I Wrote on LinkedIn for 4 Years. Here’s How I Hook Readers

The hook of a LinkedIn post is the first sentence that introduces your post and grabs the reader’s attention.

On LinkedIn, you are given 2–3 lines for your hook before it’s truncated with ellipses (these dots …). Most people don’t think this is a big deal but what they don’t realize is that if a reader isn’t interested enough, they won’t be compelled to read the rest of your post.

There are many different types of hooks to use that we can classify below. For beginners, the best hook to start with is to explain what your post will be about with enough context for the reader to care about your writing.

“5 SEO tips” → “5 SEO tips to get traffic” → “SEO advice from OpenAI to stay relevant against AI.”

Oddly enough, giving more context to your hook makes it more interesting. You can give your hooks more context with the following methods.

Answer why the reader should care. Explain if your content will help the reader get promoted, double their salary, land more deals, or stay up to date with their skills. Be explicit about the outcome the reader will have reading your content instead of leaving it ambiguous.

It would seem like leaving it ambiguous would make the post “mysterious” but it actually turns out that most readers…