Hello and welcome back to the part-time creator Academy. In this module, we're gonna be covering the hook, substance, and payoff framework. And we'll also be diving into each aspect and going over how they each play into your video and why they're important.
The first thing to talk about is the structure of a viral video and the format you should be following for every single video to give it the best chances of going viral. This structure is super important and is one of the most crucial parts to making your video go viral and doing it predictably. And the format is hook, substance, and then payoff.
Now let's break it down real quick.
1. The hook makes up the first five to seven seconds of your video. Its purpose is to persuade the viewer to watch the rest of your video. It proposes some sort of a question in the viewer's mind, which makes them stick around and wanna see more.
2. The substance is the next part. This is where you give value to your audience to keep them watching as long as possible. The idea here is to make this part as engaging as you can because this will be where most people will probably start feeling bored and uninterested and potentially scroll. This is also the section that serves to increase your watch time and again, tells the algorithm that your video is good, which leads to you getting more views.
3. The payoff is the part of the video where you satisfy the curiosity that you introduced during the hook. This part should be around the last five to 10 seconds of your video and is essentially the reward to the viewer for why they stuck around and watched your whole video.
If you miss one of those pieces, it's gonna be really hard for your video to get more than just a couple hundred views and it'll totally flop. If you go into TikTok or Instagram right now and scroll until you find a video that has over a million views, I guarantee you that if you break that video down, it will follow this framework.
Okay, so now that you know what the whole framework is, let's break it down even more. First things first, I'm gonna be diving into the hook. This is the most important part of your video. As I mentioned before, a hook is the scroll stopper that takes place at the first five seconds of your video and gives the viewer a reason to watch the rest of your video. If your hook sucks and people always scroll in the first couple of seconds, but the rest of your video is literally the best video on the face of the planet, it's gonna get no views, it doesn't matter because people will scroll away before they get to the best part.
Your goal with the hook is to make it as engaging as possible so that more people make it past the first five seconds and watch more of your video. Typically, your hook should do one thing really, really well, and that one thing is to put a question into your viewer's mind. This will be the reason why the viewer sticks around past the first five seconds and watches the remainder of the video. We call this opening the loop. You open the question loop so that the viewer feels like they can't move on from your video until they close the question loop and have the question answered.
Now, there are two ways to propose questions in their mind or opening the loop:
- Auditory hook: uses audio to strike curiosity in the viewer. So this will be things like talking to the camera, a voiceover, things like that.
- Visual hook: uses visuals to strike curiosity in the viewer. This will be things like something unexpected happening, a strange sight, or something that we found that works quite well is showing the before and after of a transformation.
These are also not exclusive. So the best way to make a hook is to incorporate both auditory and visual hooks into your content to really strengthen the effectiveness of the hook. For example, there's this video where for the hook, we show a before and after, and at the same time, we had a voiceover proposing a question to the viewer to think about. What's the difference between 8-bit and 10-bit video? Welcome back. This video went on to get over a million views on Instagram, and this video alone got us over 18,000 followers.
But how do you actually make a compelling hook? Well, there are actually two rules that you can follow that will help you make a hook for your video that is as engaging as possible. If you follow these two rules, you'll have no problem creating hooks that make your videos perform well.
1. The hook should give the viewer questions. Like I mentioned before, this is the most important aspect of a hook. This is the fundamental reason why people will feel like they have to, but also want to continue watching your video. They need to have the question answered. So this means that when you're developing your video idea, also go through the mental exercise of asking yourself, what are the questions I want my viewers to have in their brain? For example, if I had a video with a hook saying something like, in this video, I built 100 wells in Africa, it gives the viewers a bunch of questions to think about. Like, how did you do that? What does it look like to build 100 wells in Africa? Who are these wells for? Why are you even doing this? How do you even afford this? And because of these questions, the viewer feels like they need to watch more of the video to learn more.
2. Keep it short and concise. You want to keep it as concise as possible while still giving the viewer enough information to make them want to watch your video and also have questions they need to have answered. The hook should take you less than fiveseconds to say out loud, and it should use simple and direct language. You don't want to use complicated words or language in your hook because if it's hard to understand, people won't understand what your video is about and they just won't care. Also, this is actually a really good test to do on your video ideas because if you can't explain your video idea in five seconds or less, and this is not just from speaking really, really fast, then it's probably not a very good video idea.
   
   For example, if I started a video and my hook was, I went to Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Ethiopia to help them build a bunch of water collection points to help people get clean drinking water. That's not nearly as concise and engaging as if I started the video by saying, I built 100 wells in Africa. The second is way more concise and gets the point across much more efficiently.
   And finally, I'm going to share with you how to get an infinite number of hook ideas. You can watch videos in your niche, see what people are doing for their hooks, look at how the video performed, and then you can do them in your own videos. Really think that just because someone else made a video with a certain hook, the hook is now off the table and can't be used anymore? No, of course not. Reuse that hook. You can also improve on it in your own way, and you can also see how the hook performed for someone else first, and then if it did well for them, it's most likely going to do well for you too.
   Also, side note, I created a document that has 50 hook examples that you can refer to just in case you want to see some more examples. So I'll be linking that down below, and you can download it, print it off, or do whatever you want with it.
   That's it for the hook. Next up, we're going to be diving into the substance part of the framework. Next up is the substance, what your video is all about. This is the largest part of your video and the place where most of the value will be shared.
   For example, if you're making a day in the life video, this is where you'll be showing people what a day in your life actually looks like. Or if you're doing an educational video, you'll be sharing the valuable information with your audience. This section will make up about 75 to 80% of your video.
   And this is where I want to teach you the laugh or learn framework. When people come to social media, in most instances, they're here to either laugh or learn. That's it. They either want to get some sort of information or value, or they want to be entertained in some way. So when you make content that you want people to watch, you should be teaching or entertaining people with your videos.
   And something to keep in mind is that they aren't exclusive. This is not like if you teach somebody something, you can't also entertain them at the same time. You can totally mix them. Actually, if you're good at mixing entertainment and learning, your content can actually perform even better. This is a term that we like to call edutainment, content that is meant to entertain, but also educate.
   Now, depending on the type of content that you want to post, it might be easier for you to lean one direction more than the other. When it comes to giving value and educating people with your content, this means you need to already have a skill or knowledge in a certain area. The idea with this type of content is that you give value to your audience in the form of information, tips or tricks, and in the process, you'll be building trust with people who are interested in that skill or topic.
   In the substance section of your video, your goal is to make this section as engaging as possible to keep people watching as long as possible and get the highest watch time you can. Something that can actually help quite a bit with keeping people watching and engaging them during the substance section of your video is through the way that you edit your video. Oftentimes, the way that you cut your video, as well as adding in extra things like overlays and sound effects, is a great way to keep the engagement high.
   Now, if you're interested in checking out how to edit your videos to make them even more engaging, make sure you check out our high retention editing masterclass where we teach you how to increase watch time, views, and engagement through editing.
   And that's it for the substance part of this framework. Next up is the payoff. Finally, you have payoff. This is the viewer's reason for watching. The payoff is the last part of the video and is the part that the whole video has been leading up to.
   So if you were making something in your video or painting something, this would be where you show that off. Or if your video has a punchline, this is where that would happen as well. This is also where you'd answer the question that you proposed to your viewer during your hook. You are closing the loop that you opened.
   Something to keep in mind here is that the substance and the payoff can kind of be intertwined with each other. If you're making an educational video about the five best places to travel in Europe, the substance and the payoff are both the five places that you mentioned over the course of your video. In a video like that, there isn't really a singular moment that will serve as the payoff. The whole video is essentially the payoff.
   The point of the payoff is that you do what you said that you were going to do in your hook and you answer all the questions. Also, you don't want to not have a payoff in your video. If you miss the payoff stage, you don't give the viewer a reason to actually care about your video.
   You see this in the photography niche on Instagram and TikTok all the time. Someone will make a video showing their setup for taking a specific photo, but then they'll end the video without showing the final product. This makes the viewer mad because they feel like they just wasted their time and never got the payoff that they wanted.
   When creating your payoff, it's a good idea to ask yourself, why would someone save this post for later? And if you can't answer that, you probably don't really have a very
   This is also good payoff. The payoff is also the reason why people will share or save your video. This is also super great for engagement and getting your video pushed to the algorithm and as a result, a wider audience.
    super great for engagement and getting your video pushed to the algorithm and as a result, a wider audience. After you have the payoff, the video should end right after. You don't want to overstay your welcome and you want to leave the viewer wanting more. So after you've done the payoff, your video should end right away.
   
   Anyways, that's it for this video and that concludes the breakdown of the hook, substance and payoff framework. We'll see you guys in another video.