Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Hook Your Audience in 8 Seconds and Stand Out Online | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Wed, 27 Nov 2024
In the crowded streets of social media, many entrepreneurs find themselves struggling to grab attention. But with the right strategies and tools, you can get your ideal customer to stop scrolling, engage, and stay with you until the very end. This episode is the first of the six-part YAPCreator Series brought to you by OpusClip, a tool that pinpoints high-impact moments and transforms them into engaging bite-sized clips. This series dives deep into the art and science of content creation, with insights from powerful creators who have been guests on the show. In this episode, Hala Taha reveals how top creators like GaryVee, Sean Cannell, and Alex Hormozi hook their audience instantly, keep them interested, and ultimately build trust and loyalty. You'll learn everything from creating killer thumbnails and click-worthy titles to leveraging powerful storytelling techniques that keep viewers coming back for more. In this episode, Hala will discuss: (00:00) Introduction to the YAPCreator Series (01:16) Thumbnails and Titles: Your First Line of Offense (03:12) GaryVee on the TikTokification of Social Media (10:43) Alex Hormozi on Sparking Curiosity with Numbers (11:22) Action-Based Intro Hooks (14:31) Keeping Viewers Engaged After the Intro (17:47) The Power of Storytelling for Real Impact (19:44) The Three-Step Storytelling Structure (20:53) Level Up Your Content Creation with OpusClip Try OpusClip for FREE: Visit https://www.opus.pro/clipanything Resources Mentioned: YAP Episode 291 with GaryVee: https://youngandprofiting.com/gary-vee-my-2024-blueprint-for-building-brand-and-sales-on-social-media-e291/ YAP Episode 198 with Alex Hormozi: https://youngandprofiting.com/alex-hormozi-from-soul-sucking-job-to-120m-in-revenue-how-alex-changed-his-mind-and-built-an-empire-by-age-32/ YAP Episode 198 with Alex Hormozi: https://youngandprofiting.com/alex-hormozi-the-value-equation-how-to-make-offers-so-good-people-feel-stupid-saying-no-e199/ YAP Episode 278 with Sean Cannell: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/sean-cannell-start-a-profitable-youtube-channel-in-2024-part-1-e278/ YAP Episode 279 with Sean Cannell: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/sean-cannell-start-a-profitable-youtube-channel-in-2024-part-2-e279/ LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course. Top Tools and Products of the Month: https://youngandprofiting.com/deals/ More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media's Services - yapmedia.io/
Chapter 1: What is the YAPCreator Series about?
Young Improfiters, welcome back to the first ever episode of the Yap Creator Series. This series is a deep dive into the art and science of content creation. Everything from mastering attention to understanding the psychology that fuels audience engagement. Every piece of content you put out should be meaningful, intentional, and ultimately drive action.
Chapter 2: How can thumbnails and titles attract viewers?
This series is all about giving you the tools to make that happen. Throughout these episodes, I'll share insights from powerful creators who have been guests on the show, experts like Sean Cannell, Gary Vee, and Alex Ramosi. Today, we're kicking things off with a critical first topic, the psychology of attention and content creation.
In a world where attention spans are shorter than ever, mastering this is essential. The goal is to make people stop scrolling, engage, and stay with you until the very end. Top content creators use sneaky tactics to hook you into their videos and get you to want to keep watching them. With about only eight seconds to make an impact, it's crucial to stand out.
Imagine a crowded street where everyone's shouting to be noticed. Your goal is to make viewers stop and pay attention. On platforms like YouTube, thumbnails and titles are your first chance to hook in viewers. Thumbnails act like curb appeal. The more visually striking and straightforward they are, the more likely that people are to click.
Titles should be direct, keyword-focused, and hint at the value that you'll deliver. Bold titles that spark curiosity or make clear promises set the stage for viewers to stay engaged. Sean Cannell, who built his YouTube channel from scratch, stresses the importance of thumbnails and titles as a strong first line of offense.
He recommends clean, simple thumbnails with bold colors, minimal text, and a clear focal point. A cluttered thumbnail or a vague title is not going to spark curiosity. It's just going to confuse people. Less is more. The goal is to create a pause effect that stops viewers from scrolling and makes them want to watch.
If you've been creating content for a while, you've probably heard a lot about titles and thumbnails, but Sean adds another key element, topic. Here's what he has to say about that.
YouTube is recommending brand new channels, but here is the painful part for you listening to this. If you get a chance on this free platform to get in front of a complete stranger, Are you going to miss that opportunity or are you going to get it? Good news is it doesn't just come once in a lifetime.
But what I've noticed is that sometimes when those channels get recommended, I'm like, that title doesn't really grip me. That thumbnail is not that great. And those are going to be the two metrics. What is included in that topic, right time, right place. So it's the topic itself. And then a good title that makes it even more interesting. Like that's an irresistible video. And so that's,
You want to get the click and those are what you're optimizing for.
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Chapter 3: What is the TikTokification of social media?
Sean says the biggest factor to grab people's attention is having a topic at the right place and the right time. Gary V calls this the TikTokification of social media. When we spoke earlier this year about his new book, Day Trading Attention, Gary broke it down for me.
Chapter 4: How do numbers enhance viewer curiosity?
I'm one of the biggest LinkedIn marketing experts. I teach like a two-day class. It's the most popular class and I can hack the algorithm and that's why people hire me. So one of the things that's happening this year is that they're prioritizing interest relevancy over engagement probability. It used to be that you would post something motivational, something inspirational.
If people shared it, you'd go viral. Now it's all about posting a specific topic, educating people, and then LinkedIn will match users based on the things they like, the interest graph. Exactly. So I actually wanted you to, can you go super deep on the interest graph? Because I feel like this is the major trend happening with all social media sites.
And that's what I, from your book, I was like, oh, he's right on the money. This is, yeah.
I told my brother that I thought Tumblr was going to be bigger than Facebook and Twitter. I went Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr in my investing. Those are the first three companies I invested in, in my life. Out of a liquor store in New Jersey. It's like funny. It's like, I'm like, you can see I'm laughing at myself. It's so improbable. Like it's absurd. Comma.
I thought Tumblr was gonna be the biggest because of this conversation. It just took 15 years for it to happen. Again, everybody, social media for the first decade plus was very simple. It was like email marketing. You would get as many people to follow you as possible and then you would post and a percentage of those people would see it. That was the game.
And that was easy for me to figure out because I did email marketing in 97, 98, 99 when that was like new and I was a big winner in that game. That was underpriced attention. I was competing against liquor stores that were making catalogs, but I was getting to the customer for free instead of how much a catalog costs and getting to them faster. It was huge. It was foundational.
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Chapter 5: What is the psychology behind storytelling?
So I saw the same thing in social. So I massed big followings. That was the focus. TikTokification of social media, like I talk about in the book. That interest graph algorithm is now going to eat up everything because it's better. It keeps you on the platform longer. Let's use common sense. You go to your Facebook. You're now 27. You went on Facebook at 18.
The people you followed are people you met like one night hooking up or at a random party or whatever. And now you're seeing posts of them in Ohio with their aunt. And you're like, I don't give a fuck. But just like email, we don't unsubscribe people. from our fucking list. We just delete it or archive it. Like we don't put in the work to clean up our shit.
So you kept seeing shit you didn't give a fuck about, which made you not spend four hours on it. It made you spend 14 minutes on your feed. Then you go to TikTok and you're seeing unlimited shit that you fuck with. And four hours later, you're like, what the fuck just happened?
Yeah.
That's good for TikTok. That was bad for Facebook. Now all of them are going to be like TikTok. And every social network is going to have the for you page DNA in them for quite a while now. Maybe forever because it's more humanly true. That's what I focus on. And that's why focus on your niche is about to fuck up everyone.
You're going to need to talk about more things than ever that are true to you because you're going to need that content to find more different audiences for you to be as big as you want to be.
I was going to ask you, does that mean riches are in the niches now because of the interest graph? But to your point, if you've got multiple topics. It's an and game. Got it.
Think about how weird I am. The reason I know everybody from afar, especially in the game you're in, are like, what? garage sale videos. My grid has been fucked up for 12 years. And I was like, make a good grid. It's gotta be on brand. I'm like, you fucking have no idea what you're talking about. The grid is like 5% of the consumption. The feed is the whole game.
So you go to my fucking thing, you're like, who is this? Jets video, garage sale, keynote, board meeting. Like I'm confusing the shit out of people because I don't care about the grid. I care about being as relevant to as many different people as humanly possible. Let's talk about viral. Sure. I'm going to use baseball. I know it's not as popular anymore, but it's the easiest one.
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Chapter 6: How do curiosity gaps keep viewers engaged?
And posting as much as you can is also based on self-awareness of like, I start with like, do I have something to say that could bring someone value? Again, I need everybody to hear this. That comes in all shapes and sizes. I mean this. If you're funny and you do a skit like King Bach, that's value. You made somebody smile.
And it's a fucked up world out there and the feeds are fucking negative and media is negative and like that little ha, ha, ha. If you're attractive, like people like looking at attractive people. If you know something about LinkedIn, that's valuable to the people that want LinkedIn. Like we all have value. If you know something about BMX or wine or sneaker, like value, value, value.
I think people have niched themselves in a corner. What happens if you know a lot about sneakers and you know a lot about bourbon? Post both.
So like Gary says, you have to pick your topics and don't be scared to have more than one topic. The algorithm will do its job to feed your content to relevant audiences if you have a clear topic. Gary also mentions that value comes in all forms. This is really important and we'll get back to it in a bit. But first, let's move on to openings and introductions of our content.
At Young and Profiting, we're intentional with our intros because we know the first few seconds are everything. The best way to capture attention right away is by creating a curiosity gap. The curiosity gap is a psychological concept that refers to the space between what people know and what they want to know.
It's used in marketing and storytelling to entice audiences by providing just enough information to spark curiosity without fully satisfying it. This prompts people to take action, like clicking, reading, watching, to close the gap and satisfy their curiosity. You want to keep opening curiosity gaps throughout your content.
One way to leverage the curiosity gap is by using a headline overlay, an overlay like seven ways to avoid burnout. This immediately tells the viewer what value they're going to gain, and it sets expectations by sparking curiosity. Well, what are the seven ways? And notice that I used a number in this example. Number seven, seven ways to avoid burnout.
Numbers attract attention because they're specific. What are the seven ways? It makes you wonder, well, why is there seven ways and not eight or nine ways? Odd numbers are more specific. Numbers that are not whole numbers are even more specific and attract more attention. Numbers immediately tell the audience what to expect, giving the hook more of a defined promise.
Seven ways is definitely more enticing than just the ways to avoid burnout. And lastly, you can increase the punch to your hook by adding more numbers like revenue targets, timeline, or implied speed. And nobody knows how to hook viewers in more than somebody like Alex Hermosi, who has basically blown up overnight and become one of the top brands online through his engaging videos.
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Chapter 7: What role does content value play in engagement?
Okay, let's move on to how we can keep listeners engaged after the intro. The concept of pattern interrupts can be extremely effective in longer videos. Pattern interrupts are unexpected elements in the content that break up the usual flow and give users something to focus on, which re-engages their attention. These can be sudden zoom-ins, quick cuts, unique sound effects, or color changes.
Another approach is to build in novelty with small surprising elements. This could mean adding a quick animated graphic, a pop of color, B-roll footage, or a brief audio cue that stands out from the usual rhythm. When used sparingly, these surprises act as mini-resets for viewers to refocus and help them stay engaged.
Tools like Opusclip can help you find the most emotional or action-packed parts of your videos and also can make your videos more engaging and boost watch time by automatically adding AI B-roll to your videos. Grabbing attention with video editing tactics can help your videos move fast-paced. It can help them be more engaging. People remember stories far more than they remember facts. Why?
Because stories involve emotions and emotions make things more memorable. You want to use a value first approach in your videos that gives your audience insights that hook them in from the start. Then you want to guide them through a mini story throughout the video that keeps them engaged until the end. When we create content, we want it to be more than just information.
We want it to feel like an experience. One way to create this feeling is through a simple, relatable, three-step storytelling structure. Number one, introduce a common problem. Number two, share a relatable struggle. And number three, provide a solution. Think of it like this. The problem is the hook. The struggle is the emotional connection. And the resolution is the payoff.
This arc makes viewers feel invested in the outcome because they've emotionally connected with the journey. Relatability is key here because people connect with stories that mirror their own challenges. Maybe you're talking about work-life balance or the pressure to succeed in a competitive market. These are experiences that many people relate on on a deep level.
And when you tap into this emotional common ground, and when you share your own stories, you're not just holding attention, you're creating loyalty. Your audience feels like they know you, and more importantly, that you know them. This mutual understanding builds trust and engagement over time. Storytelling is a skill I think that we should all spend time improving.
Yastir Khan, one of the most sought-after public speaking coaches in the world, recently came on and gave me his three R's to good storytelling.
The most important thing that I feel that storytelling does is it's just memorable. People just remember for much longer. So if I asked you, do you want people to remember what you said? Yes. Okay. Do you want to share your message in a way that people remember it? Yes. Then you must do it in a format of a story. How many of your three-hour lectures do you remember from college, Hamad?
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