Okay. Let me guess.

My propaganda got to you and you started posting founder-led content on LinkedIn. But…it’s not working the way you thought it would. Why aren’t the posts getting more engagement? Does this actually not work??

Slow down.

LinkedIn works for B2B founders. You're probably just writing bad hooks.

The hook is the first 1-3 lines of the post. You know, before you have to click “See More” to read the rest.

If your posts aren’t hitting, your first 1-3 sentences are probably lame. Uninspiring. Boring. Bad.

Tough love, but true. Let’s troubleshoot it, together. There’s one shift I want you to try in your next LinkedIn post. It’s a simple we use all the time with our founder-led content clients.

Use a story-based hook.

Instead of starting with “how to…” start with “how I…”

See, when founders start posting on LinkedIn, they’ll usually start ripping “how to” educational posts.

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Stuff like that. Sounds good in theory—and can work sometimes—but there are 2 problems.

Problem 1: The post doesn’t tell the reader why they should trust you. For example, if I started a posting with “Here’s 3 tips for getting clients from LinkedIn” the reader has NO IDEA why I’m uniquely qualified to give that advice. You could be some 19-year-old personal brand bro who watched 1 YouTube video on how to generate 10K a month on LinkedIn. Lol.

Problem 2: Educational hooks are boring. “Here’s 3 tips for getting clients from LinkedIn” would quite literally put me to sleep. Yawn. Give me something exciting!

What if we made the hook a story instead?

How would that look?

“Last week I sat down with a SaaS founder doing $1M ARR who was struggling to get any traction on LinkedIn.

Here’s how we fixed it and increased his impressions by 110% in the next 7 days (with 1 shift):”

Which hook would you click? The latter, right?

In the first 2 lines, you understand why you should trust me (clear, quantifiable results for a specific ICP) and you're hooked into a story (how did we fix this founder’s performance?). Humans love stories. We want to be told stories, not lectured at like we’re in a college classroom.

So, in your next piece of LinkedIn content, try framing your hook as a story.

These stories will come from 2 potential sources:

Source 1: Recent conversations with customers, prospects, or team members. For example, if you're founder of a sales tech SaaS that helps startups get better results from outbound, you might write a post about a prospect who was dealing with a common pain point (like low response rates).

Source 2: Experiences from earlier in your career. For example, if I was building a SaaS to help with LinkedIn content creation…like I am…I might write a post about how posting content to social media helped me land my dream job.

And a quick bonus tip since you made it to the end of this—add a relevant piece of media to the post, too. In the 200+ posts we have going live per week for clients at Compound, posts with relevant photos and videos are performing way better.

Quick one today, as promised. Now go try this tactic out.

[If you want more insights on how to write great LinkedIn hooks, here’s another piece you might like]