64 LinkedIn Hook Examples by Type

A hook is the first line of your post, the one that shows before anything else and decides whether anyone keeps reading. The good ones are specific, short, and make the next line feel necessary.

Below are eight hooks for each of eight types, written for different jobs so you can see one pattern work in sales, engineering, healthcare, teaching and more. Pick the type that fits the post you already have in mind, borrow the shape, and fill it with something true from your own work. Every role, company and number here is invented.

Near the end, six weak openers are rewritten side by side. If you want the method behind all of this, read how to write a LinkedIn hook.

Story hooks

Start in the middle of a moment and skip the backstory. These only work if the post goes on to tell what happened next.

• My manager pulled me into a room on a Tuesday and asked if I wanted her job.
• The night before our biggest demo, the database went down.
• A patient’s daughter handed me a list of 14 questions at 6 am.
• I almost walked out of my first board meeting.
• Our only customer in Canada emailed me at midnight with one word: “Help.”
• The intern found the bug three senior engineers missed.
• I opened the shared drive and realized every contract was out of date.
• The first house I ever sold was the one nobody else would show.

Contrarian hooks

These push against something most of your readers believe. Fair warning: if the post cannot back the claim up, the hook just looks like a hot take.

• Your onboarding is not too short. It is too generic.
• A busy calendar is not proof you are a good manager.
• Most job descriptions should be half as long.
• Code reviews are not for catching bugs.
• I stopped asking candidates about their weaknesses. The interviews got better.
• Discounts are not a sales strategy.
• You do not need a personal brand. You need a reputation.
• The best marketing plan I ever wrote had no new channels in it.

Number hooks

A specific figure is hard to scroll past. Use one from your own work, and make sure the post explains where it came from.

• 3 clients, 1 laptop and 9 months of savings. That was the plan.
• It took me 41 drafts to write a cover letter I was proud of.
• We answered 1,200 support tickets last month with a team of four.
• I have run 300 school pickup lines. Here is what they taught me about logistics.
• Our renewal rate went from shaky to steady in two quarters.
• 7 years, 4 companies, 1 rule I never break in negotiations.
• We cut our weekly meetings from 11 to 4.
• 90 days into my first manager role, here is my honest scorecard.

Question hooks

The best questions name who they are for. “Nurses:” or “Founders,” in the first word does half the work.

• Recruiters, do you read cover letters or not?
• What is the smallest change that made your team faster this year?
• How do you tell a client their idea will not work?
• Nurses: what do you wish you had known before night shift?
• Would you take a 10% pay cut for a four-day week?
• When was the last time a cold email made you reply?
• Teachers, how do you grade group projects fairly?
• Founders, who was your first hire, and would you hire them again?

List hooks

A number in a list hook is a promise. If you say six, every one of the six has to be worth reading.

• 6 questions I ask before taking on any freelance project:
• 4 things I check on every pull request before reading the code:
• The 5 documents every new property manager should have on day one:
• 3 sentences that saved my hardest client calls:
• 7 tools I use every day as a remote recruiter, and the 2 I dropped:
• 5 things to do in the first week of a new sales territory:
• 4 lessons from planning our first company offsite:
• My 3-step routine for writing a weekly update leaders actually read:

Mistake hooks

Admitting a mistake in the first line is disarming. People keep reading to find out what it cost and what you do differently now.

• I hired for skills and ignored how the person handled feedback. It cost us a quarter.
• I priced my first consulting project by the hour. Never again.
• I spent a year building a dashboard nobody opened.
• I told a candidate “we will be in touch” and then forgot.
• My first marketing campaign had a typo in the subject line, sent to every customer.
• I said yes to every request from our biggest client. That was the problem.
• I skipped the reference check because I was in a hurry.
• I spent our entire event budget on the venue and forgot about follow-up.

Before and after hooks

Two states, one change. The wider the gap between “used to” and “now,” the stronger the pull to find out how.

• Last year I dreaded Monday standups. Now I run them.
• Our trial users used to leave after one day. Now most stay for the full two weeks.
• I went from 0 interviews in three months to 4 offers in three weeks.
• Our clinic’s phone used to ring all day. Now patients book online by default.
• My resume used to be two pages of duties. Now it is one page of results.
• We used to release once a month. Now we ship every day, with fewer incidents.
• I used to write posts for my peers. Now I write them for my customers.
• Two years ago I could not read a balance sheet. Last week I presented ours to the board.

Curiosity hooks

These open a question the reader wants closed. Answer it in the first few lines of the post, or the trust is gone.

• The best interview question I know has nothing to do with the job.
• There is one line in every contract I now read first.
• A customer told me why they really chose us. It was not the product.
• The most useful sales training I ever had happened at a car wash.
• I found out why our best engineers kept leaving. It was not pay.
• One small change to our listing photos changed who showed up to open houses.
• The question that ended our pricing debate came from a support agent.
• I keep a list on my desk that I have never shown anyone at work.

Weak vs strong: hook rewrites

Weak hooks tend to fail the same three ways: vague, slow, or about the writer instead of the reader. Each row keeps the idea and fixes the opening.

How to adapt an example

Start from the post, not the hook. Know the one idea you are sharing first, then choose the type that sets it up best. A mistake you learned from wants a mistake hook; a surprising result wants a number or before-and-after.

Then:

1. Keep the shape and change every detail. If an example says “my manager,” “a Tuesday” and “her job,” replace all three with what actually happened to you.
2. Use a real number or none. A number hook only works if you can explain the figure in the post.
3. Cut the warm-up. “I want to share” and “Let’s talk about” can almost always go, and the line usually gets better without them.
4. Check it on a phone. Paste your opening into the LinkedIn Post Preview to see what shows before the “see more” cut.
5. Write two or three versions and pick the one you would click if a stranger had written it.

Common mistakes

• A hook the post does not pay off. If the first line promises a surprise, the post has to deliver it. Readers remember being tricked.
• Fake drama. “I can’t believe this happened” with no real story behind it wears thin fast.
• Borrowed numbers. Never present one of the invented figures above as your own result, or as a fact about the world.
• Three hooks in one. A question, a number and a contrarian claim in the same line is just confusing. Pick one.
• The same pattern every day. Rotate types so your posts do not all start to sound alike.

Write your own hooks

Describe your topic in the free LinkedIn Hook Generator to get openings in several styles, then compare them with the lines above. Prefer fill-in-the-blank versions? Our hook templates have them. Once the first line is settled, the LinkedIn Post Generator can help you draft the rest, and the post examples show complete posts built on hooks like these.