Top LinkedIn Hooks (+ Post Templates)

Creating impactful LinkedIn posts starts with a powerful hook. Your hook is the first line that stops people from scrolling and gets them interested in what you have to say.

Here are the top LinkedIn hooks you can use (along with full post templates) to build engagement and drive pipeline.

We also have a separate guide on prospecting templates for comments and DMs.

1. Opening with a Quantifier or Statistic

Only ~5% of cold emails use a "P.S."

But email with it saw 35% more replies. The catch?

The email had to be personalized. Automated emails with a PS. saw no lift. 

So what goes in a PS?

pretty much anything...

You could put

- Your Ask / CTA

- An article

- A personal observation

- An invite to an event 

- seed a second hypothesis for why you reached out "also saw x. Realize *** could be a bigger priority"

It could be related to why you're reaching out... It could be unrelated.

The most important thing?

It adds to the warmth of the message 

A cold email, dm, etc. it's an invitation to a larger conversation.

Keep it warm, friendly, and inviting

PS. 

when you do your research take notes (Lavender has a notepad in the personalization assistant for that) 

When you build your reason for reaching out you'll have a list of observations that didn't make the cut.

They probably belong in the PS.

2. Opening with Social Proof

Salespeople… I booked 72 meetings this quarter. Here are the strategies that helped me the MOST. 



1. Video Prospecting

I wasn’t completely bought into the whole video prospecting idea last quarter, but I now see the error of my ways.

Video prospecting is ABSOLUTELY a winning strategy if done right. 

How do I incorporate it, you may ask?

ONLY on prospects that are WARM. 

If they’ve liked my post, if I have a referral, if they responded to my initial message, or if they hung up on my cold call—THOSE are the prospects that get a personalized video. 

Almost all of my videos get watched when I send them, which to me, is half the challenge already. 

Don’t spend your time sending hundreds of personalized videos that might not ever get watched—your time is too valuable. 

BUT, sending personalized videos to prospects that just need that extra nudge. 

THAT'S how you do it. 


2. Cold Calling

Yep. I know. It’s the same thing I’ve been saying FOREVER, but it’s worth repeating.

Cold calling WORKS. 


3. Prioritize Inbound. 

I know. It may seem like cheating to include inbound as part of my “strategy” to book more meetings, but let me explain. 

With ServiceBell, I’m able to proactively engage with prospects that hop on our site. 

Where does the strategy part come in?

When a prospect hops on the site, I get alerted in real time. I then jump into Servicebell, see what company they work at, then click onto their website. On their website, I look at their customer case studies. 

I then hop BACK into Servicebell and chat them something to PROVE I’m a real human. 

“Hey There, 

If you guys are looking to get more customers like (X company case study on their website), Servicebell is a great way to catch them on the site!”



This usually gets some interest. I’ve proven that I know their company AND who their ideal customers are. 

From there, I either live VIDEO call them on the site, OR send out the calendar to chat later. 


4. Leaving a good first impression.

This sounds like it should be a given, but it's absolutely NOT. 

So many salespeople absolutely burn their contacts by trying to push them into a meeting the prospect isn't ready for. 

If you treat prospects with sincerity, respect their time/wishes, and stay in front of them, sooner or later you WILL earn their business. 

This has been THE biggest lesson I’ve learned this quarter. 



Brian Genshaw, Cynthia H., 🔥 Tom Slocum, Harold Smith, Nicholas Bradshaw, Justin Diamond, Alex Murphy, John C. Unser What about you guys? Where did you land for Q2? What strategies worked best for you to build pipeline?


PS: If you saw my post at the end of Q1, yes I only booked ONE more meeting than last quarter. 

BUT, I had about 15 more meetings that were qualified held 😎 a win's a win.

3. Opening with a Contrarian or Bold Opinion

Hard truth: no one cares about your features or tech.

Your customers have 99 problems. Your product ain't one.


(Yes, Jay-Z just came up on my Spotify writing that hook)


The fastest way to make your audience unsubscribe?

Only talking about your company. And your tech.


But so many B2B companies do this every day.

Every LinkedIn company post starts with:

🤖 "We just shipped AI-powered..."
🚀 "We won ABC award..."
🏆 "We rank # 1 in..."


Your role as a marketer is to be a storyteller.

👎 Your stories lose power with "we."
👍 But they gain power with "you."


Here are 3 easy ways to reframe your company posts:


1) Your New Feature

→ Don't just announce your feature
→ Tell the problem stories it solves for your audience

Most companies do this:
❌ "We are proud to announce AI-powered blah blah blah"


✅ Do this instead:
You spend hours manually looking for content ideas.
You research on your phone during family time.
We get it. Creating new content is tough.
You can do this in < 30 secs now.
You just check AI ideas. Done.
Get back to your family.

👆 See the difference?

Break down your product launch into multiple posts.
Pick one emotion. Connect each post to it.
Tell that story. With emotion.


—

2) Your Award

→ Don't just announce your award
→ Connect to a value your audience care about

Most companies do this:
❌ "We just won the Fast Company ABC award! Go us!"

✅ Do this instead:
When you call us, we answer in 3 rings. Your time matters.
That's why Fast Company awarded us ABC...
We're pushing for 2 rings next year!
To support you even better.

👆 See the difference?

Awards are a great way to showcase what you stand for.
Pick one value your audience deeply cares about. 
Connect your WHY with why they should care.


—


3) Your # 1 Ranking

→Don't just announce your ranking.
→ Explain what it means for your audience.


Most companies do this
❌ "We just earned # 1 ranking on G2, congrats us..."


✅ Do this instead:
You can expect a 30% faster product experience!
G2 recognized this advancement ranking us # 1
We know speed matters to you. We hear you.
Our goal for you? Get every action <50ms.
So you can get back to what you do.

👆 See the difference?

What will they benefit from now as a result of your win?
Why did you win in the first place? Tell that story.

→ New funding you're investing to improve something?
→ More headcount to speed up their support?
→ A better product experience?

— 

✅ TLDR; Tell stories. Don't talk features.

📌 Pin this quote from Seth Godin:

→ "Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make."
→ "It's about the stories you tell."


The next time you start writing "We..."

Stop. Put your storytelling hat on.

Then start with "You..."

4. Opening with a Thought-Provoking Question

How do you quantify the ROI on social selling activities as a sales leader?


You know that being active on LinkedIn and sharing knowledge has a positive impact on your ability to build trust and book meetings. It's a treasure trove for leads, particularly decision-makers. But how do you measure success?

As a seller, I suggest measuring:
- reply rate on LinkedIn DMs
- connect rate with buyers
- number of buyers in likes and comments

For instance, Ryan Patel, saw his reply rate to cold DMs to connections on LinkedIn skyrocket from 5% to 21% after he started actively discussing relevant problems we solve publicly.

Don't just look at vanity metrics like impressions and likes.

Don't sleep on social selling just because you don't know how to measure reply and open rates the same way you can on Apollo or Outreach.

5. Opening with a Surprising Fact

I just read "The Startling Truth: How Cursing Impacts Sales" from Gong.

Their research team found that sellers saw up to an 8% increase in close rates when curse words were said on the call.

The cursing led to a small bond over breaking the rules, leading to trust which led to closed won deals.

Authenticity wins. (without being offensive of course)

It got me thinking about a few edgy brand voices I've seen recently.

And the more I think about them, the more I like them.

The reality is you're not the only business doing what you do. When done well, an edgy brand voice can help you stand out. 

But here's the catch. You can't just be edgy for the sake of it. Successful edgy brands are provocative, not insulting or offensive. They entice people to engage with their content, not cringe at it.

6. Opening with a Professional Experience Story

During my first week at Letterdrop‎ our CEO challenged me to do something that has changed my career. 

Post to LinkedIn. 

At first, I was hesitant. 

But... mainly I was scared. 

That people would judge me.

And I'd somehow melt from the embarrassment. 

Turns out I was wrong. 

It's been one of the best professional decisions I've made/been forced to do (at first) 😂

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝟒 𝘂𝗻𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗜'𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻
-Most prospects know who you are before you meet with them
-You'll get more opportunities [jobs, meetings, partnerships]
-You'll get "I saw you on LinkedIn" IRL
-Your reply rate and meeting booked rate will go up (for all my sales people)

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 2 𝘁𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗜 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴
-Follow Erica Schneider and buy her "book of hooks" course - cures writers block instantly. 
-Struggling with topics? Post things you heard on calls, things you've learned, questions you have, your POV on issues, etc,. Be a human 
-Start with 1x post for week towards a specific audience (usually your customer)

Hope this nudges some of ya'll that were on the fence. 

DMs are open if you want to chat about this topic more.

7. Opening with a Challenge or Question

What are the biggest things in content marketing worth debating right now? Where are the answers not obvious? 

I'll post my views and we can come to conclusions about it.

8. Opening with a Prediction

Popular Sales Prediction vs. My Prediction:

Popular: In the age of AI - RevOps will be the competitive advantage for sales teams

My Prediction? In the age of AI - Sales Enablement will be the competitive advantage to stand above the sea of sameness

9. Opening with a Customer Success Story

Alan Zhao (Click-Through King) 👑‎ has spearheaded a massive influencer network effort, getting 10k likes on the average post.

This is how he uses AI to do the heavy lifting. He can:

💠 Reach out to potential collaborators and offer them a boost in engagement

💠 Build a network of over 100 influencers who he can support and who, in turn, support Warmly,‎

💠 Uses the one-click feature in Letterdrop to drop likes and comments, increasing the visibility of posts

... all in a matter of minutes

So awesome to be part of this journey with you, Alan!

10. Opening with an Industry Insight

Hey Salespeople: 5 years ago, I benchmarked the # of touches per opp sourced for cold outbound. It was 200-400. Just redid the analysis and ...

... today it takes 1,000-1,400 touches per opp. Simply speechless.

(This is of course 1000 touches across many possible accounts & contacts.)

11. Opening with a Common Pain Point

This is the biggest problem with how we currently approach content marketing:

It results in silo'd activities 

---> You create a blog

• You base topics on SEO keywords
• You measure the success of your blog through things like search traffic 
• You have someone, or a group of people, dedicated to the blog 

---> You create a podcast

• You base topics on what your guests are experts in
• You measure the success of your podcast through things like unique downloads
• You have someone else, or a group of different people, dedicated to your podcast 

---> You create a YouTube channel

• You base topics on YouTube keywords
• You measure the success of your channel through things like views
• You have someone else dedicated to your YT channel 

And so on and so forth. 

Here's why this is a problem: 

- The content you're creating is built on keywords, trends, guests, competitors, etc., instead of being built on a common purpose, such as a strategic narrative. 

- Your content topics across different mediums don't relate to one another. 

- Success means different things for different mediums, so you have different groups within the same marketing team who are working towards different goals. 

- Success for a medium doesn't necessarily mean success for the company. 

And it turns out, the awesome folks over at Beam Content 💡 feel the same way. 

Brooklin Nash 💡 and his team spoke to 400+ GTM professionals to figure out things like how content marketing can evolve to drive better growth and get more leadership buy-in. 

I'm very happy to be featured in the report and I'm proud of the team over at Beam for taking the initiative to help content marketers around the industry level up their skills, collaborate more closely with other departments, and begin impacting company growth in a more impactful way in the long-term. 

Content marketing is evolving before our eyes. You can either adapt or stand aside. 

Best Practices for LinkedIn Posts

Here is some advice for getting more meetings booked from your LinkedIn posts:

• "Salesy" posts that directly promote your brand should be less than 20% of what you write. You need to focus on value-add, not on spamming prospects in their feeds
• Add value before making any asks. Making asks of the folks engaging with you, either on posts or in your DMs, should be secondary and come much later once you have already demonstrated your value for free
• Get your GTM team to engage with your posts to extend their reach. It matters who engages with your content for maximum impact on LinkedIn

We can help you build pipeline on LinkedIn faster by automating ideation from sales calls and auto-generating LinkedIn posts directly from them.

Reach out to us if you're interested.