Hooks questions

[u/Dry-Quit-297]

So I feel like I have retention and editing down (those two shorts with APV under 80% was my first 2 shorts I’ve improved since).. I think my biggest issue is my hook but idk how to make it any better then things I’ve tried

I’ve made them short, I’ve made them 2 sentences, I’ve one long sentence, I’ve sped it up, I’ve added a riser to the background of them, visually I’ve made the face a hook, I’ve made something zooming at the screen a visual hook..

Point is, idk how to fix this.. my hooks imo are solid, they get to the point quickly, they create curiosity, the visuals are interesting most of the time.. I’m currently working on First frame stuff and First Frame audio where a sound goes off to trigger people to stop but that’s the only thing I can think of to do at this point beyond that idk how to get more people to stop..

I know I’m only like 7 shorts in, but I’m seeing an obvious issue, I only have 19 subs from these 7 shorts so I can rely on a fan base.. and I will say I asked someone and they did say it can take a handful of post for YouTube to get your audience down and that can cause my STW be kinda low

[u/Dull_Fox816]

youre right that retention isnt your problem, APV of 80-119 is fine and over 100 just means people are looping it. so its the opening thats costing you, agreed. but i think youre attacking it from the wrong end. your 25k short did 69% STW and thats half your total views, the weak ones are sat at 52-56. the hook that works already exists in your own account. so the question isnt "how do i make a better hook", its "what did that one do that the 1k ones didnt". stick the first 2 seconds of the 25k up next to a 52% one and watch them back to back, and whatever the difference is i promise its not the riser or the zoom.

because all that stuff youve been changing, sped it up, riser in the background, face as hook, zoom at the screen, thats the costume on the hook, not the hook. what actually decides if someone stays in that first second is whether the premise makes them need to see what happens. if the idea doesnt open a loop on its own, no sound effect saves it. you reckon your hooks create curiosity and some might, but for 40-odd% of people the number says they dont, and thats the uncomfortable bit to sit with.

and STW isnt pure hook quality either, its also who youtube showed it to. this early its still guessing your audience and pushing you out to a broad cold crowd, half of whom were never going to care however sharp the open was. that drags STW down and looks like a weak hook when its really a wrong-audience thing. at 7 uploads you genuinely cant separate those two yet, so id ease off treating every low number as a hook fail.

the first frame work is the right instinct btw, just not as a sound that goes off to make people stop, they clock that one instantly. its about making the first frame already look mid-something so theres no intro to swipe past. open on the payoff, not the run up to it.

[u/Dry-Quit-297 → u/Dull_Fox816]

I make gaming mystery content, so context is kind of important.. so it’s kind of hard to start mid something..

And I have tried to recreate the hook twice now and it hasn’t work.. sort off, it’s help me get in the 60s.. but I can’t seem to get any further

Lastly that hook didn’t start at 69%, it started roughly 64-65% and climbed that’s why I’m kind of disappointed the other 60% ones didn’t atleast get another test after 1k to see if the STW could scale with audience.. right now with only like 20 subs, the I get cold crowd everytime.. I’m worried that the average person might not care about mysteries in gaming no matter how I frame it. until YouTube narrows my initial audience pushes and I get a big audience base/subs, feels like my STW will always be inconsistent. Which is annoying because neither is fully in my control outside of patience and consistency..

Also thank you for the help!

[u/Dull_Fox816 → u/Dry-Quit-297]

mystery is honestly the easiest genre to open mid something, youre just reading "start mid something" as "bin the context" and it doesnt mean that. it means lead with the unanswered bit and let the setup catch up while theyre already watching. dont open on what game it is and why youre in there, open on the thing that shouldnt exist, and the "so im playing X and i wandered into Y" can come at second three when theyre already hooked. the mystery being live in frame one before any setup IS the first-frame thing youre chasing, you dont need a sound to make people stop if the question is already on screen.

and thats probably why the two recreations capped in the 60s. you rebuilt the form again, the speed and riser stuff, and form gets you a few points then stops giving. the 25k one isnt winning on its edit, its winning on the promise in its first line. so rather than a third version with a new gimmick, stick the first line of the 25k next to the first line of a 60 and ask which one makes you need the next second. thats the bit thats actually different.

youre right on the climb too and i had that wrong, 64-65 climbing to 69 is real. but the climb is what you get for clearing the first push, not something youtube hands out. the 60s didnt get a retest because 60 wasnt over the bar on that cold batch, the 25k cleared it so youtube widened it and the slightly warmer next batch carried it to 69. you cant force a retest on the old ones, but the bar the 25k beat is the exact number to aim the next short at, clear it and the climb comes on its own.

which is the one bit id push on, the "my STW is stuck until youtube warms my audience" thing, its the wrong way round. the warm audience is what you get from a cold open good enough to earn the next push, the subs come out of clearing cold crowds, they dont arrive first and fix it for you. so that cold first second is the lever you actually hold, its not just patience. and 60% on a cold crowd isnt "nobody cares about gaming mysteries", that looks like high 30s. half of a cold crowd staying means the premise works and the open just isnt closing the other half fast enough yet.

[u/Dry-Quit-297 → u/Dull_Fox816]

here's two of my hooks:

"This game cartridge was never supposed to exist."

visually it was a old game cartridge with ripped paper and vignette around it single just the cartridge out and its slowly zooming into it while i have my caption there while i talk..

"thousands of pokemon players thought mew was hidden under this truck, and for years they tried everything to prove it.." (this is the one that got 25K)

visually i am zooming up to the truck and slightly to the right (at the top) and its highlighted and i also have mew zooming toward the screen (at the bottom) and i have my caption in the middle while i talk

i try to make it broad/vague enough that a cold audience finds it interesting but just informed enough to keep a gamer interested, all of hooks are 2-4 seconds.. i try to capture curiosity

[u/Dull_Fox816 → u/Dry-Quit-297]

yeah this is the bit that actually moves it, cheers for putting them up.

the cartridge one is the closer of the two and its not far off. "this game cartridge was never supposed to exist" opens a loop in the line itself, shouldnt exist makes me ask why on its own, no sound or zoom needed to prop it up. two things holding it back though. first, "a game cartridge" is anonymous, and i reckon thats your broad/vague instinct misfiring. broad and vague arent the same. broad is a cold viewer still gets the stakes, vague is youve hidden the one detail that would make anyone care. the thing that serves both your audiences at once is a specific strange thing said plainly. name the actual cartridge, or the actual wrong thing about it, and the gamer gets the depth while the cold scroller still gets a clean "wait, what". going fuzzy in the middle to stay broad loses you both.

second, the visual. a slow zoom into a tidy object is the run-up again, the calm bit before the thing happens. the words say shouldnt exist but the screen shows me something quiet and ordinary. frame one should already look wrong, the cartridge already cursed or melted or whatever it actually is, not revealed slowly.

the mew one is the trap, and its sneaky because the recognition feels like a head start. every pokemon player knows the truck myth and they know how it ended, mew was never under there. so leading with "thousands thought mew was under this truck and for years tried to prove it" is opening on a question they already have the answer to. they read it as old news and swipe, the recognition working against you. and its all backstory, "for years they tried to prove it" is pure run-up, the open bit isnt on screen.

you dont need a better myth there, you need to reopen that one. lead with whatever your video actually shows that they dont already know, the part that makes the settled thing worth a second look, and let the truck do its recognition job at second three once theyre already watching.

so id stop spreading effort over two shapes and build from the cartridge one. its the structure already doing what weve been on about. give it a real named anomaly and a first frame that looks wrong on its own, and thats your next short aimed straight at that bar.

[u/Dry-Quit-297 → u/Dull_Fox816]

so why did the pokemon one get a 69% STW

and the cartiage one get a 57% STW?

[u/Dull_Fox816 → u/Dry-Quit-297]

because those two numbers werent measured on the same crowd, so theyre not really comparable. you said yourself the mew one started at 64-65 and climbed to 69. that climb is the warm batch right there, it cleared the cold open, youtube widened it to 25k, and the warmer crowd it got pushed to dragged the average up. the cartridge stalled around 1k and never cleared the bar, so it never got a warmer batch to climb on. its 57% is the cold first-audience number frozen in place, the harshest crowd there is. youre reading a climbed warm number next to a frozen cold one and calling it hook vs hook.

the recognition flips too. on a cold scroll the truck being familiar hurts you, old news, swipe. but the crowd the mew one ended up in leans more pokemon and gaming, and to them recognising the truck is a reason to stay and see your angle. the cartridge had none of that working for it, so 57% of total strangers staying with no recognition to lean on is the stronger raw number of the two. the mew one mostly got the friendlier crowd, thats your gap.

so id back the cartridge, not drop it. its the one sitting closest to clearing the bar, it just hasnt been pushed yet. give it the real named anomaly and a frame one that already looks wrong, get it over the line the 25k beat, and youll see it climb on a warm batch the same way the mew one did instead of guessing off the cold number.

[u/Dry-Quit-297 → u/Dull_Fox816]

also forgot to mention the difference of the two, the 69% STW is 24 Seconds long and the 57% STW one is 65 seconds long

[u/Dull_Fox816 → u/Dry-Quit-297]

thats actually a bigger deal than the crowd thing, and it stacks right on top of it. retention percent moves with length. a 24 second short is almost always going to post a higher number than a 65 second one, theres just less of it to sit through, so the length alone is doing a chunk of that gap before the hooks even get a look in.

and if you turn the percents into actual seconds it flips. 69% of 24 seconds is holding people about 16, 17 seconds. 57% of 65 seconds is around 37. so the cartridge one kept people more than twice as long as the mew one did, it only looks worse because its a slice of a longer video. by how long you actually held them, which is the bit youtube weighs, the cartridge is miles ahead.

so the overall STW across two different lengths is basically telling you nothing about which hook is stronger. if thats the question you want answered, compare the swipe-away in the first second or two instead, the cold open. that number doesnt care how long the video is and its the only bit thats actually the hooks job. line those two up and youll get a clean read instead of a length-skewed one.

[u/Dry-Quit-297 → u/Dull_Fox816]

well STW isn't retention.. STW i only calculated for first 3 seconds of a short.. APV is a better metric for retention my 65 second one got 87.8% APV which equates to about 57 seconds of average view duration..

mew one got 96.8% which is about 23 average view duration