Hook examples for TikTok, Reels and Shorts (and why they work)

A hook is whatever makes someone keep watching once a video starts: the first line, the first words on screen and the first frame. On a feed of short videos, people decide in a moment whether to stay or swipe, and each app says, in its own words, that staying is what it looks for.

• TikTok weighs strong signals of interest more than weak ones, and its example of a strong one is “whether a user finishes watching a longer video from beginning to end”.
• YouTube asks whether viewers choose to watch a video or ignore it, and uses average view duration and the average share of the video watched as ranking signals.
• Instagram ranks reels by predictions such as how likely you are to watch a reel all the way through, reshare it, like it or open its audio page. Its creators blog tells creators to open strong in the first three seconds.

A viewer who leaves in the first second never reaches the end. So the hook doesn't replace a good clip, but it decides how many people see the clip at all.

Most hooks that hold people do three things in one breath:

• Say what it's about. A stranger should know the subject from the first line: the job, the mistake, the story.
• Open a gap. Something unanswered, surprising or arguable that the rest of the clip closes.
• Promise a payoff the clip delivers. If the hook says “wait for the end”, the end has to be worth it. A hook the clip doesn't keep gets people to leave halfway, which is no better for the clip than leaving at once.

The first frame matters as much as the first word: start on a face or on movement, not a logo, a title card or a fade in. And keep it short. One sentence that lands beats two that set up.

48 templates in eight types, each with an example filled in. Swap in your own words for the parts in [brackets], and keep whichever reads like something a person would actually say.

When you clip someone else's video, the hook isn't something you write: it's a line they said. The kinds of lines that open a clip well:

Put on-screen text over it only when the line needs a few words of context (“the founder on the first year”), and never change what was said. Fill-in-the-blank lines for your own videos come from the hook generator, which fills formulas like the ones above with your topic.

1. Read the moment as words. A transcript shows the strongest line faster than scrubbing through the video does.
2. Pick the line that works alone. It makes sense to someone who has never seen the video, and it makes them want the next sentence.
3. Start the clip on it. Cut the greeting, the “so, yeah”, the question that leads into it, and the breath before it. If the question is part of the hook, keep it short.
4. Check the end pays it off. Stop right after the answer, the punchline or the point.

More on cutting the rest of the clip in how to make clips that go viral.

Many people scroll with the sound off, so a hook that's only spoken misses them, and a hook that's only text misses the people who listen. The strongest clips do both: the first spoken line is the hook, captioned word by word, and a short line of text at the top says what the clip is about.

• Keep the on-screen line to a few words, in the first frame, readable in a second.
• Don't repeat the captions word for word: the text sets up, the captions carry the speech.
• Keep both clear of the apps' buttons and captions; the safe zone checker shows where they sit.

How to style the captions themselves is in how to caption short videos.

Each app shows how many people got past the first seconds, which is the number a hook moves:

• YouTube Shorts: Stayed to watch in YouTube Studio is the percentage of times viewers stayed past the first seconds of a Short.
• TikTok: each video's retention rate shows how much of it people watched, with the drop-off points. TikTok suggests checking what was on screen when people left.
• Instagram: Instagram tells creators to watch View Rate in Insights, the share of people who keep watching after the first 3 seconds. Meta's developer documentation also describes a reels skip rate, the share of views skipped in the first 3 seconds, which it labels as estimated and in development. Trial reels show a reel to people who don't follow you first, a way to try a hook before your followers see it.

Change one thing at a time. Post the same kind of clip with two different openings, at similar times, and compare the first-seconds numbers rather than the views, which depend on much more than the hook. For the rest of what each app measures, see how to get more views on TikTok and how to get more views on YouTube Shorts.

• A promise the clip doesn't keep. People who feel tricked leave before the end, and the end is what the apps count.
• A warm-up. “Hey guys”, a logo, a title card or a slow zoom before anything happens.
• A hook that needs context. “And that's when he said it” means nothing to someone who wasn't there.
• Too much text. A paragraph on screen in the first second is a paragraph nobody reads.
• The same opening on every clip. A formula that worked once wears thin when your followers see it every day. Rotate the types above.
• Words put in someone's mouth. On a clip of someone else's video, on-screen text that misstates what they said can break a campaign's rules and the apps' rules on misleading content.