$ man content-wiki/viral-hooks

On every social platform, the first 1-3 lines determine whether anyone reads the rest. LinkedIn shows 2 lines before the see more fold. X shows the first tweet in a timeline of hundreds. TikTok gives you 1-2 seconds before the thumb scrolls. The hook is not the introduction to your content — it IS the content for 90% of people who see it. If the hook fails, the rest does not exist. This is not about clickbait. Clickbait promises and underdelivers. A good hook promises and the content delivers. The hook earns the attention. The content rewards it. Both are required.

PATTERN

Curiosity Pings: open a loop the reader needs closed. You are not supposed to know this, but here is the trick top founders use. The loop creates tension that only reading further resolves. Contrarian POVs: challenge conventional wisdom. I ignored everyone is advice and that is why it worked. Contrarian hooks work because they create cognitive dissonance — the reader needs to understand how the opposite of what they believe can be true. Data Bombs: lead with a specific, surprising number. 91% of posts fail. Here is what the top 9% are doing differently. Numbers create credibility and specificity in a feed full of vague claims. Story Openers: start in the middle of a moment. Three years ago I almost quit. Then something unexpected happened. Story hooks work because humans are wired for narrative. We cannot stop mid-story. Problem-First: name the pain directly. Your content is not boring. It is just missing this one thing. Problem-first hooks work because the reader self-identifies with the pain and needs to know the solution. Direct Challenge: provoke the reader's identity. If you cannot explain your product in 10 words, you do not understand it. Challenge hooks work because they trigger a need to prove or disprove the claim.

PATTERN

LinkedIn: lean into professional stakes, career journeys, insights with emotional or intellectual weight. Hooks can be slightly longer — you have 2 lines before the fold. Example: the first time I fired someone I cried in the bathroom. X: fast hooks, punchy facts, meme-ability, concise. Must work in the first 10 words. Example: this founder built 3 products before he ever launched one. TikTok and Reels and Shorts: on-screen text IS the hook. 8 words or fewer. Must work without sound. Result-first hooks drive replay value — show the outcome, then how. Example on-screen text: you are using Claude wrong, here is why. Example result-first: 30 minutes of work, 3 seconds. The same insight can be hooked differently for each platform. A LinkedIn hook can be reflective and emotional. The X version of the same hook is compressed and punchy. The TikTok version is visual and immediate. Same core idea, different delivery optimized for the platform is attention pattern.

FORMULA

Pain plus solution signal: your outbound stack is a spreadsheet, mine is a git repo. Names the pain (spreadsheet ops) and signals the solution (repo-based) in one line. Contrast plus curiosity: cold email is dead on arrival if you are only checking google and microsoft. States a contrarian position and implies hidden knowledge. Action plus result: built two operating systems this weekend, inside a code editor. Shows what was done and creates curiosity about how. Identity plus challenge: the cursor era has begun, at least for me. Makes a bold identity claim and invites the reader to decide if they agree. Failure plus intrigue: I almost nuked an entire enterprise list by accident. Vulnerability plus stakes equals attention. Always lowercase first word unless proper noun or first-person I. The lowercase start is a voice signature that also visually breaks from the capitalized-headline pattern that most LinkedIn posts use.

ANTI-PATTERN

The worst hook pattern is the setup: I wanted to share something interesting that happened today. This is not a hook. It is throat-clearing. The reader learns nothing from this line. They do not know what the content is about, why they should care, or what they will get from reading further. Other failing patterns: so I have been thinking about, let me tell you about, I have always believed that. These are preambles. They delay the actual hook by a sentence or more. By the time you get to the interesting part, the reader has scrolled past. The fix: delete the first sentence. Start with the second one. In almost every draft, the real hook is hiding in sentence two or three. The first sentence is warm-up the writer needed but the reader does not.