Catch Your Audience's Attention: The Power of Hooks in Marketing

I became OBSESSED with this skill to level up my business.

Want to know one of the least talked about, yet most powerful skills you can develop? 

This is something that can 10x your business, help you get better in sales, help you get a job, become better at content creation, and even potentially help you discover your soulmate. 

I know, that’s a bold statement, but read on and I’ll explain.  

A few years back I was told about the concept of ‘creating a good hook’ when creating posts on LinkedIn. 

If you’ve been in the content game, you already know what a hook is.  

If you don’t know, a hook is an opening statement (or image) in content that attempts to grab the reader's attention so that they want to keep on reading, watching, or listening.  

Most people think, ‘yeah, I get it, use a hook so people stop and read your post’…. 

This email is not about creating hooks… 

It’s about the art of learning how to capture attention.   

The average human attention span is 8.25 seconds.  

Attention spans can range from 2 seconds to over 20 minutes.  

The average human attention span decreased by almost 25% from 2000 to 2015.  

Humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish (9 seconds)!!! ß crazy right?  

This is because we simply have so much information coming at us at all times.  

Most people have multiple emails, message apps, DMs, phone calls, texts, ads, mail and social media platforms hitting them all at once. 

Jim Kwik, author of Limitless calls this Digital Deluge.  

Now can you see why it’s quite important to learn this art?  

Like I said, this email isn’t so much about creating hooks but getting better at creating them will teach you how to stand out. 

Start with putting more intention/attention to the first 1 or 2 lines of your posts (or first part of your video/audio).  

2 of my favorite ways of capturing attention are: 

•  Create curiosity – good TV shows always have a cliffhanger that made so HUNGRY to watch the next episode! I always think about Game of Thrones and how painful it was to wait a week or wait until the next season.  
•  Embrace being a little bolder and more disruptive – learn to be ok with creating a little polarity, not everyone has to like you. Start taking a bolder stand on what is important to you, it may push some away but it will attract YOUR people.  

After you get good at creating hooks on your social media posts, start to use them in other places: 

•  Your LinkedIn headline and about section (so they actually visit your profile and read it).  
•  A voice note via DM can be a great hook, people are curious about the message you left. Keep the message short and instead of pitching them, ask them if they’d like to know more.  
•  Creating better subject lines for you emails & skyrocket your open rates! 
•  The titles of your podcast episodes  
•  The title or subtitle of a book or naming the chapters. What will get people want to open it up, or read the next page?   
•  Your online events (For example “How To Create Highly Profitable Offers That Convert” instead of ‘course building masterclass’)   
•  Your CTA’s (calls to action) 

I’m guessing that this could come in handy in the online dating world too! And standing out as a job applicant! 

Ok, so before I lose your attention, a couple more things: 

Check out the lessons in the LinkedIn Advantage, we’ve got a training on hooks in Module 4 plus a workbook. Like I said, learn the skill and you can implement them EVERYWHERE!

By the way, shoutout to my collaboration partner on that project Danny Langloss who was just voted one of the Top 40 Thought Leaders on LinkedIn! He also does several breakdowns of hooks inside this course. 

Mindset Hackers Podcast: Why Affirmations are more powerful than you can possibly imagine, how to effectively use them, and what ‘negative’ affirmations are. I used to not buy into affirmations until I started really geeking out on neuroscience and human behavior. Now I’m all in and I’ll tell you why! Listen on Apple podcasts or Spotify