Inevitability Hooks: Making Your Audience Feel Like They're Already Behind

Welcome back to Viral Examples.

Today (in 2 mins or less) we're diving into why certain posts make you feel like you're falling behind just by scrolling past them.

Can’t believe I missed this…

Picture scrolling through your feed. You see a post: "Can't believe people still do X manually. Been automating this since 2022."

Your heart rate spikes. You check the comments — hundreds of people saying "wait, what?"

That's an inevitability hook. And you just fell for it.

Let's dissect what makes these work:

Great posts don't sell the future. They reveal what's already happening. When someone tells you what's coming, you can ignore it. When they show you what you're missing, you can't.

Consider these two hooks: 

• "AI will change everything"

• "Just used AI to automate the task you did this morning"

The first is a prediction. The second creates FOMO about the present.

Your audience needs three elements to feel that stomach-drop moment:

1. Recognition: "This affects me" 

2. Realization: "I'm behind" 

3. Resolution: "But I can catch up"

Here’s how to implement this for your own content (as simply as possible):

Start with daily friction 

• "Still doing X?" 

• "Can't believe people manually Y"

• "Remember when we used to Z?"

Add the timeline twist 

• "Been automated since last year" 

• "Haven't touched that process since Q2" 

• "Stopped doing this months ago"

Close with accessibility 

• "Took 10 minutes to set up" 

• "The template is ridiculous simple" 

• "Can't believe I waited so long"

Each element ratchets up the tension between where they are and where they could be — right now. 

That's how you turn FOMO into fuel.

Time to Grow

There’s two parts to getting results from posting content:

1. High quality content

2. Relevant distribution

Megaphone, the team behind Viral Examples, helps with both.

1. Our writing team works learns your voice and delivers weekly batches of content for you to post.

2. Our creator network helps get your posts in front of the right audience.

Grab time here or just reply to this email to learn more.