What is Hook?

A hook is the opening line or two of a post, and on LinkedIn it has exactly one job: earn the tap on see more before the fold hides everything else you wrote. Whatever the rest of the post deserves, the hook decides whether it gets read at all, which is why experienced writers spend a disproportionate share of their time on line one. Hooks that work tend to be specific and charged: a concrete claim someone could disagree with, an unresolved tension, a number with stakes attached, a question the reader already argues about in their head. Hooks that fail are warm-ups: greetings, context paragraphs, excited to announce. The ethical line is bait. A hook must be paid off by the body of the post, because bait-and-switch buys one click and spends a unit of trust you do not get back. Draft several hooks per post, pick the sharpest one that stays true, and check how it sits above the fold with the post preview tool before publishing.