I bet you want to vibe market your app but are clueless on hook writing…
… so here’s the step-by-step guide that’ll get your first 1M views video ????
1/ Research
Can’t skip this, sorry. You need to know what others are doing especially in your niche. Two options here:
1/ follow some relevant accounts and scroll through their content. Apps, ugc creators, physical products in your niche, all of it
pro tip: do this while you warm-up a new account, just note down some hooks you see performing well
2/ use hook datasets. At Social Growth Engineers we have plenty, they are all free and there’s more coming out every week
All with categories, views and engagement, so if you’re lazy it’s still not an excuse
2/ Comments section
Optional but I wouldn’t skip.
Once you have these competitor accounts, spend some time on their videos, especially on the comment section
What do viewers say? Sometimes they’ll provide you a ton of context and feedback on how they feel or think about a given message
Don’t spend hours here, just see it for the main ones and be sharp on what you’re looking for, otherwise you’re just wasting time:
Ex: on Ditto’s founder video, multiple comments ask if the app is Hypelist (it’s not). This is an insight you could use for a hook:
3/ Selection
Okay now you’re gonna pick 10 hooks.
This doesn’t mean you’ll be repeating the same 10 over and over, it just means you will take what makes them good and milk that.
Idea is that you get something like this – not a final hook, but rather a few formulas you can use as a base for your end results:
4/ Perspective
Something that you might forget. One single hook can be re-written at least 4-5 times depending on perspective:
“POV: you just started a diet and are craving chocolate” – user perspective
“Please tell me why I just started a diet and I’m already craving chocolate” – creator perspective
“When we just decided we were gonna start a diet but we’re already on our way to buy chocolate” – creators plural perspective (i.e. friend group)
“If you are like me and you start craving chocolate 2 mins after starting a diet, you need to know this…” – direct appeal to user
…
5/ Format
Similar. Some hooks can work with both face and faceless formats, but not all will
Generally (and generalizing), if you’re going for a creator’s perspective (see above), something will be missing if the creator is not there
At the same time, some hooks almost only work with faceless / slideshows (i.e. “<<<<“)
Tip: after you’ve selected them, copy paste them on TikTok and see how others are using them (here we don’t care about niche, just formats and viral results)
6/ Variations
Now take the same research and extend your hooks
“Can’t believe I caught my brother doing this” – can be a sister, cousin, girlfriend, grandpa, neighbour, roomate
“Please tell me your best weightloss tips” – can be fitness, health, glow up, etc
The point is that for each hook you need at least 5-6 variations
This is how you multiply your content across the week
7/ Posting
My tip when you’re starting out is to compartmentalize
Each account should have 1-2 formats and for each format 3 hook types (scaled with variations)
Keep them for at least 50 days
After that time, you should have a video outperforming the median by at least 10x
That’s your first winning hook and you need to see how to use it to the max
Pro tip: that usually comes down to being creative with formats and variations
8/ Tracking
And now you’re gonna track closely everyday
You can do this however you want but I’d skip the excel sheets.
Best tool rn is Shortimize, plus you can test it out for free for a while
Don’t forget that you need to track 3 things:
views (and variation vs median)
engagement (close attention to bookmarks and shares)
conversion
From day 1 you should be linking views to traffic/downloads
I’ve seen amazing hooks do 1M+ views and not bringing any $ home
Only way of knowing is tracking and keep testing
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