How I Write Viral Hooks
You'll never grow on social media if you can’t hook someone’s attention in 1.7 seconds.
That's because 8 out of 10 people only read your hook.
And so if you can't reliably hook strangers to read your content, you miss 80% of your growth potential.
It doesn't help that most hook advice out there is, at best, mediocre.
Today, I'll show you the 3-part hook secrets that got me 927+ million impressions in the past 2 years. But first, let me tell you why (and how) you're probably sabotaging your own hooks right now:
The Weird Way 95% of Founders Self-Sabotage Their Hook-Writing Ability
I recently learned a cool fact:
You can play 90% of all hit songs with just 4 chords on the piano.
So, if you're smart about learning to play piano, you wouldn't just press random keys and hope for it to sound good. Instead, you'd learn and practice the 4 "proven" chords that get you 90% of the results.
Only after you've mastered those basics, you try new combinations.
Sounds obvious, right?
It should. Yet, 95% of founders I meet try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to hooks. They write new hooks from scratch when they should simply copy the proven formats.
Let me get this straight -
There are only 3 reasons why you're not copying proven hook formats:
- You don't know how to find proven hooks
- You don't know how to adjust a proven hook to yourself.
- Your ego is so big that it doesn't want you to "copy" others
I'll solve all three for you in the next two minutes.
Let's start with the ego problem.
The hidden reason why most founders don't use viral hooks is because they're afraid to look like influencers.
I often meet founders from corporate backgrounds that tell me they want to maintain a "professional" style.
But that's just their mind's way of saying:
"I'm afraid what my existing network will think of me if I use trendy hooks"
The good news is that nobody actually gives a f* about you. Even less about your hooks.
I say this with 100% conviction. For long, my most viral X thread was literally:
"The 10 best Christmas ads of all time”
Yes, that's being a slave to the algorithm. But it got me 270,242 likes, 50+ million impressions, and easily made me $100,000+.
So I'm happy to trade my ego for money. Are you?
Now, for the actual hookwriting process, we'll use my ROI framework:
- Research
- Output
- Iterate
Step 1: Research
Don't waste your time re-inventing hooks. Instead, find proven formats.
It's mind-blowing to me why not more people do this. There are BILLIONS of content pieces out there and there are zero-cost tools that help you find the top 0.01% of them.
It's insanely simple:
1) Find someone who's crushing content in your niche (or adjacent)
2) Use tools to find their best-performing content of the past 3 months
For X, use TweetHunter (dot) io
For LinkedIn, use Taplio (dot) com
For YouTube, go to a channels videos and press "Popular".
For Facebook and Instagram Ads, google Meta Ads Library and type in any businesses name
3) Save the 5 best-performing hooks of that creator
4) Repeat steps 1-3 for 4-5 creators in your niche
5) Put them all in a spreadsheet & see if you find any patterns
After you've gathered hooks, you want to "templatize" them. Think about them in mini-sections.
For example, here's one of my recent best X threads:
Here's how I would templatize that hook:
Gather some templates and proven hooks in your niche. Then...
Step 2: Output
Time to get to the actual writing.
If you did step 1 well, this should be as simple as filling in the blank.
Here's how I would re-use the same hook template I just created if I was a fractional CFO:
This is the king of financial strategy:
Ray Dalio
He has worked with Bill Gates, Paul Tudor Jones, and Alan Greenspan.
And last year alone, his company made $16.9B
7 of his investment principles you can learn to build lasting wealth:
(By the way, this hook was 100% AI-written using my Hook Writer OS)
Tip:
For each post you do, create 3 different hooks, and then send them to 2-3 ICP and ask them for feedback. That lets you test the hook on a micro-level before you post. If you're hiring a ghostwriter, instruct them to write 3 hooks for your social media posts.
There's no "one" hook template that ALWAYS works. The tactics come and go.
But there are 4 foundational hookwriting principles to keep in mind:
1. Appeal to self-interest. Make it about the reader. Either push people away from pain or get them closer to something them want.
2. Use numbers. Make them specific and big. Why do you think that I have my annual revenue of $13.8M in 37% of my hooks on all platforms? Because it works.
3. Don't give away the answer in the hook. Sell the outcome, not the mechanism. If you're helping people with outbound email, don't say "7 ways to do outbound email". Say "the simple system we used to book 13,389 sales calls".
4. Give people a reason to trust you. 75% of people who see your posts don't know you are. Mention revenue, results, notable clients, etc.
Write your hooks and run them past these 4 criteria.
Step 3: Iterate
In the 1920s, when the early copywriters sent physical mail advertisements, it took them months to know the results. Testing 10 different advertising campaigns could take them months. Ouch.
Today, you can test different hooks in hours.
You get real-time data on what performs well. When I got into YouTube, I learned that the best of the best A/B test their thumbnails and titles for DAYS.
Steven Bartlett tests 100 different titles.
Alex Hormozi tests 30+.
I test dozens (and gradually increasing).
So what should you do?
Every 2-4 weeks:
- Pull up your analytics and view your post performance
- Note which hooks worked well, and re-use a variation of them the next month
- Note which hooks didn't work well
If you do this 6 months in a row, you have more sophisticated social media data than 99% of founders.
And better data = informed decisions = greater results.
Remember the “best Christmas ads” thread I showed you before?
I only wrote it because my most viral thread to date was “best Marketing ads of all time”:
(this is a list of my all-time highest likes threads using TweetHunter (dot) io)
How To Scale To $100,000+ a Month With Hooks & Content
If you follow the advice in this newsletter, I guarantee you you’ll grow 2-3X faster on social media.
Once you do that, your next bottleneck will be monetization.
If at any point you want me and my team to help you build out the exact content, monetization, and sales system I use to make $7.57M for Founder OS without spending a dime on ads, see if you’re a fit for Founder OS+.
Quick context -
In Founder OS+, you get a personal founder coach to build out your strategy with you. You get access to all the systems I use in my own business (yes, all of them). And you get access to Talent OS, my pool of world-class talent (in writing, sales, video, etc).
Of course, I realize you might not be ready for that, which is totally fine. My free content will get you 80% the way there if you analyze it deeply.
And, as always, to help you implement this system even faster, I created a free system for you.
Hook Writer OS is an AI system that helps you:
- Turn viral hooks into AI templates
- Write viral AI hooks for you based on the viral templates
- Help you grow your socials 10X faster
>>> Access Hook Writer OS here
That’s all for today.
Let's win together!
P.S. Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
#1: If you want to learn more about how my team and I are building Founder OS systems that generate $3M+ and set up our most ambitious Black Friday launch yet, check out my YouTube video on My $1M Launch System.
#2: I’ll pay you $1,000 for each founder you refer to Founder OS. Just copy this link and send it to 5 founder friends: https://www.founderos.com/claim?referred_by=
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