How To Get Better At Making Great Content

Hello hello!

Welcome back to, 1, One, 1. This newsletter is the place founders come to learn how to get leads from their social—and I’m so glad you’re a part of it.

I'm not sure when this will go out, but at the time of writing this, it's my first week with two full-time employees on the team. I'm now having to ask questions I used to dismiss as elementary.

How do you build culture? How often should you have one-on-ones? How do you run those one-on-ones? How do I make this a great place to work while maximizing productivity?

These are all questions that I used to scoff at people when they asked or talked about on social but now I 100% get it and frankly would love any tips.

Anyway, as promised, here’s your 1 winning hook template, 1 post breakdown, and 1 content tip:

Winning Hook Template

People will clown on this hook for being overused, which it sometimes is. But I don't care—it catches your eye.

Why Does This Hook Work?

1) Short eye-catching sentence with tons of authority.

Not many people have a friend who sold their company for $800M. We'll of course give Will the benefit of the doubt here. But I know factually some people straight up lie about this on the timeline.

Don't lie about it. But if you have a similar story or anything else along the same lines, use it.

2) Relatable storytelling tease

The next line gets into something every founder can relate to. Will details the grinding, sleepless nights, and putting everything on the line. What makes this good, though, is you would expect the next line of this post to be around how he's living the good life now, potentially on a yacht, $400M richer after taxes, etc.

Except that's not the case. The next line of the post, if you end up reading it, goes as follows:

He walked away with $6 million. That might sound like a win.

And that's the beauty of it. There's tension and contrast between What he leads you to think based on his writing and the reality of it (declared with the next line), and that's what hooks you in.

How To Replicate It

Being that the whole "my friend sold a business" line is kind of overplayed unless your friend actually did. I would apply this elsewhere in your work world.

As long as you're seeing something aspirational, the hook has the same effect.

For example:

• I know an enterprise AE who hasn't missed quota in 8 quarters.

• I know a founder who raised a $5M seed round without a pitch deck.

• I know a CMO who gets 400+ inbound demos per month on their site.

The point that you're leading someone to think here is that you're going to give them some form of insight or value based on your relationship with this person (who better not be fictional).

You can take the next line one of two ways.

1) Follow what Will did and lead with something you would expect them to do / is seemingly obvious.

• I know an enterprise AE who hasn't missed quota in 8 quarters. He spends two hours every morning before work in his CRM.

• I know a founder who raised a $5M seed round without a pitch deck. He had paying users for his product before it was even fully built.

• I know a CMO who gets 400+ inbound demos per month on their site. Their interactive product tour is next to none.

From here you build a third line in the way Will did.

Something applicable to all three examples would be saying something like “but that’s not why they [did impressive thing].”

This works fairly well.

2) The other way to go about this is to use the second line of the hook to add contrast and tension right away.

• I know an enterprise AE who hasn't missed quota in 8 quarters. His emails suck.

• I know a founder who raised a $5M seed round without a pitch deck. He had no demand for his product.

• I know a CMO who gets 400+ inbound demos per month on their site. She hates it.

You basically want to say something contrarian to what you would expect based on the first sentence.

As for picking which version of this to use, it largely comes down to what story you're about to tell or how you're going to tie the rest of your post in. In this case, specifically, you kind of have to let the content itself decide the hook.

Post Breakdown

Today's post is this exec’s second time featured in the newsletter. It’s from Emir Atli, CRO at HockeyStack.

These posts are not easy to make but are extremely valuable. Let's talk about why.

1) Proprietary data.

This is the hardest part of making a post like this. What you see on the surface is a good hook, listicle, and graphic (more on those below).

What's required to make this though is some type of marketing or research team project to actually get this proprietary data.

Emir shares that the team analyzed 135 companies, $700M in spend, and over 1,000,000 opportunities to get this data. And that's before you even analyze it/make it digestible.

Yes, these are ridiculously hard to do without a team, but it's extremely high leverage for one specific reason: This asset lives everywhere. I haven't had a look at their full funnel, but I can tell you for sure that if you are going through the hassle of making this asset, it should live on your:

• Founder’s socials

• Brand socials

• Site as a gated resource

• Newsletter as an ungated resource

Think of this as creating the asset first and distributing it everywhere.

2) Incredible hook.

What I want you to notice first about this hook is the authority.

He shares how the company analyzed over 135 businesses, $700M in spend, and over 1,000,000 opportunities, spanning certain headcount ranges.

Authority is built in two ways. First of all, he’s basically saying “we went through all of this work, so you don't have to – here’s what we found”.

Second, though, is the 135 companies, $700M in spend, and 1,105,245 opportunities they analyzed to do this. Authority is built with those numbers.

I also want you to notice how he wrote 1,105,245 opportunities instead of saying over 1 million opportunities. That specificity makes people stop and digest it a little more.

3) Easily digestible listicle.

After going through all of the trouble to source, analyze, and make sense of the data, Emir makes it easy for you to read in a simple listicle format.

Notice the formatting of the seven points. It's a simple one-sentence answer with a little bit more context, but it gives you everything you need to know.

4) Wonderful graphic

This graphic is great. Anything that makes people stop and digest it will increase dwell time on the post and thereby improve performance. This is the same reason cheat sheets and infographics work so well.

They, of course, took their proprietary data and made a chart out of it with a clear headline.

No, this post will not be easy to replicate.

This type of thing takes serious surveying data collection, analysis, and packaging to execute. But if you have the time or team resources to survey people your ICP cares about to create a report your ICP cares about, do it.

If you want another example of a company doing this extremely well, check out Hampton by Sam Parr. They develop incredible reports for their ICP—high net worth founders. And ironically, they pull that data from their ICP—high net worth founders.

Content Tip - How To Get Better At Making Great Content

I know that sounds like something super vague and ambiguous, but stick with me here. There are a few things I've identified that have made me a pretty good social writer, as well as what I coach our writers on.

Here's a quick breakdown of each. And I'm fully aware you won't like number 3, but it's arguably the most valuable.

1) Consciously reading, digesting, and curating other high-performing social content.

There's a difference between doom scrolling the timeline and actively looking for great content. It's one of those things though that when you do start actively seeking it out as well as saving it to a swipe file, you're more easily able to identify what makes yours great.

This isn't to say I'm the best, but I've obviously made huge strides over the last two years and have been able to build up a decent clientele. Now, when I look at a social post, my eyes automatically go to the topic choice, hook, structure, formatting, and media choice.

It will take some time and a lot of practice, but you want to get to this point and beyond where I am.

In terms of an actionable way to do this, it's actually not that hard, but does take a conscious effort:

• Curate your feed properly. Like and comment on posts from people you know make great content. “Great content” in this sense can be distinguished by what makes you stop reading the post in its entirety and potentially engage. If the post does that, it should be in your feed.

  Similarly, do not engage with content you deem weak, sub-par, or that just isn't from a creator you want to see. More than that, unfollow these people. Over time, your feed will get much cleaner and much more valuable.

• Save winners to a swipe file. You can use LinkedIn's saved folder or build a simple spreadsheet / Notion doc. I prefer the spreadsheet / Notion doc so you can add a column with tags about what you liked with that given post (hook, topic, structure, etc.)

• Search the swipe file when you need inspo. The ugly truth about swipe files is that people don't use them enough, even if they make them. You must actively go back and train your brain to look at what makes great content.

2) Actively seek out free or paid resources on this specific topic.

We're lucky enough that we live in a time where there is more free information on pretty much any topic online than we know what to do with—social content included. If I were you, I would start with a few key resources:

• My newsletter bank. Yeah, maybe I'm biased, but I'm intentionally making this a library of long-form content that will make you better at social.

• David Perrell’s YouTube. If you want to talk about a binge bank David's YouTube is exactly that. You will learn the principles of writing, storytelling, etc. I credit a lot of what I've learned to these videos specifically.

• Tommy Clark’s Social Files. There are very few times I promote a competitor, but Tommy deserves it. He writes great long-form essays on how to make great content as a founder. I'd be lying to you if I wrote this newsletter and didn't include his as a good resource.

3) DO MORE REPS

Okay, we're at the one that I told you you'd hate. This is the most practical but least desirable advice that anyone wanting to get better at anything wants to hear. At the same time, it's 100% true. The 10,000-hour rule undoubtedly applies to social content.

Kobe didn't become Kobe after 10 three-pointers.

Tiger didn't become Tiger after three rounds of 18.

You will not become Adam Robinson after writing five posts.

Jokes aside, you need to do reps. I'm probably approaching 4,000 individual LinkedIn posts personally written outside of the thousands I've edited. I still feel myself getting better, as well as identifying gaps or weak points in my writing as I progress.

There are people who've written twice and even triple what I have. It's a never-ending game of constant optimization, and frankly, I think that's beautiful.

Social Stuff I Found For You

📌 The founder of Boom Supersonic appears on MFM. 

📌 Tim Davidson drops the sauce on ABM with LinkedIn Ads

📌 Hilarious way to build a custom LinkedIn feed.

Last Thing

Thank you for reading. Truly, it means a lot to me that you take the time out of your busy week to do this.

Just wanted to say that my agency, Hat Tip, has availability for more founders like yourself if you want support with content.

See if you’re a fit here.

I’ll be back next week,

Christian