Toolkit · Template 4 of 5 · v1.0
Hook Analysis Worksheet
A worksheet for studying why the first seconds of your own content did or did not work, and pulling out the mechanism without copying anyone’s words.
For a creator or builder learning what makes an opening hold attention, using their own material as the evidence. It is for the content you make about your product, not for building the product.
- Hook: the first seconds of a video or the first line of a post, the part that decides whether someone keeps watching or reading.
- Completion rate: the share of views that reach the end of a video.
Copy the templateWorked exampleWhy these fieldsAll five templates
How to use it
- Log only your own openings, word for word. Write a hypothesis before you see the numbers.
- For what you noticed elsewhere, record the technique in your own words, for example “names the cost before the fix”. Never paste another creator’s wording.
- Compare against another opening shown to a similar audience at the same time, not against an earlier day. Give the numbers and how many views they rest on.
- Give the verdict against your hypothesis, not against how you feel about the post.
- One entry is one test. This worksheet is for noticing. To decide something, write a locked rule first in the Experiment Ledger.
Copy the blank template
Plain text. Paste it into a document or notes app. Nothing on this page collects what you type. Free to copy, adapt and share.
Hook Analysis Worksheet (template v1.0) Hook (your own): [The opening line or visual you used, word for word. Your own piece only.] Platform: [Where it ran.] Format: [Video, carousel, single image, text post.] Hypothesis: [Why you expected it to work, written before results.] Mechanism seen elsewhere: [The technique, described in general terms. Never another creator’s exact wording.] Signal observed: [What happened: completion, saves, replies, and how many views. Compare against another opening shown at the same time, not against an earlier day.] Verdict: [Did the result agree with the hypothesis, and how strongly.] Reusable mechanism: [The general principle worth reusing, stripped of the specific example.]
Worked example
Example: one worksheet entry for a board-game night app. All names and numbers are invented and illustrative.
| Field | Example entry |
|---|---|
| Hook (your own) | “Game night just lost an hour to setup.” |
| Platform | Short-form video. |
| Format | 15-second vertical video. |
| Hypothesis | Opening on a small, familiar moment of trouble will hold people longer than opening on a feature. |
| Mechanism seen elsewhere | Several unrelated hobby-app creators open on a familiar moment of trouble before showing the tool. Noted as a technique, not quoted. |
| Signal observed | Invented numbers: the same video was shown with two different openings to two comparable groups of viewers over the same 3 days, 4,000 views each. Completion was 74 percent with the trouble-first opening and 68 percent with the feature-first opening. |
| Verdict | Consistent with the hypothesis on this single test. Not proof. |
| Reusable mechanism | Open on the small, familiar trouble. Introduce the fix second. |
Type the numbers in rather than attaching screenshots of platform analytics. Screenshots can carry account names and other details you did not mean to share, and typed numbers can be searched and compared later. Do not paste another creator’s wording into this worksheet or into new content: describe the technique in your own words, so the worksheet holds what you can reuse.
Why these fields are here
The plain fields explain themselves. These are the ones people skip, and the reason each one is there.
- Hook (your own)
- Your own wording is yours to reuse and learn from. Someone else’s is not.
- Mechanism seen elsewhere
- A technique you describe in your own words can be reused. A quotation cannot, and copying it teaches you nothing about why it worked.
- Signal observed
- Two openings shown on different days reach different audiences, so the gap may not come from the opening at all.