Are a you a scientist thinking about creating science-related videos? Here’s an essential thing to know: the most important part of any video is the first few seconds. That’s because if you don’t give a viewer starting your video an immediate reason to keep watching, they will immediately switch off.

The first few seconds of a video (10 seconds on the outside) are known as the hook – so-called because they exist to hook the viewer in. Without a good hook, it doesn’t matter what the rest of your video looks like, because your would-be viewer will never bother to see it.

Here’s an example of a good hook. The following video by Minute Physics, uses a simple question as its hook (and is just two seconds long).

What makes for a successful hook? The one requirement is that it should immediately tie into things that connect with your audience. This is of course means that you, as a would-be video maker, need to know something about your potential viewers. Beyond that though, you have tremendous room to experiment with your video hooks.

Interested in learning more about creating great videos? SciFund Challenge has a lot more to say about it in our Video for Scientists class. Here’s the relevant section of the class material.