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If you had to choose between saving your dog and your business, which one would it be?

Oh my god, you monster. You don’t have a dog!

But that’s not the point. The point is that people love dogs, and you care strongly about your business.

Therefore, emotions arise when we make you choose between the two. Surprise, doubt, sadness, anger…

Which is why you’re still reading.

They hook. 

More on what hooks after this 👇️ 

They’ll dig (you) for nuggets

Think about all the content you have.

Blogs, sure. Social posts, probably. Landing pages, product pages, about pages, emails… there’s a lot.

Where do you put the hooks in all of that?

If you’re thinking: “in the hero”, or "in the intro”, or generally at the top, you’re not wrong. But you’re not right.

A perfect hook appears where you would have lost the reader otherwise.

And the perfect kind of hook to reel them back in is a nugget.

Don’t bury the lede — bury some gold

A nugget, in this case, is a fascinating fact. One that makes the reader feel like they’re striking gold.

For instance:

• The average social media user scrolls the height of the Empire State Building every day (not real, but will hook).

• Facts have a half life. In any discipline, that’s the time it takes for 50% of our knowledge to become irrelevant. For fast-moving industries like technology, the half life can be as short as 6 months (real).

• In 2008, Airbnb was 2 guys renting out 3 air mattresses in their apartment. In under 15 years, they scaled to $100 billion (real).

You’ve done it right when your reader thinks, “Wow, I didn’t know that!”

This makes your content effective (re: profitable) because:

1. It acts like Velcro, snagging your reader’s attention and pulling them in.

2. It builds credibility because you’re teaching them something new and valuable.

3. It leans on the reciprocity principle. You gave away something good, and they feel grateful.

But make it gold, not brass

A poor attempt at a nugget will have the opposite effect. Here are three principles to synthesize the real thing and not fool’s gold.

1: Spend more time researching than writing

Gold and gems are valuable for their rarity. 

Nuggets tend to get repeated.

The more widely they’re shared, the less valuable they become in your content. Put in the effort to find credible, interesting information that isn’t widely known yet.

2: Keep it relevant and useful

In 1262, a law was passed making it illegal for bakers to sell underweight loaves. To make sure they were fully legal, bakers started adding an extra slice to every loaf, and an extra loaf to every dozen. This is where we get the term “baker’s dozen.”

Interesting, right? But not particularly relevant.

The best nuggets are related to your topic and feel useful to your reader.

Location, location, location

Use nuggets wherever reader drop-off is highest. At the top of any content is a must, but you can then use data from Google Analytics or a dedicated tool like Hotjar to see drop-off points.

Tip: always give the most value right before you ask for something. Put your best nugget right before the CTA.

You’ll know it’s working because your bounce rate will plummet, your time on page will start to climb, and, most importantly, your conversion rate will soar.

65%

The percentage of people who think they’re visual learners. But they’re wrong.

In a study, 65% of medical students said they thought they were visual learners. Actual testing showed their preferred style didn’t make them learn any better.

But that begs the question:

Why are people hooked on visual learning in the first place?

It’s about the cognitive load

In scientific terms, it boils down to something called “processing fluency” or “speed of comprehension.”

In normal language:

It’s (sometimes) faster to see something demonstrated than it is to read about it or hear it explained to us. We don’t have to work as hard to get information into our brain.

Yeah, we don’t necessarily learn better with visuals…but we learn faster, and that’s pretty darned important for marketing.

What, hooks?

We know a thing or two about what hooks human psyches, so why not use it to your advantage?

1: Emotion

Dr. Shahram Heshmat has discussed how emotions influence memory formation, noting that emotionally charged events are often remembered more vividly. It’s actually a fundamental part of our survival mechanism: go through something significant, imprint the memory, seek/avoid that situation in the future. It’s a chemical response.

→ Instead of trying to make people care about what you’re selling, start with something they already care about (like love, loss, or climate change) and connect from there.

2: Meaning over aesthetics

Thousands of images slip away from our minds every day. 

Cognitive scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology identified what makes the sticky ones stick:

• Warmly colored human faces, close-up objects, and indoor scenes are more memorable than blue and green outdoor spaces. Why? Faces are distinctive; landscapes are samey.

• Object semantics play a role in picture memory — if people immediately understand what they’re looking at, it sticks.

• Beauty doesn’t equal memorability because of inter-subject variability. It really is in the eye of the beholder.

On the whole, most subjects agreed on what’s memorable vs what isn’t. 

→ It’s about content over beauty. Don’t just look good; mean something.

3: Repetition

There’s a reason you remember '90s pop songs, but not your latest password.

It’s about repetition, repetition, repetition.

Brand consistency is a drum worth banging. Say it often. Say it the same. Then say it again.

→ Research by Neil Patel suggest customers need to see your brand at least 8 times before they buy from you.

The takeaway? Memory has cheat codes.

No matter where you look today, there’s some kind of marketing.

It’s hard to get noticed in this much noise.

Don’t waste your chance. Use the science to hook attention, hack memory, and actually get remembered.

Written by Amy Hawthorne and edited by Catherine Solbrig. 

PS: Search is changing