11: FUEL Framework

Every great hook needs fuel, literally. In this episode, I break down the FUEL framework, my go-to method for writing hooks that actually stop the scroll, and walk through real examples from breweries doing it well.

In this episode:

1. The three types of hooks (visual, audio, written) and how each one works
2. The FUEL framework: Find your purpose, Understand your audience, Echo their experience, Lure them in
3. Why understanding your audience is the piece everything else depends on
4. Real hook examples from Allagash, Highland Brewing, and more
5. How to find creators outside the beer industry who already reach your ideal audience

Content Mentioned

https://www.instagram.com/p/DbojwWNlLm_/?img_index=1

Transcript

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Welcome to Tapped In, the Craft Beer Marketing Podcast for brewery teams who want to turn their Instagram followers into regulars. I'm your host, Stephanie Grant, and today we're going to talk about hooks. I like to use this as sort of an example of what hooks do. If you're walking in a crowd of people and someone says a name Jenny, you may turn around. You're going to especially turn around if your name is Jenny or even close Jennifer, something along those lines, you're going to turn around. You might just keep walking because your name isn't Jenny and they're not talking to you. If someone calls out your name, though, you're going to turn around. Another example of this, if someone says mom, I would imagine you know your child's voice, right? But I think that any mom would probably turn around because not only is there a child calling out for their mom, they might be lost, you might be concerned, it's going to get your attention. This is the same thing with hooks. There are different types of hooks, which I'll get into, but your hooks are there to capture someone's attention. You want to have hooks in your content. Otherwise, if someone is not hooked in, they're gonna keep scrolling. And this is regardless of platform. Let's talk about the different ways a hook can show up. A hook can show up visually, so something that's done in the video or in the carousel, because hooks could be in carousels as well. It's something that someone visually sees that makes them stop. That's a hook. It could be something interesting, it could be something funny, it could be a familiar background. It doesn't matter. Like it's something that feels like you have caught that person's attention. If it's something funny, it's something funny to laugh to, right? A video of a dog is automatically gonna make me stop, okay? Because I love puppies. That's part of the visual hooks. I don't know why I'm thinking about boats, boats on the lake. Maybe because I would like to get on a boat on a lake before my summer is up, but it could be you see a boat on the lake and you have a boat, or you would like to take a boat out, and so you stop. So this is what I mean by like visual hooks. There's something either familiar or something that is of interest to someone in the video. Okay. Then you can have audio hooks. These are things that are said. They could be saying very much like the example I gave. They could be calling out a name, whether that be someone's identity, an interest that someone has, whatever it could be. It's something that's spoken that gets someone's attention. Probably my favorite type of hook is a written hook because no matter what you film in that video, a written hook can do a lot of lifting to get someone's attention. I have used so many written hooks on my own page that I have been amazed at how well they can work and they can really make or break your content, and that's for any hook. So a written hook is something you put on the video or it could be a carousel that gets someone's attention. You want to have either one or more of those types of hooks in your content to get the attention of your audience. Now, let's talk about how you create a great hook. I made this framework with the written hooks in mind. When you're going through this framework, you can still think about the audio or the visual version of your hooks because it works regardless. I came up with this framework as a collection of my technical writing background. This is stuff that I learned while I was getting my degree, and then just things that I have noticed work well when it comes to hooks. Every great hook needs fuel. It's almost like if you think about filling up a car so that it can go the distance, okay? That kind of fuel. I also think about fuel for the fire, right? You want your content to be hot, you need fuel, okay? So we have a breakdown what the F-U-E-L stand for. So we have F find your purpose. U is understand your audience, E is echo your experience or belief, and L is to lure them in. All right, we're gonna go through this and break it down. So F find your purpose. One of the first things that I learned as a technical writer was for us to understand what is the purpose of this content? Whatever you're writing, whatever you're creating, what are you trying to get across? What is the message that you are trying to communicate? And that is the first thing you need to think of when you are thinking of creating something. Is this something that you want to bring awareness to? Is this content meant to help build a relationship? Is this just simply content that's supposed to help you sell tickets to an event? Think about what is the goal that you have for that piece of content. You don't have to spend a ton of time on this, but you should know what message you're trying to get across to someone. This is how you create content that helps your business goals, okay? You have to think about what is the goal of this, what am I trying to communicate? So once you have that figured out, you then want to understand your audience. This is probably number two of what I was taught when I was learning to be a technical writer. You have to know who you're talking to. This is important because it helps to position the content. This is important because it helps to provide more direction for the content. So you already know why you're posting about this thing. Now it's time to think about who is on the other end of the content, who is going to receive this. This is very important because when you're coming up with whatever the content is a carousel, a reel, a video, you want to make sure that the ideal audience for that content, that you're speaking their language, that you're saying things that would get their attention. Again, yelling Jenny versus mom in a crowd, right? You want to be able to get in their heads and understand who they are. Now, ideally, I would highly recommend for you to have some type of customer profile, some type of representation of who are the people in your audience. You could have young professionals in your audience, you could have young parents, you could have couples that are empty nesters, all of these different things. They're all kinds of different people who are going to be showing up at your tap room. And it's important to identify who these people are and to really make them feel real on paper. One of the ways that we do that as technical writers is to create customer profiles. You can start out with one. Think about your most loyal returning customer. If you were to divide your audience into a pie, what is the biggest slice of that pie? Think about who that person is. Think about why they come to your brewery. What are the things that they enjoy? What are the things that are probably going on in their life? You don't have to be exact about this, but I think it is important for you to really understand who it is that you're talking to because that makes all the difference in creating great content for your brewery. That is understanding your audience. And I really feel like the understanding your audience piece is probably the most important part of this because if you don't understand your audience, the other parts just kind of fall apart from there. So really take note of diving into who your audience is way beyond demographics. What stage of life are they in, what interests do they have? Those are the things that are important. All right, so now we move on to E. You want to echo their experience or beliefs. Now, this is why if you don't have you, E is not going to make sense and it will be hard for you. You want to find a way to think about what are the things that they're up against, what are their pain points, what are the things that they're talking about in the group chat, what are some of the things that they've experienced and echo that stuff in your content. You want to be able to show people that you get them and that your space is a space for them. And this also is a great way to capture the attention of your audience. If you think about the content that is doing well on Instagram right now and on TikTok, it is very much rooted in things that resonate with people, things that they feel they're like, oh, I just was talking about that with my friend, or oh, I just experienced that the other day. Those are the types of things that should be showing up in your content. And now on to L, which is lure them in. Now, this part you could technically leave off and be fine if you do really well with the F, the U, the E. You could possibly leave off L. L is like the cherry on top, okay? L is like sprinkles on ice cream. It's not necessary, but it does sweeten the deal, right? So when I think about luring someone in, I think about providing either some curiosity in your content or providing some context, letting them know what they're going to see. This is something that just in general, hooks help to do is they let people know what they're about to get into, or they add some type of, hey, we're gonna pique your curiosity here so you can keep watching. So when you're thinking about really putting some fuel on the fire, if you will, that invoking some type of curiosity or providing some type of context as to why they have to stick around is important. Again, not necessary, and I don't think that curiosity and context are always present, but they are great additions to your hook. All right, I'm actually gonna talk through these examples that I shared in a post that introduces the feel framework. Some of these I likely have already shared here with you, but I just want to talk through these a little bit more. So the first one is a post from Alagash. I know y'all probably are so tired of me talking about Alagash, but they just do content so well. So this one is an evening in Portland, Maine with Alagash with friends. It's just showing what it's like to enjoy beer, drink beer in Portland, Maine, and enjoying food and beverage and friendship with Alagash. And what I love about this is that it talks about Portland, Maine. Alagash is not the first thing that's mentioned. It is the first thing that you visually see, but it is not the first thing. And I think that having hooks that include the city that you're in, the neighborhood that you're in, those are the kinds of hooks that get people's attention. If you are a brewery who is really focused on connecting with the locals in your area, using words in your hooks that they will understand. For here in Atlanta, it'd be Atlanta. It could be Buckhead, which is a suburb of Atlanta. It could be Marietta, also suburbs, Sandy Springs, uh, East Point, College Park, saying those neighborhoods, those things will automatically get my attention. And so I have here examples made in Atlanta, made for Atlanteans. POV, you found the perfect brewery in College Park that has the best check dart lager on tap. You know, those are the kinds of things that you can post, and this type of post is great for reach because you're going beyond people who are following you. You're going to get attention from anyone in the area who is stopped by the mention of a familiar area of town that they have either lived in or they visit often. This is what I'm talking about about adding in elements that get people's attention. All right. So the next post is almost time for late days, ice cold beers, farmers markets, 9 p.m. sunsets, highland metal season, fireflies. There's a list of things. This one is from Highland Brewing, and I love this because it lists things that people would be excited for, right? This is clearly a summertime is here or summertime is coming. Here are the things that we are excited about. And if you are excited about lake days, I guess we're talking about lakes this episode. If you're excited about lake days and ice cold beers, which I don't know, I'm not necessarily excited about ice cold beers, but I am excited about a perfectly chilled beer. Not ice cold though. Farmers markets, 9 p.m. sunsets. You know, these are things that people get excited about. I get excited about farmers markets. I get excited about fresh flowers. Those are things that would peak, like immediately grab my attention because these are things I am interested in. So I have one here if your brewery wants to connect with people with similar interests, these are the things that you should list. And for you, your audience might be completely different and they might not care about late days and fresh flowers. We have an event here in Atlanta similar to Comic Con, Dragon Con. They might care about that, you know? And so you want to list things that you believe your audience would be interested in. And so I added this beer is for the people who what do your people care about? What is it that they're interested in? Put that in the blank. Again, you have to understand your audience in order to fill this out. So get to know them. Get to know them. All right. Now, the next one is for breweries who want to connect with specific groups of people. So this might be a stage of life that they're in, it might be an identity that they have. So this post is not from a brewery, but I think it was a mom group or a parent creator. Because the hook is this might be our new favorite family hangout near Houston. Okay. Not only do you have family hangout, right? There's a visual hook in here as well. Because the first thing you see is this cool playground. And also has near Houston. So you know that this is for anyone who's in the Houston area to pay attention to. And the video just goes through it, shows why. It even names things 3.5 acres to play and relax and enjoy the backyard vibes. Family friendly, dog friendly, live music and games, seasonal drinks, and a full food menu. These are things that I know I could name probably 20 breweries off the top of my head, have maybe not the playground. These things are important for people, important for people who have kids, who want a family-friendly thing to do. And I talk about parents a lot because I think breweries are at a great intersection of something that adults would enjoy, but also something that kids can get into. So if your brewery has a playground, you should be making this kind of content. I would even, and this is a trick, and it's not just for any breweries that have playgrounds, but this would be good for any people with specific interests that you're trying to attract. Go find creators in that niche who create content for the same group of people you are trying to attract. So if you have a playground and you want to show that you have a family-friendly brewery, look for parent creators in your area and see what type of content they're creating, see what type of hooks they're using to get people's attention. I think that we look too much to other breweries, for examples, but I really think that the way Instagram works, the way a lot of algorithms are sort of going, it's about the people and who they are, what stage of life they're in, it's about their interest, it's about all of these things. So looking for creators that already attract the type of people that you cater to. If your city has an account that is based on culture and the inside jokes of your city. So, for example, here in Atlanta, we have Butter ATL. Hilarious. Like they talk about all kinds of things. Atlanta, if you don't live in Atlanta, you wouldn't get half of the stuff on the page. Look at stuff like that to figure out how they are currently attracting the same audience that you're trying to attract. All right. I think good hooks for this would be like you just found a brewery that was made for who are your people. Put your people in there, show things that go with that. You know, there was a brewery I spoke to earlier this year, and I've probably mentioned them on the podcast before, but they were really into medieval things, right? Show all of the medieval old world things you decor that you have in your tap room. That is a great way to have a visual hook in your content. That is my last example. So, what I would like for you to do after this episode, because you know I love to give you some action items of things to do, right? Get to know your audience. And this is a way you can do this. Talk to your beer tenders, talk to anyone who's on the front lines and connects with your customer on a regular basis. That could be your sales team as well. Start having conversations around who is your target audience. And I'm gonna tell you right now, it is not everyone. It's not, it can't be. You cannot sell to everyone, so really challenge yourself and think about who it is that you're speaking to. Who do you want in your tap room? See where there's a gap between the people that are showing up and the people that you want to show up. Okay, so that's the first step. Understand your audience. The first and most important. So the next step would be to find creators who share the same audience as you do. Whether you are targeting parents, young professionals, maybe you're targeting people who love to be outdoors and love hiking and biking and all of those things. Maybe you're targeting parents that take their kids to the soccer field that's across from you. I would even just go over there and talk to them. You know, what are their pain points? How can you help alleviate those pain points? Those are the things that really help make the difference in your content and get people to pay attention. If you have any questions for me about the fuel framework and how to use it, I am here. You can send me a DM, you can send me an email. I would love to hear from you. I am making this so that it makes it easier for you to create content. So if there's anything I can clear up or provide any assistance on, I am here for that. All right. I will see you in the next one.