It Sucks to Give Your Podcast a “Hook” — Do It Anyway
I’ve heard the pushback a lot. Some of the most popular podcasts out there don’t have a hook, so why does mine need one? After all, doesn’t a hook flatten a creative work, making it two-dimensional and overly predictable for the sake of marketability?
It’s true, marketability does have a little something to do with it. A “hook” is a marketing term, after all. It refers to a phrase or concept that entices an audience to opt-in to a podcast. At a time when number of podcasts released are growing exponentially, the discoverability of your podcast is extremely reliant on making your show’s purpose and potential clear from the outset.
The impulse to pushback against marketability in defense of something more “pure” is rooted in a pretty normal human impulse: to be seen for who we are, right off the bat. Unfortunately, when you’re creating a podcast and trying to inspire an unknowing audience to listen to it, telegraphing who you are is a lot harder than it might be when you’re spending physical time with someone in the same space.
The truth is, every podcast needs a hook, whether you recognize it or not.
There are lots of ways to isolate a hook for your show: you can lean into the vibes, the specific thesis, or a particular mystery or question you’re trying to resolve. But the key is that it feels unique and specific. And probably most importantly, it needs to be an accurate representation of who you are and what you’re about.
Coming up with a hook can be frustrating. And if you’re like me, it can even be existentially destabilizing! Articulating who you are to people who don’t already know who you are can be an inherently alienating experience. There’s nothing we know better than ourselves, and we naturally gravitate toward spaces where others are able to see and appreciate us as we are.
The bravery and risk of public creation is putting ourselves out into a space that is has the potential to be unfamiliar with us. It’s an inherently vulnerable place to be. Trust us, we know. We’re experiencing this exact kind of vulnerability ourselves as we work on an upcoming podcast ourselves. But the reality is, connection won’t happen without vulnerability.
The solution to that is building an audience. And from our experience, establishing a clear podcast hook is actually the most painless way of building an audience who understands and opts in to your approach. A hook can be determined by answering the following questions:
- What do you do differently than anyone else?
- What drives you in life? What are you trying to accomplish, and what is your podcast trying to accomplish?
- What do you excel at that you want to show the world?
- What question are you determined to answer?
These questions are deep, personal questions, but that’s because you need to have a deep understanding of yourself before you can stand out in the overcrowded marketplace. The number of people who simply want to make “The Joe Rogan Experience but I’m hosting” is entirely too high for this world. We can do better.
And even if you were wanting to emulate a good podcast — for instance, “like Back Issue, but I’m hosting,” — it wouldn’t be enough. That podcast already exists — so the question is: what makes your podcast different from everything else? For us, the answer already lies in whatever it is that makes you a unique presence in the world.
Next week, we’ll get more specific, and look at a few different examples of types of hooks and how you might be able to apply them to your own show.
