Writing Posts That Get Read
Hook, body, specificity. The mechanics behind every post that breaks through.
4.1 The hook
Your hook is the first line of your post. On LinkedIn it is the only thing visible before the fold. On X it is often the entire post.
You have 0.3 seconds.
What makes a hook work
Specificity. “Social media is hard” gets scrolled past. “I spent 201 hours last year copying and pasting the same post into 9 different tabs” stops the scroll. Specific details make the reader picture it. They recognize themselves in it.
Pattern interruption. Most hooks in your niche are predictable. “5 tips to grow on LinkedIn” has been written fifty thousand times. Your hook needs to break the pattern: very short sentences, specific numbers, a confession that runs counter to the expected narrative.
An emotional trigger. Curiosity. Recognition. Surprise. Urgency. The hook must create one of these or the reader keeps moving.
4.2 The body
Hook → Setup (the situation or problem) → Substance (the value) → Turn (the insight) → CTAOn line breaks. On mobile, a 5-line paragraph looks like a wall. The same content in 10 single-sentence lines looks readable.
Same information. The second gets read. The first gets abandoned.
On specificity
- “It saves a lot of time” → “It saves 198 hours per year”
- “Users see better results” → “Users who schedule a week in advance grow 3x faster”
- “Many founders use it” → “1,000+ posts published through SocialLead”