So it's worth doing and testing. And again, this is all around testing your content because you're going to get like Mia said, it's going out to usually a new audience anyway. That audience are not sitting at home thinking you know what? I reckon she posted that three days ago Like no one's got time for that shit and even if they do, it doesn't matter. Like it takes so long to get these messages across over and over again. So it's really important to test that and not be afraid to test that. I think too often I know that I'm guilty of this creating new content like, oh, I have to think of something new. Oh, it always has to be something new and fabulous, where you really just got to do something and do it well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and if you can understand hooks and how they work and how important they are when you go to run paid ads, you know it tells you at a 50% hook rate and you know shit, that's good. So understanding how important hooks are for when you go to run paid ads or even when you're creating content for a brand and they're using them as ads. So having a hook rate of you know, below 20%, the ad's going to flop and they're going to waste money on that ad. So really work on your hooks and look at the metrics and see are my hooks hitting well, are they not? How can I change them? How can I add to them? How can I layer to them? And just test, test, test, test, test.

Speaker 1:

And really, at the end of the day, the only way you are going to get information back and understand hooks better is by doing them. And that's, like you know, it's why we created Val, our viral hooks gal, val. If you want Val, then she's in the show notes or you can comment on one of our posts, val, and we'll send you the link to her. But basically, we have trained her with over 250 viral hooks our knowledge, our expertise to make sure that she's going to craft that hook for you. Now she's going to ask you a few questions. When you first jump in there. She's a chat GPT trained viral hook gal, but it's going to help you niche down and get viral hooks. So then go and test all of them that she gives you with the same end piece of content and Betty, her little bestie that's in there, she's always going to help you create a piece of content and a script to get it going. So that's why that little duo is so fantastic. But in doing that, all you're doing with this is building the confidence to keep creating and getting that feedback from your audience.

Speaker 1:

And if we think about it like that invitation, for example, imagine that invitation has the most juiciest hook. That's like the first 10 people in the door get a million dollars right. And that just lands somewhere and you pick it up. You're like I'm in, I'm in, that's the invitation for me. It doesn't say your name, it doesn't say who you are, it doesn't say anything about you, but it's loud in your lap Like great, I'm in, I'm on the first 10. And then you get in there.

Speaker 1:

Once you're in there, then me as a creator, I get to take you on the journey. I get to take you through the party. I get to introduce you to the people. I get to take you through my story. Now you're either going to continue is you're inviting somebody into your content and then, once they're in, then it's your job to take them further. It's your job to tell a story, it's your job to become magnetic to them. But if they're not getting that invitation in that first little minute, like if that invitation lands on their lap and it says so, like if you're not busy in the next kind of 10 minutes, if you just like we could come in here and you can hang out with me and say I scroll past that, but if I'd gone in there I could have won $10 million. So that's the importance of a hook and why we're so passionate about you getting that right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Be more conscious of them, look into them, study them, use the AI tools you know, and if you're a UGC creator, again, this is where you can make more money with your content. Offer the brand more hooks. Brands need to test content. Do the same video with three or four extra hooks.

Speaker 1:

And understanding. I've just actually now completely lost my thought too.

Speaker 2:

Just completely lost it. Yeah, Barry is hitting hard today.

Speaker 1:

What were you saying? So the other thing that you can do, which is really important to do, is notice what stops you when you're scrolling, because that's a huge indicator of a hook that fucking works. Like, how many times as a content creator, tell me or tell yourself, cause I'm not there in the room with you, but tell me if you're listening to this, shake your head, yes or no. If you're scrolling on a piece of content and you watch it and you're like, wow, that was awesome. And then you got to create a piece of content, you're like, oh, I don't know how to hook people in, but yet you've stopped on something before, potentially several times. So it's have a, have a saved folder, have a Trello board.

Speaker 1:

Of all the times that you stop on a piece of content, actively think to yourself why did I stop? What made me stop? What was good about that? And answer those questions, because that's what's going to make you better at being a content creator and better at getting these hooks right, like AI can't do all of that for you. You need to understand what did I like about that, what made me stop? What made me share, what made me say, what made me whatever? That is key. Do not forget that, because I think sometimes we underestimate the power of like oh, that's why I love that piece of content. I could use that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you think about how much content you're competing against in this big, massive digital sea. So if you get attention, it's got to be a hook. And watch big creators too, because you'll understand how important their hooks are. That's why they're big.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of just what we want to talk about in terms of the hook. So it's a visual hook. So think about movement, think about what you're wearing, where you are, where you're located that's a visual hook. Maybe what you're holding, how you're holding it, you want to think about the text on screen hook.

Speaker 1:

So what is it that you're calling out? What is it that you're not saying? But somebody's reading, like they're getting all this stimulus while they're watching. What are you calling out in that moment? And then how you're holding them or taking them like what's the invitation for somebody to come into your world? Start thinking about that. That and also go to the show notes, get viral vow, vow, a viral hooks, gal, um and betty the link is in there or, if you're watching this on socials, just comment vow and we'll send you that. But that's probably the most important things to get your hooks right and test, test, test, test and then also um, replacing the hook. So getting a piece of content that worked and then testing different hooks is really, really key to the whole process and no more starting your videos with hey, hey guys, just no, no cut out as much air time as you can.

Speaker 1:

Make it short, make it sharp, make it crisp, make it clear. That could be a song. All right, we're gonna do our new little, our new little end of podcast fun chat. Hope you enjoyed last week's. Yeah, I know, I know part of us is like a bit nervous to put that one out there, but, like you know, this is us, so if you don't like us, sorry that's how we roll would you rather let's jump into this week's, would you rather so?

Speaker 1:

these, would you rathers, will probably let you into, how mia and I think our sense of humor. So apologies if you don't like it, but you know what. We hope you do it. If you've got any good, would you rathers like hit us up in the dms, share them with us, because we want to share them with you guys, because we look, we're getting some giggles out of. If you're not, also let us know that and we can cut this section out. But we get giggles. Sorry, sorry, right now. Mia, would you rather make out with a goat, but nobody knows? No one knows. Or would you rather not make out with a goat, but everybody thinks you make out with a goat and talks about it? This is tough. Last week was tough. It's not on TikTok and we just lost it because we were like so stupid that it's so great. But like what I love about these is part of my brain actually goes. I don't know what would I do. You've got to actually think about it you do.

Speaker 2:

So would I rather make out with a goat and no one knows about it, or just not do it and everyone knows about it or thinks I did.

Speaker 1:

And it's in a really classy way. It's not in like a bestiality way, like I just want to make that really clear before we continue on this. Like, this is like a loved up kind of way, just a peck yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, it was just a peck, I'd probably kiss the goat. To be honest, I'd kiss the goat?

Speaker 1:

I think I would too, like I mean, there's something about goats too. I'm like they're so quirky and they're so weird that I love them for being that rogue.

Speaker 2:

And the teeth. Oh, and their eyes. Yeah, I'd give the goat a little kiss.

Speaker 1:

I think I would too. It would be better than people talking about it and you didn't do it and like they're talking about it for life and you're like no, no, no, that's not the jam. Oh God we can't help ourselves and we're sorry. If you hate this segment, then just let us know. But if you're kind of like this is weird and these guys are rogue, I'm here for it, then let us know your would you rather, and we'll share it with the world all right guys all right guys. See you next week.