You’ll find many great guides and videos on this, especially if you have a particular genre you’re making for. So our guide is focused on how to win over the algorithm, no matter the type of content you make. These are the tricks professional content creators use and can be applied across any genre of video.
All content follows the same basic rules, and has to achieve these 3 things;
1. The Hook
The Hook is all about one thing - making someone stick around more than 3 seconds to see what this video is about. Creators use a few different tricks to get the message of the video across straight away.
Titles - Sketches might say “POV: That friend who can’t hold their drink”, “Can’t believe how this ends” or “What a HERO”. 5 years ago these words would live in the caption of the post. But in a video-led world, no-one reads captions in the first 3 seconds. By setting up what the video is about straight away, the viewer spends 3 seconds reading the caption and now they want to know more. Hooked.
Already started - Everyone over 35 thinks it’s weird, but videos generally start VERY FAST on TikTok. Sometimes it seems like you may have missed the first second of the video. It’s not your poor 4G connection, it’s on purpose. By taking away that nano-second where your thumb flicks the video away, you’re already watching now. Hooked.
Show the end - Used to great effect in cooking videos and horror accident videos alike. You might have heard this during presentation training - “tell people what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you just told them”. When you see a recipe on TikTok, it doesn’t start with dry pasta, tomatoes and grated cheese - you see a bubbly pasta bake coming out of a hot steaming oven. Then you see ingredients. But now you want to know how to make that bubbly feast. Hooked.
2. The Story
As you might imagine, the Story is main part of your video. The aim of this part is to deliver your main points, and ultimately you’re trying to keep the viewer engaged. While any engaging story will retain viewers, Creators employ a few different techniques to try and maximise retention through the middle of the video.
Be fast - talking fast and editing fast. Some creators will speak incredibly fast over their videos, and it seems that they aren’t taking a breath. In fact they’re editing their lines closer together, and you may notice that they talk over themselves so there’s no dead air.
Keep it interesting - while this seems obvious, take a hyper-critical view of your own edit. Are there any points in your video where nothing happens? Or a few seconds of necessary stuff? Imagine the viewers thumb hovering over their phone while they watch your video. At what point will their thumb twitch, tempted to scroll past? Cut that bit out.
Signpost - tell people where they are in your story. Videos seem shorter if the viewer knows where it’s going, and where they are right now. Countdowns are good one - “5 reasons why you’re not being productive”. You know it’s five points, and after number 2, I kinda want to know the others.
3. The Ending
There are 3 ways to end a video. The aim here is full completion. Not 0.5 seconds before the video ends. Not even a higgs-boson nano second. The real trick to ending a video is making the viewer believe it doesn’t exist (90s film reference there). You’ve got the viewer all the way to the end of the video, don’t ruin it now.
Really abruptly - your branded 5-second sting, it has to go I’m afraid. The problem is, when a viewer sniffs the end of the video, they flick up. That’s a 98% view rate. You need 100% to be really successful. Many creators simply end the video very abruptly, maybe 1 second earlier than perhaps seemed necessary. It looks like a mistake, but trust me, it’s on purpose. Video view completed.
End = Start - this is the dark arts of video creation. You’re watching a video, then you realise you’re watching it again. How did it happen? The start and the end frames were seemlessly blended together to loop, and there you have it - 120% view rate.
Make it loop - Looping videos aren’t just about merging the end with the start. True looping videos are different. They’re shorter (often < 15 seconds), and will even merge the audio track (i.e. the music), making the enjoyment of the video watching it over and over. 500% view rate. Mission complete.
