On a feed built for scrolling, a viewer decides whether to keep watching almost instantly - well before your video has made its actual point. That decision happens in the first second, sometimes less. Everything downstream of that moment - the body, the payoff, the call to action - only matters if the hook already earned it.
A hook is not an introduction
"Hey guys, welcome back to my channel" is not a hook - it's the exact sentence that gives a scrolling thumb permission to keep moving. A real hook does one specific job: it creates a gap the viewer needs closed. A question they suddenly want answered, a claim that contradicts what they already believe, a result shown before the process that got there. The rest of the video exists to close that gap - which is precisely why the hook has to open one first.
Specific beats vague, every time
"This will change how you think about travel" is vague enough to mean nothing. "Riviera Nayarit has the same beaches as Cancun and a tenth of the tourists" is specific enough to make someone stop. Specificity does two things a vague hook can't: it proves you actually have something to say, and it lets the viewer picture the payoff before you've delivered it - which is what makes them wait for it.
Say the interesting part first, not last
Long-form storytelling earns the payoff through buildup. Short-form doesn't have time for that - say the most interesting sentence in your entire script FIRST, then explain it. This feels backwards if you're used to writing for a longer format, and it is: short-form rewards front- loading in a way almost nothing else does.
Read it out loud before you trust it
A hook that reads fine on a page can fall completely flat spoken aloud in real narration pacing. Read your hook out loud, at the pace it'll actually be spoken, and ask honestly: if I heard only this one sentence with no context, would I want to know what happens next? If the honest answer is no, the fix is almost always specificity, not more words - a longer vague hook is still vague, just slower.
The short version
You have about a second, not a paragraph. Skip the introduction, open a specific gap instead of a vague one, put your most interesting sentence first instead of last, and test it out loud before you trust it. Everything else in the video only gets watched if this part works.