Why the first few seconds matter
Something you might have noticed in videos on social media is that most of them have some kind of hook right at the beginning. But why is this? There is a simple answer to this: Human Attention Span. But in order to understand the psychology behind it, we have to dig a little deeper. When a person clicks on a video or it gets recommended to them on a feed like Instagram-Reels or TikTok, what they see in the first few seconds is very essential for how good a video will perform with the
algorithm. If your video isn’t interesting enough, the person watching will just scroll to the next video or, in the worst case, even leave the app. This is not only bad for your watchtime, but directly reflects how the algorithm ranks your video. If it is ranked badly, it won’t be shown to many people and therefore the reach through the video will be terrible.
So how can you prevent this problem?
The most important thing is, to give the viewer a reason, to continue watching your video. You can achieve this, by including visual and/or auditory hooks. These can be questions, asked to the viewer, sound effects, visual effects and more. What you use as a hook is highly dependent on the type of content you create and also your target audience. Finding the best hook to fit your needs is the masterclass of successful content creation. The only way to learn this skill is by trial and error.
But why does this even work in the first place?
By including hooks, you can catch the short attention span of the viewer. Depending on the plattform, this attention span is between 1-3 seconds. But once you catched the viewer, they will most likely keep watching the video, if it is interesting enough. In short, if the viewer watches the first 50% of the video, they are very likely to also watch the last 50% of the video. This theory is also proven by many big creators, who say the same. These creators are also in all types of different areas, which proves that the type of content you create isn’t important to use this trick.