👇 Before You Write Another Word: Read My Hook Masterclass Notes
✨ Your Content Deserves Readers: Applying Hook Science for More Clicks
Let's get straight to it. We spend ages creating content, right? Pouring over research, crafting sentences, maybe even sharing something personal. Then we hit publish and... maybe 11 views and no likes? Barely a ripple. It’s frustrating, inefficient, and honestly, a bit soul-crushing if you let it be. ☠️
I'm navigating this content creation maze myself, trying to figure out what actually moves the needle. Recently, I've going through Dan Koe's Writer's Bootcamp and diving into frameworks like Dan Koe's – because clearly, just 'creating value' isn't enough.
Here is a breakdown of how to get our work actually gets seen.
Note: Little experiment I am trying out to improve readability and digestability, the 💡 represent TLDR summaries. Would appreciate feedback on whether these make my writing more digestible.
Why Your Best Work Might Be Invisible (And How Strategic Hooks Can Change That)
You know the feeling. Hours invested, brainpower spent, you hit publish... and the silence is deafening. Or worse, the analytics dashboard is just red.
Sound familiar?
Here’s the bottleneck: Your content's quality is irrelevant if the first impression doesn't land. In the endless scroll, attention isn't a given, it’s earned – usually in less than a second.
We're not just competing with other creators. We're up against instant gratification loops, urgent notifications, and the general chaos of the internet.1
Ignoring the hook – that first line, that title, that immediate impression – is like building an incredible piece of software 🚀 but forgetting the install button. Useless.
The Big Idea: Marketing Isn't an Optional Extra
I didn't actually use to put any thoughts into being discovered, because I was still back in the old days of okay, you write something that is good. People will eventually find it because the platform will take care of it. Then I considered how I actually find content, and it is mostly by scrolling through my feed, and if anything catches my attention, then it would get read.
The core idea here is this: Your hook is the gatekeeper. It determines if someone even pauses long enough to consider clicking or reading more. This means marketing, especially crafting that initial hook, isn't some separate task you do after writing; it's integral to the writing process itself.
Ali Abdaal is always going: Title & Thumbnail, for youtube videos. TikTok - Make Your Day This still holds true for content like ours. Even written blog posts do better with thumbnails and it is really easy to generate one with AI nowadays.
💡 What I Discovered: Great content isn't enough. If you don't consciously design the attention catcher (the hook, the clickbait), you're leaving readership entirely to chance. Marketing is part of the creation process, because this is how we communicate with others now.
The Problem: Wasted Effort & The Burnout Treadmill
So, what's the cost of neglecting the hook?
Good Ideas Lost: Valuable insights and solutions never reach the people who need them.
Wasted Energy: All those hours spent researching and writing feel pointless without engagement. That feeling of "why am I even writing" is brutal and the reason why people stop posting.
Burnout Fuel: Creating into a void is exhausting. It makes you question your skills, your niche, everything. It's a fast lane to wanting to just pack it all in. ☠️
Missed Connections: You don't get to interact with or help the audience you were aiming for.
It’s just deeply inefficient and demoralizing. I also cringe from 'clickbait' but that is the reality of how we write nowadays. Even when someone is geniunely sharing their experience, that is actually included under the marketing points below.
💡 What I Discovered: Ignoring the hook leads directly to wasted effort and creator burnout. It’s not something we can neglect, because not designing for human attention undermines the very reason we create. You aren't genuinely sharing, if you don't consider the humans you are writing for.
The Goal: Write for people
My new approach? Stop thinking purely as a writer/creator and start thinking about my readers.
The goal shifts from just 'making good stuff' to intentionally:
✅ Mastering the mechanics of attention. What actually makes people stop and look?
✅ Understanding reader psychology. What problems, desires, or curiosities drive clicks?
✅ Designing an irresistible 'front door' for every piece of content.
It’s about bringing the human factor back into writing. How can we design the presentation of our content so that clicking our post feels like it would provide value option for the right person in that moment?
💡 What I Discovered: The goal isn't just creation, it's designing the discovery experience. It's making your content readable and digestability. Becoming a creator means shaping how people encounter your work, instead of tossing out a bunch of research that they struggle to digest.
Read more about my writing philosophy here: How to Talk Like a Human Online (Stop Sounding like a Textbook) I am currently transitioning from academic writing, and got good feedback from one of my creator friends on this.
An Example: The Scroll Test Reality Check
Think honestly about your own scrolling. What makes you stop?
Is it:
❓ A relatable statement that resonates with a current frustration?
✨ A surprising number or fact?
⚠️ A bold statement that challenges your assumptions?
👇 A clear promise to solve a specific problem you have?
My old habit was purely descriptive titles: "Multi-Agent Strategies: An extension of Single-Agent Skills to MARL" Academic, accurate, and snooze-inducing for most people. 🐥
Compare that to:
One describes in technical detail, the other hooks by being visually different and offering a desirable benefit (new workflow) in a way that induces curiousity. It’s aimed at a specific person with a specific problem. Content creators who want to work differently.
The Benefit: More Reach, Less Agony
When you get the hook right:
🚀 More Readers: The most obvious win.
✨ Deeper Engagement: People who click intentionally are more likely to stick around, comment, share.
✅ Sustainable Growth: Builds your audience, authority, and yes, helps with those passive income goals (let's be transparent, that's part of the equation for many of us).
💡 Less Wasted Work: Your effort actually translates into impact and connection.
📚 Real Impact: You get to share your ideas and potentially help people.
It makes the whole creator process feel less like shouting into the wind and more like a strategic conversation.
💡 What I Discovered: Investing time in the hook isn't extra work; it makes the rest of the work more effective and the entire process less frustrating.
The Process: Engineering Effective Hooks
Okay, practicalities. How do we actually build better hooks? This involves internalizing the elements that consistently grab attention, drawing from folks who've dissected this stuff (like Dan Koe and Neil O'Grady). Here’s the toolkit I'm working with:
👇 Key Hook Ingredients:
❓ Curiosity: Pose an intriguing question or scenario. e.g., "What if your 'lack of discipline' is actually a systems problem?"
⚠️ Fear / Problem: Highlight a pain point or risk. e.g., "Are You Making This Mistake That Kills 90% of Content?"
✨ Value / Benefit: Promise a clear, desirable outcome. e.g., "The Simple Framework I Use to Write Hooks That Get Clicks."
💡 Counter-Narrative: Challenge a common belief. e.g., "Why Most Productivity Advice Doesn't Work (Especially if Your Brain is Wired Differently)."
✅ Credibility: Signal your expertise or the effort behind the insight. e.g., "After analyzing 50+ top newsletters, here’s the hook pattern..." (Mentioning my AI background is relevant sometimes).
👀 Surprise: Use unexpected stats or facts. e.g., "Fact: 8 out of 10 people never read past the headline. Here’s how to beat that."
🎯 Identity: Call out to your specific audience. e.g., "For Aspiring Creators Feeling Stuck..."
🗣️ Eloquence: Articulate a shared feeling. e.g., "That brain-fog feeling when you know you need to create but just... can't?" (Relatable, right?)
Aim to combine 2-3 of these in each hook.
💡 What I Discovered: Hook writing isn't magic; it's pattern recognition. Learning these core elements gives you a repeatable toolkit for crafting better entry points.
My Current Hook Checklist (Work in Progress!)
Synthesizing this, here’s the mental checklist I’m currently using. It’s iterative – I’m still refining it as I learn:
✅ Hook Checklist:
👀 Scroll-Stop: Does it look different?
Visual break (Emojis ✨🚀❓, formatting, an image)?
Whitespace is key. Break up long blocks of text. Use short lines. Use lists.
Goal: Interrupt the visual monotony of the feed.
🖱️ Click Reason: Is the "What's In It For Me?" crystal clear? Pick one or more:
🎯 Identity Match? (For writers who..., If you struggle with...)
⚠️ Problem Solved? (Tired of X?, Fix your Y...)
❓ Curiosity Piqued? (Hint at the value/transformation: The method that..., Unlock the secrets of...)
✅ Credibility Signal? (Why listen? Lessons learned from X..., Based on Y research...)
👇 Format Signifier: Is it obvious what they're clicking?
Thread? 🧵👇 Make it clear that they should be clicking for more.
This three-part check helps me move from just writing a title to intentionally crafting the hook.
💡 What I Discovered: Having a simple, repeatable checklist makes applying hook principles systematic rather than haphazard. It turns theory into practice.
Tweet Thread Example
Here is my best performing thread yet:
Time is a concept that really appeals to most people. You can see this theme in Ali Abdaal's videos too. Just check through his 'popular' videos and you will see the topic of 'Do X faster' and 'Time management' pop up repeatedly.
You want to appeal to a general audience even if it sound specific.
This does sound very negative, but what I found is that people do pay more attention to more aggressive tweets. You only have 280 characters so you have to be more direct and specific.
It feels really uncomfortable and I worry that I will lose my audience by being too negative, but I also don't have much of an audience to lose (at 100+ followers) so this is me working on experimentation and ignoring the fear of failure.
We should practice deliberately designing that first interaction point that gatekeeps the rest of our content. This is acknowledging the noisy environment and strategically painting our storefront's "doorway" to make entering appealing and easy for the intended audience.
It’s not about manipulative clickbait; it's about clear, strategic communication. It respects the reader by being upfront about the value proposition.
It’s about earning attention, not just hoping for it.
So, let's stop letting our hard work dissolve into the digital noise like tears in rain. Let's start thinking like communicators. What would you like to read?
Here is a quick printable:
Hope my checklist helps you craft your content. Have you made any other checklists to help with content writing? 👇 Drop a comment – I’m genuinely curious and still figuring this out too!
And if this resonates and you want more practical insights from my creator's journey, (especially on creating systems, leveraging tech to make workflows easier), consider subscribing. ✨
If you liked this post, you may be interested in:
https://creatorpreneurteststudio.substack.com/p/when-should-you-time-your-posts-for?
Sources
Dan Koe’s Writer’s Bootcamp Course Materials