How to Write a Hook on LinkedIn
Most people on LinkedIn get their hook wrong when writing posts.
The hook is the first few lines someone sees of your post in their feed before they have to click on “Read more”.
For image and video posts, the hook is the first 3 lines of the copy, and for text posts, it's the first 5 lines.
They are important because that's the only thing people see before consciously deciding to read more of your post or not.
You can write an effective hook in 2 ways:
1. Provide the value upfront:
Communicate the lesson or the key insight in the hook. And then expand on it by adding some context below. (Most people do it the other way around).
2. Explain clearly what people will get from the post:
For example:
"We added a Q&A section to our website and increased conversion rate by 20%. Here's how..." (and then explaining how or what you did in the post below).
Is better than “Last week I had a conversation with my co-founder about what we could do to improve our website after reading about it on a blog post and so…”
The first one gives someone a clear idea of what they will get out of reading your post. The second one is just a bunch of details and context I don’t care about.
Unless you can make people WANT to read more, they won’t engage with your content either.