What I Tried
“I sat down to test hooks and realized I didn’t know how to write one.” That was the first line of the first video, and it was true. A hook is the opening line of a short video, the part that decides whether someone keeps watching or keeps scrolling. Almost everyone who talks about growing online says it matters more than anything else in the video. I’d heard that plenty of times, but I had never tested it myself. So I set up a simple experiment to see what my own numbers would say.
I filmed three short videos that all made the same point. The only thing I changed was the first line. One opened with an admission, the line you just read. One opened with a question: “Have you ever tried to learn something and realized you didn’t even know where to start?” The third dropped viewers into the middle of the story: “I had my camera set up, ready to test three hooks, and I couldn’t write a single one.” I posted one a day, October 15 through 17, on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Facebook Reels. Then I checked views at 24 hours and again at 72 hours, so every video got the same amount of time.
What Happened
Instagram came with a catch. The admission video showed 36 views there, which looked like a win until I checked where they came from. Twenty-six of those views came from my own personal account, so the real number was 10, the same as the story opening. That’s why the admission’s total in this post is 306, not 332. I checked TikTok and Facebook the same way, and Instagram was the only place my own views showed up. The question video pulled 22, which makes it the real Instagram leader. It’s a good reminder to check where your numbers come from before you trust them.
TikTok told a different story. The admission hook did best there, with 136 views, compared to 89 for the question and 53 for the story opening. It also held people the longest, with an average watch time of 11.7 seconds. The question averaged 10.2 seconds, and the story opening averaged 9.6. Those gaps are small, but they all lean the same way. On TikTok, an honest admission seemed to keep people around a little longer.
Instagram came with a catch. The admission video showed 36 views there, which looked like a win until I checked where they came from. Twenty-six of those views were from my own personal account. Take those out, and it had 10, the same as the story opening. The question video pulled 22, which makes it the real Instagram leader. That’s a good reminder to check where your numbers come from before you trust them.
Then there’s Facebook, which is the part of the numbers that stands out most. Facebook carried the biggest share of views on all three videos. The admission got 160 there, the question got 262, and the story opening got 266. That means the story opening actually edged out the question on Facebook by four views at the 72-hour mark. The admission video also brought in one new Facebook follower, the only new follower from the whole test. One follower isn’t a trend, but it’s still a real person who decided to stick around.
What I Learned
A question opening seemed to pull more people in overall. TikTok, though, responded better to an honest admission. Here’s the problem: I posted these three videos on three different days. A Thursday crowd and a Saturday crowd might not be the same crowd, so I can’t tell yet whether this is a pattern or just luck. If I’m honest, three videos is barely enough to call it a test.
There’s something else in the numbers I don’t fully understand yet. The difference between the best hook and the worst hook was 67 views. The difference between platforms was much bigger. Once my own views were out, Facebook did more than TikTok and Instagram combined on every video, no matter which hook I used. That makes me wonder if where a video lands matters more right now than how it starts. I’m not sure yet, and I don’t want to build a rule on three videos.
I’ve posted plenty of things that went nowhere. Not a few views, but nothing anyone could measure. This test was the first time I counted every single view on purpose and wrote it down. When you track numbers that closely, a small number stops feeling like a verdict. It turns into information about what real people actually did. Three hundred and twenty-nine views isn’t a failure. It’s 329 chances to learn something.
What I’m Trying Next
I’m running the test again, but this time all three hook styles go up on the same day. That takes the “different day, different crowd” problem off the table. I want to see if the question still leads overall and if TikTok still favors the admission. I’m also going to watch Facebook closely, since it carried so much of the first round. If it keeps doing the heavy lifting, that changes where my energy should go.
I’ll share the numbers either way, including if the second round flips everything the first round seemed to show. If the question hook loses next time, that’s still an answer worth having. It would just mean the first round was closer to luck than I hoped. That’s the deal with doing this in public. The results don’t get to be clean just because a post would read better that way.
If you’ve ever posted something and heard nothing back, what’s one small thing you’d test before deciding it didn’t work?
R.L. Canty │ The Canty Effect
