Hook viewers to your YouTube videos using the Hooked model!
Hooked, by Nir Eyal, is a really great framework for product makers as it helps drive customer engagement if executed well.
However, those who understand it deeply enough will tell you that it can be used for pretty much any type of product or service.
And after all your YouTube channel is also a service.
In this blog, let’s see how this model can help you have a highly engaged YouTube audience.
Hooked is a 4-step cycle that the users of a service typically pass through. Your goal should be to get all the 4 steps working well for you so that your viewers convert to become your loyal audience and even promoters.
Step 1: Trigger (External and Internal)
A trigger is an explicit push to get your audience to engage with your offering, in this case your videos. It can be a notification that you have new content posted.
Here is what’s important about a well-functioning trigger — An anticipated and trusted trigger is better than an unanticipated and unreliable one.
You can do this by:
- Scheduling your videos, say every day or every Sunday and so on.
- Calling this promise out in all of your early videos
- Sticking to the promise and delivering on time
Over time, your subscriber expects to see your video at a fixed time every day or every week converting this habit to an Internal trigger. Beyond this point your viewers themselves come to your channel voluntarily to look up new content; no push needed.
Converting your audience from ‘externally triggered’ to ‘internally triggered’ is one of the most important steps for high engagement channels.
There are other ways your audience can/will be triggered like social media posts, YouTube notifications etc. But what’s important is you get all of these working for you towards internal triggering.
These other triggers act like multiple internal roads that lead your audience to the highway of internal triggering where their engagement with your channel is unhindered and at a high velocity.
Step 2: Action
Give your subscribers the simplest path to have the best experience with your service. This is where ‘great content’ comes into play which will induce your user to take action on the trigger.
Great content is easy to consume, clear, and to the point. If it’s delivered in an entertaining way, that’s cherry on top.
Here are a few tips on ease of consumption:
- You have 5 things to say, sequence them; or if you have a complex topic, break it into chunks (YouTube feature)
- Make playlists on related topics to ease discovery
- Add subtitles for ease of audio comprehension
- Title and tag your posts clearly consistently for relevance and discovery
- Let the user skip to the segment they find most interesting. They should derive value from having spent that time on your video.
In the long run, there is no substitute for quality content. Whatever your niche, try to research and provide autheticity and quality to your viewers. You will also get better as you go.
There are 2 more steps to this process. Continue reading part-2 of the blog here
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At Ylytic, we are building products to help YouTubers to track their channel growth daily and focus on taking the right actions based on data. Register and try for free here.
