5 Viral Social Media Hooks and Formats That Have Generated Millions of Views
Confession: I’ve spent way too much time scrolling shorts recently. I’ve had some stomach issues recently, and there isn’t much else to do while you’re going about your business. Although I should really read a book.
But anyway, I thought I could try and turn it into something slightly productive by observing viral hooks and formats that I or you can steal.
Let’s dive in.
1. The Enemy Hook Switch
Wasn’t quite sure what to call this one. But basically, it’s taking a hook like you see below from the “perceived enemy”, they don’t have to be a complete enemy like Democrats vs Republicans, Conservatives vs Liberals, Carnivore’s vs Vegans, and so on.
Like in the example below, it’s simply a girl giving guys dating tips — but endless guys have ran with it and used it as a hook to promote self improvement, business, fitness, or whatever.
(Medium won’t let me embed, but basically the girl says if you ever want to be intimate with a girl, then it switches to the guy and he says something along the lines of no thanks, but here are some great tricep workouts.)
There are also numerous other examples, especially in health involving Dr IDZ and Eddie Abbew.
Why it works well: The hooks from your niches enemy is likely going to stir up some emotion to get the viewer watching. The switch to you will also make you agree-able, and any type of switch or transition improves viewer retention.
2. The Perceived Outcome + Engage
This one is more a format than a hook, but it’s something that we’ve been doing for 2 years on our clients X (formerly Twitter) and have generated massive results with:
For context, if you don’t know how this works…
- You create a resource.
- You ask your audience to like + comment + follow (or sometimes share; best if they REALLY want it since there’s more resistance to sharing)
- You automatically send a DM to their inbox with their resource.
Why it works is pretty self explanatory, if people want said resource. So you should actually ensure it’s desirable.
If you’re an agency owner, you can record a video going over a process.
If you’re a fitness coach, you can record a video going over a recipe, a workout plan, a case study, etc.
But you probably want the outcome to be as big as possible, and the knowledge to be specific that they can’t get elsewhere.
3. Baiting the big guys
I just watched a guy with 32K followers tell Alex Hormozi how to improve his Instagram profile.
Interestingly, this lead to…
- Tons of people commenting telling him he’s not qualified to do so.
- Tons of people arguing in the comments
… And ultimately a lot of engagement. You can still show off your expertise, and some people will follow you.
The cool thing about this is you don’t even need to bait the influencer, it can just be their audience. And as long as your niche is something the audience actually cares about, or they care about the influencer (which they probably do since he/she is a big guy)… It will work.
Some ideas on how you can do this:
- Disagree with their advice
- Tell them how they can improve
- Call out an event where they lied or were saying BS
Bonus Tip: Look for influencers that have cult-like followings.
4. Day ___ of ____
“Day 10 of filming our daily routine in a war zone”
“Day 51 of travelling the world on a bicycle”
“Day 8 of trying to build a $100K per month business in one year”
All of these are titles/hooks I’ve seen. The cool thing about this is that they are actually building an audience using a repetitive format, yet focused on progress with a variable reward.
The repetitive format lets users know what to expect, kinda like if you were to watch an episode of your favourite TV show, you somewhat know what to expect or at least the format (Think: Who’s Going To Be a Millionaire?, Big Brother, etc.)
But they only know the format, they do not know… The exact thing that’s going to happen, which is the variable reward. The variable reward is new exciting sh*t, whether that’s knowledge or entertainment.
This gets us ‘addicted’ to the repetitive format, but also keeps the user hooked by triggering new dopamine releases.
(Btw, this is the same way big tech got us addicted to posting on social media because we receive a different variable reward — engagement; likes, comments, etc. we don’t know how many we will get so it’s a like a game to find out)
5. The “YOU” Format
This one comes in different ways but the main gist of it is talking to the viewer in such a forward way that it stands out from the rest of the feed.
I’ve seen others, that also talk about the viewer as in “Look at this guy. It’s the guy that keeps talking all big, but never does what he says. He said he’s going to crush this year and here we are 3 months in, and he hasn’t done shit.”
This approach isn’t just creative — it’s extremely effective because the audience likely feels a strange mix of emotions after they decide to invest their 60 seconds and listen to what he has to say; slight shame, motivation, and gratitude for the reminder or encouragement. Or, they might reflect, either way they will probably be hooked in some way or another.
Other examples are…
- This is your sign to go all in (This was pretty popular on YouTube for a while)
- Stop Scrolling get back to work…
You get the idea.
Final Thoughts
I hope you have enjoyed these 5 hooks and formats or whatever you want to call them…
If you did make sure to:
- Spam the clap button
- And hit the follow button
Thank you :)
And of course, if you want to add something leave a comment.
