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Social Media Marketing Podcast
YouTube Shorts: Hooks and Curiosity Loops That Explode Your Views
00:42:43
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, before we get to today's show, I want to tell you something we just released. It's our 18th annual social media marketing industry report, and it's out. Now. Here's something that jumped out at me as I was preparing this report. Two thirds of marketers say the pace of change is overwhelming. If that's you, you are not alone. And I want to help download this free report. It covers everything from platform shifts to AI adoption to the growing divide between B2B and B2C marketers. And you can get it for free right now by visiting socialmediaexaminer.com Report 26 socialmediaexaminer.com Report26.
- [00:48]
B
Welcome to the social media marketing podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.
- [00:57]
A
Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the social media marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Today, I'm going to explore YouTube shorts and I'm going to be joined by John Scott. And by the way, if you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow this show so you do not miss any of our future content.
- [01:22]
B
Helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide.
- [01:29]
A
My special guest is is a YouTube shorts expert who helps marketers and entrepreneurs get attention and grow their business with shorts. His community is called the real Creators. He's the founder of hookbomb.com a tool designed to help your shorts go viral. And you can find him on YouTube at Creator Rant. John Scott, welcome to the show. How you doing today?
- [01:49]
B
Hey, I'm good. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.
- [01:52]
A
Super cool. So, like, before we get into, like, YouTube shorts, tell me a little bit about your journey. Like, how did you get into short form video.
- [01:59]
B
Okay, So I started YouTube about five years ago. Before that, I was in a touring band. I was a band guy. I was a musician. But towards the end of that, I moved to Germany and I kind of started a new life in Germany. And after about, like, six months, I got that creative itch. I wanted to do something, but I didn't know anybody, so music was out of the question and I started 3D animation. Surprisingly, that's really what got me into YouTube because I wanted to show off my animations and stuff like that. And that's when I started looking into how to get more views, how to get more subscribers, that sort of content. And I started watching people like Tim Schmoyer from Video Creators and Vidiq. And I ended up becoming one of the biggest fans of Vidiq because I was just constantly watching them. And they had this live stream thing that you could submit your. Your videos and they would review it. But the thing was, there was always like 300 people in there, so the numbers weren't in your favor. And they had a community where you could be priority if you wanted to join the community. It was called Max. They don't have it anymore. So I joined, and I did that for a couple reasons. One, I wanted to get the review, but two, I wanted to get in front of them, maybe make an impression, something like that. And it worked. One of the workers at Vidiq saw my content, and he was starting a new channel, and he asked if I wanted to be the editor for it. And I'm like, okay, sweet. His name's Travis. And so I edited some videos for him, and they were really good, really fun, funny. It was a channel called Travis Tries. And we did that for a few months until he said, man, Vidiq needs a thumbnail designer. I'm like, okay, I'll apply. Long story short, I did get that job, and I was making thumbnails for about three months until they asked, because they knew my editing skills, they asked if I wanted to make my own video about, like, how I went full time on YouTube. And so I did, and people really loved it. They loved the editing of it. And so Vidiq was like, what do you want to make one about editing? I'm like, sure. So it took me about a month, and I made like, a crazy video about editing. People love that. And then about a month later, I was a new face for Vidiq. And so I worked there for a couple years, and I had my own side project, which was John Scott. It was a channel with my name, and I did short content on there. I did a lot of experimenting. But eventually, eventually I figured out the formula for me, and those started getting millions of views, and I had to put more time into it because it started paying all my bills. When you get millions of views, shorts can pay your bills. A lot of people will say shorts isn't worth it for money, but it is if you're good enough. And so that's basically what I did. I. I quit Vidiq. I left. My last video was, hey, I'm leaving, but here's how much shorts make. And so, yeah, that's basically what happened? I went to the John Scott stuff and about three months later I stopped. I was not fulfilled with it because the audience I was appealing to skewed younger. There was a lot of kind of brain rot type comments. And I'm like, I'm, I'm 35. This is not for me. But in my personal community, I was helping a lot of people. I was teaching them how to tell stories and all that stuff. And when they said, john, your advice made me go viral, that's when I got fulfilled. I'm like, oh, I have to chase that dragon. And so I started a channel called Creator Rant and I'm teaching people how to succeed in the shorts feed.
- [05:32]
A
Awesome. Love that story. And definitely shout out to Tim and the Vidiq crew over there. So YouTube shorts is really your area of domain expertise right now. And there's a lot of people listening right now that perhaps understand TikTok. They understand Instagram, maybe even Facebook, you know, reels. So what is it about YouTube shorts that you want to explain to all the marketers and creators that are listening right now? What's the benefit? What's the upside specifically to YouTube when it comes to shorts?
- [06:02]
B
Okay, YouTube. Well, YouTube shorts are honestly the most underutilized tool when it comes to marketing because of just one simple reason. People don't know what they're doing with it. That's the problem. Most business people, most marketers, it's not TikTok, it's not Instagram reels. Every platform prioritizes their own metrics. They, their own specific metrics. For Instagram, it's things like sharing because they have the whole seamless DM feature. But YouTube doesn't have that. So YouTube prioritizes watch time. How long can you keep the viewer watching before they swipe away? And the longer you keep them, the better YouTube feels about you and the more impressions it'll give your video. So yeah, if you do that well, if you know how to work it, then your shorts, I think this is the most important, that they can build trust, they can build brand loyalty. You have this connection with a viewer. Of course, exposure goes without saying. I just spilled water everywhere. And yeah, for YouTube shorts, honestly, I think the ROI is like exceedingly high. You, you put in a little bit of work for a 30 second video. That's what, that's why I gravitated towards it, because I am a bit of a perfectionist and I, I only put in so much work and then I put it out and if it fails, then I can just Move on to the next thing and you learn very, very fast. I recommend Pat Flynn's Lean Learning for figuring out how that, that method hole works. But yeah, I honestly think vertical is the future because of how, I hate to say it, but how addictive it is. And so the better you get at it, the more exposure you're gonna have. And honestly, I think vertical is going to get longer. And so the more you learn now, the better you will be in the future.
- [07:47]
A
I love it. And you know, folks, remember that YouTube is pure video platform, right? All the other platforms are not just video. You know what I mean? Instagram has images. Well, TikTok might be pure video, now that I think of it. I'm not active on that platform. But when you compare it to Instagram, you know, Instagram is not a 100% pure play video platform. They were designed from the get go to be for images, and YouTube was designed from the get go to be for video. So there are people specifically that go to YouTube to find content exclusively. And you know, the other thing goes without saying is that they are the number two search engine in the world owned by the number one search engine in the world, Google. So people kind of forget about the fact that this could show up in search google.com, right? So there's a lot of huge advantages specifically to YouTube and specifically to shorts. So now that we're drilling into shorts here, now, before we get into some really important things to do to create shorts that really perform well, is there any groundwork we need to cover? Is there any foundational things that we need to talk about before we get into that?
- [08:52]
B
Yeah, I mentioned that they got to know how to do it. They got to know how to, how to work the shorts feed. And when businesses are focused on the shorts, they, they make big mistakes. Okay? So like the worst mistake businesses and marketers make with YouTube shorts is they view it as a promotional tool. It's like it's a. Something they can use to sell to people. And that's not the right way to go about it. They, they do that instead of giving value. There is a way to advertise. There's a really good way. But if you do it right, it can go viral. And it, when you go viral, you have lots of conversions. So it's. It eventually achieves the same goal, but when you start out with that goal in mind and only that goal, it's bad. It's real bad. So basically what happens is businesses will upload their short and then it'll get About a thousand views. This is the seed audience. And then it'll flatline and then they're like, is that it? That's YouTube shorts. And so they upload again and then it flatlines again and then they do it again and it flatlines again. And they have no idea why, they have no idea what's going on. And most of the clients that I work with, they have this issue until I point out that, hey, people can see right through what you're doing. You're just trying to get them to go to your landing page or you're just trying to get them to go to your long form content. Which is another big mistake that a lot of people don't realize they're making. They think that shorts are a trailer, a teaser for, for bigger things that they can show these people. But the secret is that shorts viewers don't want to leave the shorts feed and YouTube doesn't want them to leave the shorts feed. And so if you play by YouTube's game, then things will start working out for you. Basically what I'm saying is shorts need to be their own piece of content. You can't say, hey, if you want to learn more, check out my long form video. Like all of that, people will not watch. And if you leave something hanging, if you didn't give them entertainment or you didn't give them something to learn, then there's no viewer satisfaction in this short. And so I'll tell you two examples where this does work. Podcasts like this one and live streams. If you use clips from those, they can get people to move over to convert very easily. Because say you take a clip from this podcast, you'll clip something that I said, that is a piece of value. It's its own video. Without the podcast, it can still survive on its own. It can still get a lot of views and viewers get value from it. But when people say, here's what's going on, here's what my brand represents, click here to learn more. It's not going to work. That's where you get that flat line. This is where a lot of businesses suffer. I have a good example of this. There is a video I saw yesterday in the shorts feed. It was a hair product, okay. And it starts out with, it's like a top down shot of the top of this guy's head. And then a hand comes in with, I think it's like a spray can or something like that or. No, it's a can of powder. And so the hand turns over, it pours powder all over his head. It's on his face. And then she pours water on it. And then it gets, it's a huge mess. And the hand, I guess maybe it's his wife or whatever, she like rubs the top of his head and shows her hand and it's, it's a gigantic mess. This alone is entertaining. It's chaotic. People are like, wow, this is funny. You know, there's a little bit of dopamine in that. And then shortly after they show another one and it's like nice and smooth. And then it says link in description. And that little part that made the sale was like so short. People got it, they're like, oh, wow. Like that's very, very effective. But they were also entertained. And so there was viewer satisfaction regardless of whether they advertised or not. So there's no ulterior motive if there are two motives. And one of the motives has to be value. And so, yeah, that's really a big mistake a lot of businesses make. They just think, oh, I'm trying to move them to my landing page or my long form videos. But it's like, no, try to make value in the shorts alone. And this might feel counterintuitive. You might think, well, if I do that then I'll never get sales. And like the whole point is conversions. But it's not the case. Google had this research, it was something like 7 hours of interaction across 11 touch points over 4 platforms or something like that. And they said that's how you convert, that's how your consumers, that's how you get a sale over that seven hours. And that's just not the case. Like, I just don't believe that that's how it works for YouTube shorts because of the data that I have. Basically, if your shorts are good enough, if they provide education, entertainment, people will stay to the end, you'll have a higher watch time and your retention will tell YouTube, hey, this person's worth watching. And so 10 shorts down, as they're scrolling, your next short will pop up or they'll leave eventually. And then next time they come on, YouTube will show one of your shorts to them. After three shorts, they choose to go to the long form or they choose to figure out what you're talking about. And when it's the viewer's choice, then you've made the sale without even trying. All you got to do is just give free. Alex Hermosi. Give free value. Just give free value all the time. That's it. You build this reputation, you build this trust. And when you approach YouTube shorts like that, you will succeed.
- [14:20]
A
Love it. Okay. Super cool. And a lot of marketers are listening right now, instinctively, probably understand what you're talking about, especially if they create any kind of content at all. The simple philosophy here is that you have to do what the platforms want and what the watchers want. Right. The platforms want you to want consumers, viewers to stay to the end of the video. Well, if you start doing direct marketing, they're not going to stay to the end of the video. Therefore your views are not going to be seen. That's the platform desire. And when you layer in, what do consumers want? Well, they didn't come into the shorts feed to be sold necessarily. They know when a commercial pops up. And my guess is commercials do pop up in between the shorts. Right. And it's pretty obvious it's a commercial. But when they're watching the non commercial shorts, they are intentionally looking to either learn something or to be entertained. Therefore, if you can leverage that concept and you can do it in the right way, it's free advertising effectively. Right. And this is what we're going to talk about today. Like, I would rather create content that is shown to my target audience for free over and over again, then have to pay. So that's really what we're here to talk about today. So, so thank you for setting up all this foundation. And here's what I heard you say so far. Number one, view, don't view it as a promo tool. Focus on value. Number two, do not try to push people to long form content unless you've got some value you can extract from long form content and it can stand on its own. Yeah. And the key thing is every short should stand alone, meaning it should be good enough that it does not require them to have to go to something else.
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B
Right.
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A
You know, it's like a little movie, for lack of better words. And focus on entertaining and focus on learning one of those two. So now, given all this foundation that you've set, how do we actually begin? Because there is some kind of magic, if you will, or secret wisdom that you have learned having done a lot of this. So share with us kind of what, where we start.
- [16:20]
B
Okay. All right. Let me preface this by saying the two most powerful weapons in your marketing arsenal, especially for short form content, are observation, which is what works and why, and then perspective. If you can see like the viewer, the consumer, the target audience, you're golden. That's it. Those are the two things. So we'll get to perspective here in a bit, but let's start with observation. This, this is my bread and butter. This is what I love to do. So it's without the doubt. This is without a doubt the easiest way to go viral with short form content. I see it all the time. I see it every day. I help my clients, I help my creators. And I don't make the claim lightly because reputation means everything. Now, especially in the age of AI, you are focused on building trust and loyalty. The know like and trust factor. Then you're going to win from 2026 and on. So here's step one to going viral on the Shorts feed. All right, this is going to be really, really simple. And once you get really good at it, then you don't even have to like follow this. You just start doing it automatically. You kind of. I mean, you guys are marketers. You know how to look at the world from the perspective of the viewer. You know, you see a billboard, you don't see what it says, you see what other people see. And so go and find a viral video. It can be in your niche or it cannot be. I'll cover where to look here in a minute. But go find the viral video and just observe it. You're going to break it down into three categories. A audio, V visual, and T text. Now, a lot of people will say, all right, audio is whatever you hear that's not the case. I disagree. It's whatever you hear that makes you curious. V is for visual. What you see that makes you want to stay to the end. In text, what you read that makes you want to stay to the end. Subtitles are not a text hook. Subtitles are just there to provide a little bit of back and forth engagement. So let's say you find a. I got an example. These are the top three businesses with the lowest failure rate. All right, so that is the audio hook. Once you hear that, you stay to the end. Because you want to know the third one. That's Listicles work really well. But so when you hear that audio hook, you think, all right, how can I apply this to my niche? Maybe you're not even in the business niche. Maybe you're like me, maybe you're a short guru guy. And so you got to break that down. Like these are the top three. He said businesses. So I would say niche related item or category. And then he said with the lowest failure rate. I would say with the extreme important detail.
- [18:54]
A
Okay, just, just over the record, you found a viral video at this point. Right. I'm just, I'm just summarizing what was Done. You found a viral video that had a lot of views, and you're like, okay, there's something here. I want to model this. And what the person said at the very beginning is, these are the top three businesses with the lowest failure rate.
- [19:09]
B
Right.
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A
And now you're saying, this is how I could reverse engineer this.
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B
Yep.
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A
And you said, these are the top three. What did you say again for you?
- [19:17]
B
So the way that you reverse engineer it is you replace all the main words with just generalized terms.
- [19:21]
A
I see.
- [19:22]
B
I break it down that way so I can give it to all different types of niches, and then they can replace it. So mine would be these are the top three shorts niches with the highest payout. He said lowest failure rate. I would say highest payout.
- [19:34]
A
Got it. Okay, okay, okay, I'm following. Keep going.
- [19:36]
B
Okay. And then with that specific example, I remember he was holding up money. He was holding up, like, 100 bucks or something like that. And he was standing in front of a Bugatti. I don't know. I'm terrible with cars. And so when I look at that as a viewer, not just me trying to, you know, be entertained, but what keeps the viewer. Does that visual keep them to the end? Well, yeah, because money and expensive car creates credibility. Like, okay, this guy has authority in the space. So I'm. I mean, I'm hooked. Right. And so in my case, I would probably just hold up my YouTube play buttons because that gives me credibility. People don't know who I am. So what can they visually see that they can just connect those dots without me saying it out loud. And so that's how I broke down the visual hook.
- [20:26]
A
We'll.
- [20:26]
B
We'll go through some more examples here in a bit. But the problem with this particular example is there was no text hook. There was. There were subtitles, but there was no text hook. So I'm gonna throw a different example at you. By the way, when you break these down, you don't have to have all three. You can just have one. Okay, so give me a profession. Any profession.
- [20:51]
A
Let's say they are a marketer. You want to pick something more. More precise. I mean, I could say. I could. We could get more precise. We could say somebody who sells consulting services to aspiring entrepreneurs, if you want to.
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B
Okay. I mean, we did. Okay, we'll just say marketer because. Yeah, that's easy.
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A
Go for it.
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B
Okay, so let's just do one short with only a text hook.
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A
Okay.
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B
And this is. This is pretty simple. You say, all right. What marketers say to Their clients versus what they want to say. That's. That's all the text says. And so the first thing they say is something nice. Right. But then the viewer has to stick around because their true feelings are about to come out. And so this text hook has created this curiosity. And people stay to the end because they want to know, like, why. Right. There's a lot of things people want to say to their clients, but they don't because they're human and they want to be nice. And so this marketing profession, what they say to their clients versus what they want to say is just a solid example of a text hook working on its own. So, yeah, I, I have some examples that are all three, but we, yeah,
- [22:02]
A
let me, let me ask some clarifying questions here. Just, just, just kind of help everybody out. So we are focusing on hooks, and that is the piece that might be confusing people because we didn't state that at the beginning. So we are on the hook section of the video. And why don't you just back up a little bit and explain why the heck the hook matters so much? Because you've already told us there's a. There's an audio, visual, and text component to this thing. But back up a little bit and explain why the hook matters so much when it comes to shorts.
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B
Absolutely. That's. That's the curse of knowledge coming out right there. Sometimes I'll, I'll get into it. Assuming people already know what I'm talking about.
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A
Yeah.
- [22:39]
B
Okay. So hooks are super important. Hooks are basically the secret sauce of what makes short form content work. Hooks create curiosity. So there are three different types of hooks. There's audio, visual, and text. And their whole purpose is to get you to stay and maybe to the end, depending on how long the curiosity loop is. But we'll get into that here in a bit. But yeah, the hook just keeps you. Grabs you, and it says, hey, there's more coming. That's it. That's. That's all the hook does.
- [23:08]
A
How long is the hook? Typically with a YouTube short, it can
- [23:12]
B
be anywhere from 1 second to 5, 7 seconds, something like that.
- [23:17]
A
Okay, yeah, got it. Hey, just a quick interruption. I want to share something with you. If I told you that 62% of your peers are using AI tools every single day, would that surprise you? Well, that's the data that we found in the recent study that we just did. In fact, nearly half of marketers now say that video is their most important content format. More than written, more than visual, and more than audio combined. These are just Two statistics. Two stats that are in our brand new industry report. It's our 18th annual study. It's 44 pages long. And over the next couple of days, you can download it for free if you visit socialmediaexaminer.com Report26. Grab your copy now. Okay, let's get back to the show. So here's what we know so far. The hook is the most important thing to get them to watch to the end of the video. And. And so far you have mentioned that there are audio hooks which in your examples have been spoken words. Okay. There are visual hooks which you talked about this car and money. And we can talk about some other examples of visual hooks. And then the text hooks we really haven't gone into yet. So kind of maybe give us an example of how all three of these things can kind of play together. And then also let's talk about like any tips that people have once they find a really good video and they reverse engineer what the hooks are like. Any tips on how they could like apply it to their business?
- [24:38]
B
Sure. So the one text hook was the profession thing. It's usually an easy go to, to just say, hey, here's, here's something that will work for everybody if I say what profession say it says to their clients versus what they want to say. Or you could say what I say to my parents versus what I want to say.
- [24:56]
A
So that's on the screen while you're talking and it's exactly the same as the spoken word.
- [24:59]
B
Yeah, but you don't have to. What you actually say in that one isn't the hook though. You're just kind of like fulfilling the requirement that you set with the text hook. So the key to a te took is it's text that sits on screen that sets the plot, basically. And it can stay up the whole time or it can disappear after a short time. But it's not what you're saying out loud. It's like the subtext to the situation you're seeing.
- [25:23]
A
I see. So in this particular situation, this might be a marketer interacting with a client. Right. And you're just beginning to watch the interaction, but you're seeing these words on the screen that actually signal that what is happening here is not what it seems. Is that effectively what I'm hearing you say?
- [25:40]
B
Correct. So remember the guy with the hair thing? The example I said there was a text hook on that example. It said how it's going versus that's all it said. And so you see all this craziness. I mean, the Visual hook is already strong enough. You know something else is coming. But you definitely know something else is coming because of that little verses on the text hook. So all it says is how it started versus. And then you're like, okay, where's the how it's going? And then how it's going? And that can, I mean, say you're in a pet niche. How it started, it's just a cat, nice and cuddly, you know, a cat being cute. And then versus. And then it has the how it's going part, which the text changes to how it's going. And it's the cat just going crazy with the zoomies, tearing things up. It sets an expectation that something is coming.
- [26:25]
A
Audiovisual text. These are all different layers that are part of the hook that can technically hook together. Pardon the pun. So do you find one is more important than the other?
- [26:35]
B
No. I recently made a video specifically on text hooks because I don't think they get utilized enough. And I dropped like 15 of them. I said, here, you can use all these. And they're already. They're already working for people. But I don't think any of them is more important than the others because they all equally get hundreds of millions of views from my data. And the tool that I made. It's all the same. Some of them are just only text hooks. Some of them are a little bit of a combination. Maybe one is only a visual hook. It all works.
- [27:04]
A
When we were prepping, you said you had an example of Roblox. Maybe you can share a little bit of that story.
- [27:08]
B
Okay, so I have a tool that kind of does this stuff for you. And one of the biggest wins for this tool was somebody found a hook in the Roblox niche. The hook is, I'll just paint the picture here. It starts out with a character walking. It's a Roblox character. For those that don't know, Roblox is a game that kind of looks like Legos, but it's a video game. And so you got this Lego looking character walking. And the audio hook is, I just found this dark secret in this Roblox game. Or I just found a dark secret in this Roblox game. So what this person did, they ended up getting eight times as many views as that example, which went from 1 million to 8 million. So they got 8 million views using that hook. The hook itself is I just found a extreme secret in niche. So I think their hook was, I just found this hidden secret in this. Or I just found a hidden secret in this optical illusion. And that's all it was. And then they went on to explain what the secret was. Just like the original Roblox example went on to explain what the secret was that they found.
- [28:18]
A
Ah, okay. I love it. I love it. Okay, anything else on hooks before we get to the curiosity loops thing that you kind of hinted at a little bit?
- [28:25]
B
No, no, we can. We can just go ahead and move on.
- [28:28]
A
All right, let's go. Let's go. Yeah, let's hope you mentioned curiosity loops. So why don't you kind of explain what that means? I know we've kind of. Maybe we could deduce what it means, but let's talk about, like, what it is and why it matters, and then let's. Let's dig in on it.
- [28:42]
B
Sure. So once you understand how to break down hooks, you can observe all the shorts and know how to break them down into audio, visual, and text. You can start looking for the angles, like the. The most important. I don't know, the most, like, dynamic or funny angle that will make people the most curious about what will happen towards the end. And that's basically just storytelling. So when you have a hook, you open up a curiosity loop, and a curiosity loop is just an open question. They think, okay, well, what's going to happen? Right? Just like somebody's. Somebody has a text hook that says how it started versus and then that's it. They're going to be like, okay, well, versus what, How. How's it going? Right? What. What's going to happen next? And so until that question gets answered, the curiosity loop is opened real quick.
- [29:28]
A
Do you feel like this is like a psychological thing that kind of. Because, you know, if you watch some really good TV shows, you know, where they kind of end on a. Like a tease of what's going to happen next, you kind of feel like you have to keep watching. Right? Isn't it kind of the same concept?
- [29:40]
B
Absolutely. That is the longest curiosity loop you can create. It's. It's awful. Like, okay, great, now I have an open curiosity loop until next week when the new one airs. And so, yeah, that essentially, that's just the same thing.
- [29:53]
A
Got it. Okay. So how in the world do we create a curiosity loop?
- [29:58]
B
Well, hooks, basically, that's. That's the way I do it. There are two ways you can do this, in my opinion. You can go and you can find examples and break them down and figure out, okay, what can I do this for my niche, which is basically what my tool does, or you can look at what you Already want to talk about maybe a situation happened and you think, all right, how can I make people curious about this? What. What happened at the end of this story? And how can I preface it to lead people to that. That part? So how do I make them curious about it? And that's where you find the angle. So let me just give you an example. I'm going to go on a little bit of a rant here, because one of the worst things that people do in this situation is they don't know how to appeal to a layman. And I'm just saying that most people in the shorts feed aren't specialists, and you don't have to talk to them like one. I mean, you guys are all marketers. You know that you have to simplify your language to create good copy. So just going back before I understood this, I never got more than a thousand views ever. But then I learned how to break down storytelling. And this is what took off for me. This is how I got over 350 million views on the John Scott channel. So to be clear, let me just give you the example. I have this real estate client, and they understand how to tell stories. They understand that a story is basically just a conflict and a resolution. That's it. You bring up the stakes. These are the conflicts. Here's my bad situation, here's how I'm going to solve it. And so they start talking about the marketing and the numbers and how them and their client overcame this and sold a house or whatever. And I'm just like, this is too confusing for the Shorts feed. Nobody, nobody cares about this. The layman is lost because they don't understand your. Your marketing jargon, your real estate jargon. But what they can understand is, is something as simple as your yard sign. And they had this story about a yard sign. They kept getting ripped up. And she overcame that. And the way that she overcame that over overcame it is she bought a stronger tool to, like, dig them deeper. So it was very difficult to rip them out. And that sounds like a boring story. My. My signs were getting ripped out, so I bought a tool, and now I can bury them deeper. The end, right? It's a story. Sure. It's a crappy story. So what I told him is, somebody keeps ripping my for sale signs out of the yards. All right, there's the conflict. It's a hook almost. But then I bought a baseball bat, all right? Now it's a hook. And it's like, okay. The viewer is like, whoa. What does that have to do with this. And so the baseball bat, in essence, in the end, she can use the baseball bat to hit it down. And that's like a funny punch line. That's a good twist that the end. But you opening it up by saying, okay, here's my conflict. Here's this crazy thing that I did that adds on to this crazy story that is unexpected. I, I, I really just think it works. And so the layman understands yard sign, they understand baseball bat. They understand that the two don't really have anything to do together. And so they have to stick around to the end. And the way that I got this was from my most viral video. The story is I'll explain the story and then I'll explain the angle of the story. So the story is, there's this salesman in China, I think he had some sort of, like, food. He was a food vendor and nobody was buying his food. And so he takes an iPhone and he glues it to the ground. And people, they, they start trying to pick it up. And I saw that video. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every, it was a very, I might,
- [33:38]
A
I might have seen it on your channel, actually.
- [33:40]
B
Yeah, yeah, maybe. So people, they've been down to try to pick this up, and then they can't because it's glued to the ground. And so they're stuck in front of the vendor. And maybe there's some awkward situation where they're like, oh, I'm just, I don't know, I just dropped something and they leave. Or maybe they stick around because it's so awkward, they buy something. So the way that I frame that story is I saw the angle, the angle of it. The weirdest part about the whole story, the thing that creates the most curiosity is the cell phone. It has nothing to do with a food vendor not being able to sell anything. So I said, this guy, I turned it into a hot dog stand for this story, but nobody was buying this guy's food. So he glued an iPhone to the ground, and that's it. Now, those two things have nothing to do with each other, but it creates a lot of curiosity. People have to stick around to the end to find out why. And so that was the angle. That was the one thing I knew that would create the most curiosity. And so I front loaded that until. And it led them to the end. That's, that's kind of how I frame these stories.
- [34:41]
A
Okay, so I believe you created an animation out of this one. Because if I'm not mistaken, because that's how you got started doing these animations is that Correct.
- [34:49]
B
Yes.
- [34:50]
A
Like kind of a 3D animation. So in this particular case, did you model another video that you. You had heard somewhere or did you actually just decide to take the story and create a new version of it through animation? I'm just curious what you did did there.
- [35:04]
B
I. I saw the original story. There was a viral video. All it was was somebody's recording of iPhone glued to the ground in front of a stand. And people kept trying to pick it up and that was it. They would drop something to try to pick it up.
- [35:18]
A
So you added a story layer to it, which is something happening in front of the phone.
- [35:22]
B
Yeah, yeah. And also the twist where, like, people now have to pay for their food and stuff like that. That was all me.
- [35:27]
A
Yeah.
- [35:28]
B
So, yeah, I just added or them dropping the dollar and then going to pick it up to pretend like this was all tension building. It had nothing to do with the original story. And so.
- [35:37]
A
Yeah, interesting. Okay, so we're on curiosity loops right now. We're getting into storytelling a little bit, but curiosity loops are the combination, at least the way we've been talking a bit about things that don't seem to naturally go together. So, for example, the yard sign being ripped out and her buying a baseball bat, immediately your brain goes to. She's going to sit in her car with the baseball bat and attack the person who takes the sign out.
- [36:02]
B
Right.
- [36:02]
A
Which creates that tension. At least that's where my brain went. And in the particular case of the glued down cell phone, like, what goes through your brain is, why would anybody buy a cell phone and glue it down? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Right?
- [36:13]
B
Yeah.
- [36:14]
A
But there is a creative marketing twist to it. Right. So whenever you see two things that seem to not go together that can create curiosity, that's not the only way to create curiosity, I'm guessing. Do you have any other ways that curiosity is created beyond just two things that don't seem to go together?
- [36:33]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So that's definitely not the only way to tell a story. It's just like one really great way to create curiosity is to combine two things, subverting expectations for sure. But let's say we have an example. I wish I knew this before I built my gardening thing. Right. And so that's a. That's a great way to start, but you then. Then you follow up a story. I wish I knew this before I did niche activity. And so why do you wish you knew that? Like, we can connect the dots. Something bad happened, like there was a conflict or there was an obstacle. And this is going to warn me not to meet that obstacle. And so, yeah, you build it up. You. You say, okay, so the other day I was doing this and I was trying to achieve, blah, blah, blah. But now you have a but. And there's the, the problem, the stakes, the obstacle. And so. But this got my way. So. Or therefore. It's a but therefore storytelling technique. That's the most popular way.
- [37:38]
A
I love it.
- [37:39]
B
So I tried this thing and then it kind of went along. But. And there's another one. So you have this like, I don't know, roller coaster of.
- [37:48]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every but opens up a new conflict potentially, right?
- [37:52]
B
Yep.
- [37:53]
A
So this is intriguing. We're talking about curiosity loops, and we've mostly been talking about how to open the curiosity loop. Give us some tips on how to close it.
- [38:01]
B
I, I always like to end on a punchline or a twist. I, I like to subvert expectations just a tiny bit. But that is, that's more like you're telling stories for entertainment, right. Whereas if you're doing education, you might want to end on the epiphany, the great piece of value, the information that you can give. So that's, that's the way I usually approach it. But when you end it, there's a mistake that a lot of marketers make is that they will try to push people or they'll try to deliberately get people to comment, subscribe, like, or whatever. And I don't think that that's a good idea. I think that that ruins the story. Honestly. I think if people do it on their own, then you end up with a lot more engagement. And so that's just a trap that I wouldn't recommend falling into.
- [38:57]
A
Love it onto the storytelling thing, which, you know, we're interconnecting all these things together, but we've, we've started this interview talking about hooks. Then we got into curiosity loops and we started to talk about storytelling. Do we always have to tell a story in every one of our shorts? Do they not work if there is no story? Like, tell me a little bit about storytelling.
- [39:13]
B
I think the word is almost intimidating. People get caught in a trap of they have to do it a certain way. Storytelling is basically just obstacle solution. So anything can be a story, right? Like the very original example, guy has mess all over his head. Here's the solution. It's my product, right? Here's an example. There's this 3D printer guy and he has all these comments popping up, trying to improve his 3D printed product. And then he starts showing version one, here's the problem, there's the conflict. Version two, problem. Version three, problem. And like, you're just hooked. You wonder what the next problem is. That's it. And so, like, does that fit in the normal storytelling? The problem, conflict, resolution, whatever, like falling action. No, it doesn't. It doesn't fit this, this word that a lot of people expect to fulfill. They have to do this. So I think storytelling is essentially, you need to simplify the idea of storytelling, and I think that'll help you out a lot more. And eventually the guy, his, his product, did it pass eventually? Was it like a great version of a product or was it worse? I don't know. But there has to be some sort of solution at the end, right? There has to be some sort of resolution. If it was worse, you end on a joke. If it was solved and it was better, then people feel that satisfaction anyway. So, yeah, that's. That's one example that doesn't go with the, the man and whole type story. Where, here's how it starts, here's problem, here's how I solved it. It's like a lot more and it's back to back. And so there's not a whole lot of tension built up. It's just problem resolution, problem resolution.
- [40:57]
A
You mentioned at the beginning that there are two things, observation and perspective. And observation, if I'm not mistaken, is really observing what others have done that are successful in reverse engineering what exactly you could do. Is perspective something we've addressed. Do we need to talk about that at all?
- [41:14]
B
Yeah. So this, this whole thing, storytelling is perspective. So for instance, when the real estate agent wanted to say all these things, like, you have to approach this story from a mindset of a very young person that isn't necessarily interested in your profession. Right. You want to entertain them, and when you do that, you make a connection. I'll give you an example. Jefferson Fisher, he is this guy on Instagram, and he tells people how to handle conflict. He gives tips. All he does is he just sits in his car and. And he says, okay, if somebody treats you this way, here's how to address it. It's just very personable. It's just him with his phone. Authentic, right? And he makes a ton of these. And Jefferson Fisher is actually like one of the top attorneys now in Texas because of this stuff. But he never said anything about being an attorney. His target audience wasn't people that needed attorneys. But in turn, for all this no like and trust factor that he built from that, he became the biggest attorney. And so he focused on making content that related to anybody and everybody. And so when you approach it with observation, your perspective of any type of viewer and you can make that connection, you end up like Jefferson Fisher.
- [42:31]
A
Love it. All right, John, we have just scratched the surface of that brain of yours. So if people want to check you out or connect with you on the socials, where do you want them to go? And if they're interested in possibly working with you or joining your community or whatever, where do you want to send them?
- [42:46]
B
Okay, so the reverse engineering of all these viral videos. It's hookbomb.com Basically, I have a ton of videos on there. I'm aiming to get up to a thousand here in the next month or so. But yeah, hookbomb.com all that work can be done for you. If you're looking for me, there's a channel called Creator Rant where I break down these hooks and I do live streams every Monday and Friday where people submit their shorts and I tell them why they suck or why, why they're good. And so yeah, if you're looking for other stuff, other stuff, I've done all of my backlog of YouTube information because I was not only a shorts expert, you can go to shorts expert. I got it because the domain.
- [43:26]
A
Awesome. Thank you, John Scott, so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us today.
- [43:30]
B
Hey, thanks for having me.
- [43:31]
A
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you or over@socialmediaexaminer.com 719. If you're new to this show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener for a while, we would love a review on whatever platform you're listening on. And do let your friends know about this show. You can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn and or X. And do check out my other show, the AI Explored Podcast. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving.
- [44:03]
B
The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.
- [44:12]
A
Hey, thanks for listening to this week's episode. Before you head out, I wanted to personally recommend that you download our brand new industry report. I've been publishing this study for 18 years. It's a long time. And this year's data points to a really clear picture of where the industry is headed. Whether you're focused on organic, paid video or artificial intelligence, it's all covered in this 44 page report with more than 50 charts and right now it's totally free. Visit socialmediaexaminer.com report26 to download it right now. Social mediaexaminer.com report26 see you next time.