Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

Exciting news! We’re hiring another Content Writer at Compound. Apply here to be considered for our amazing team of writers and content marketers (not biased, I swear).

Today, I’ve got a masterclass on hook-writing for you. Ultra-tactical, per usual.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Adam Robinson’s $22M copywriting formula

3 LinkedIn copy tactics to steal from the poster child or founder-led content

Adam Robinson scaled RB2B, his new SaaS, from zero to $1M ARR in 16 weeks.

LinkedIn, and his writing, was a major driver behind that rapid growth—and the growth of his other company, Retention.com, which is sitting around $21M ARR as of today. Insane.

Adam’s writing is next level. He hits all the buttons required to make a LinkedIn post pop off. Today I want to parse out 3 powerful copywriting tactics for you to use in your next LinkedIn post.

This’ll be like a live copy editing session. Per usual, I’ve got my cold brew next to me on my desk. Cracked out and ready to copy edit. Shall we?

Adam’s hook playbook

The first element of Adam’s writing that jumps out at me is the hook. We all know the hook—the part of the LinkedIn post before the ‘see more’ button is the most important. Adam’s got a repeatable formula.

Check this example out. What do you see?

I count at least 6 tactics in this 3-sentence hook alone.

(1) Social proof. Adam starts with “I bootstrapped RB2B from $0-1m in 16 weeks. Right away, Adam answers the question in your mind, Why should I listen to you??

Alex Hormozi says you should never assume your audience knows who you are. If your post does well enough, it will get in front of new people. That’s the point.

So, give those new readers the context to trust you. In other words, show them you know your shit.

(2) Story-based. Stories stop the scroll. The social proof section above is positioned as a story. The rest of the hook introduces a new dragon to slay (how Adam is going to scale from $1m to $10m).

(3) Specific numbers. This sounds silly, but using specific numbers makes hooks more potent. I count eight instances of specific numbers being used in the hook. Using big, monetary numbers like $0-1m and $10m ARR also add to the oomph.

(4) Bold prediction. Will Adam scale to $10m ARR? Who knows. But, by putting it out there so directly, he takes a stance.

The stance is bolstered by the ‘tiny team’ angle. People who are bought in on lean teams will nod their heads and think YES!. VC-backed founders who are blowing capital on headcount will get triggered and run to the comments. Either outcome feeds the algorithm.

(5) Lists. Lists and frameworks make content easy to understand. “Here’s my 7-step playbook to make RB2B an 8-figure product” performs way better than “Here’s how I’ll scale RB2B to 8-figures.” The latter isn’t a ‘bad’ line. The former is just far better.

(6) Open loop. Strong hooks create an ‘open loop.’ Your read has to keep reading to close it. Adam does this three times in the three sentences above.

First, he opens the loop of How is Adam going to scale to $10m?

Then, he introduces the idea of the ‘playbook.’ This exaggerates the first open loop, since now the reader wants to see what the playbook is (so they can save it).

Finally, he ends the hook with a colon, which physically opens a loop. The reader’s gotta click see more to see where the colon leads.

Once you see the formula, it’s hard to unsee it.

Exhibit B:

Social proof: “Over the past 10 years, I’ve bootstrapped startups $0-$1M three times.

Story-based: See above line. Knocks out two levers in one.

Specific numbers: “10 years…$0-$1M…”

Bold stance: “Each time as TWICE as fast with HALF the resources.”

Lists and frameworks: “Here’s the breakdown of what I did, how long it took, and how many FTEs we had:”

Open loops: See above. What did Adam do to get to $1M? How long did it take him?? How many FTEs did he have??? Any SaaS founder or GTM leader is going to want to keep reading to close the loop.

Exhibit C:

Social proof: No explicit social proof in this hook, but he did cite examples later. There is also the implicit social proof. If you know who Adam is, you know he’s bootstrapped a few companies to a few million.

Specific numbers: “10 years…$0-$1M…”

Bold stance: “I don’t disagree, but I think their reasoning is wrong.”

Lists and frameworks: “Here are 5 things that B2C nailed that are INEVITABLE in the B2B world (and sexy branding isn't one of them):”

Open loops: See above. What are the 5 things? Why are they inevitable?? Sexy branding isn’t one of them??? The open loops will have SaaS marketers, and SaaS founders who care about marketing, reading more.

Design your hooks to be dense.

Bad writers ignore the hook. Okay writers use one tactic in each hook. Great writers stuff their hooks full of reasons for their intended audiences to see it, think WTF, and stop scrolling.

As Adam showed us above, great hooks often have 3-6 levers planted in them, in just a few lines.

The hooks are dense. Packed with trip wires to make the rest of your post irresistable.

Now, excuse me, I need to go write (and re-write) the headline for this piece.

Quick ask: if this live-ish copy editing session was helpful, let me know. Might do more of these.

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

• How to go from 0 to 5,000 followers on Linkedin in less than 6 months (full content strategy) by Tommy Clark 🎥

•  I built a $1M SaaS in 87 Days by Starter Story 🎥

• The key to growing as a creative by Oren John 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

Hey. One more note before you go on to your next meeting.

I just released a template pack, with 50+ of the prompts we use with B2B CEOs at Compound.

I plan on updating this with more and more over time. So, I kept the price kinda low at $27.

If you use these prompts, and run the above playbook, you’ll have enough content for at least 1-2 months (that’s being conservative).

I think you’d like it. Want to make the product a no-brainer for anyone who’s considering launching founder-led content this year.

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: If you want Compound to run a founder-led content motion for you… save a spot on our waitlist here. We’re at capacity through August, but looking to partner with some SaaS startups in September.