If you get this wrong, nothing you do afterwards matters.
How can I be so sure?
Simply because this one thing has been important since the invention of marketing (whenever that was).
It’s just as important today and will be just as important tomorrow.
What is it?
It’s your hook.
The very first thing you say either grabs interest or makes it easy for someone to ignore you.
On the web it’s the first thing someone sees. So your headline or the first line of your social post or your video thumbnail.
You have a second or two to win some more attention. So you better nail your hook.
It’s hard work but also lots of fun. You become better the more you practice. But there’s a few shortcuts you can take to learn how to write better hooks.
The first one is read the titles of bestselling books. Not ones by famous people because they sell on their profile mostly.
A classic is The 4 Hour Workweek. What a great hook. After all who wouldn’t love a 4 hour workweek. This title led to Tim Ferriss becoming very famous.
But pick a relevant category on Amazon and look at the top 100 books. Which titles stand out? Keep a copy of them in a notepad.
Another technique to find good hooks is look at the most read articles on a news website. Also you can scroll through a news site and see what headlines grab you. Again add those to your notepad.
Do the same thing on any social media platform. Twitter is especially good for research if you know how to look (I’ll show how if you ask).
You are developing a ‘hook consciousness’ (look at me making up words). But seriously you are.
The more you study the good ones and practice, the easier it will be to write compelling hooks for your business.
Your hook makes or breaks the success of your marketing. Just fixing a weak hook will result in a lot more people buying and I’m sure you want that.