Most personal-brand LinkedIn advice hands you 50 canned hooks and a posting calendar, and six weeks later every post reads like it came from the same swipe file as everyone else's. This system replaces the swipe file with four archetypes and a hook pattern you fill in with your own material, so volume doesn't cost you voice. It's a direct application of the Experience pillar. Pair it with the Social Media Voice Pack for the cross-platform version, or the Channel-Switch Prompt Guide if you're also writing for other channels.
The 4 post archetypes
Rotate these four. Each one protects a different part of your voice, and hitting all four in a month keeps the feed from flattening into one mode.
1. The specific lesson. One thing you learned, told with a real detail attached. Not a general principle; the moment that taught it to you.
2. The disagreement. A piece of common advice in your field that you think is wrong, with the reasoning, not just the contrarian take.
3. The behind-the-scenes. A decision, mistake, or process from actual client or project work, told plainly, no dressing it up as more dramatic than it was.
4. The short answer. A question you get asked often, answered directly in under 150 words. No preamble.
Your fill-in: one real example you could write for each archetype this month.
Specific lesson: _________________________________ Disagreement: _________________________________ Behind-the-scenes: _________________________________ Short answer: _________________________________
Weekly cadence
| Day | Post type | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Specific lesson or short answer | 20 min |
| Wednesday | Disagreement or behind-the-scenes | 20 min |
| Friday (optional) | Whichever archetype you have real material for | 15 min |
Two posts a week beats five if the two are specific and the five are filler. Skip a week entirely before posting something generic just to hit the schedule; a gap is invisible, a flat post is not.
The hook bank pattern
Canned hooks fail because they're generic on purpose; a thousand people can plug into "Everyone thinks X. They're wrong." and it still reads as no one in particular. A hook bank pattern works differently: it's a shape, not a sentence, and you fill it with something true from your own week.
Pattern 1: The number from your own work. Shape: "[X] of the last [Y] [things] I [did] had the same [problem]." Fill it with a real count from real work. If you don't have a real number this week, use a different pattern; don't round up.
Pattern 2: The exact question, restated. Shape: "A [client/reader/colleague] asked me [real question] this week. Here's what I actually told them." The word "actually" only works if what follows is what you really said, not a cleaned-up version.
Pattern 3: The claim you'd defend. Shape: "[Common belief in your field]. I don't think that's true, and here's the case that changed my mind." Requires a real case. If you can't name one, you don't have the post yet.
Pattern 4: The plain confession. Shape: "I got [specific thing] wrong for [real timeframe]. Here's what fixed it." The specificity of the timeframe is what separates this from a humblebrag. "For years" is vague; "for the first six months of doing this" is a hook.
Comment-voice rules
Your comments are read by more people than you'd think, and they're the fastest place voice drifts because they feel low-stakes. Three rules:
- No "Great post!" or "Love this!" If you don't have a specific reaction, don't comment. A like says the same thing without the noise.
- Add one real detail or disagree specifically. "This matches what I saw with [specific example]" or "I'd push back on the second point because [reason]" both work. Agreement without detail is filler.
- Reply to comments on your own posts the way you'd reply to an email, not a fan. Thank-yous are fine short. Real questions get real answers, even if that means a longer reply than the post itself.
3 worked example posts, for a fictional operations consultant
Specific lesson (Pattern 2 hook):
A client asked me last week why their new hire kept missing deadlines that were clearly written down.
Turned out the deadlines were clearly written down in four different tools, and the new hire had access to two of them.
The problem was never the hire. It was that "clearly written down" and "clearly findable" got treated as the same thing. They weren't.
If someone on your team keeps missing something obvious, check where it lives before you check how obvious it is.
Disagreement (Pattern 3 hook):
Everyone tells new managers to "over-communicate." I think that advice makes things worse.
Over-communicating usually means more messages, not clearer ones. I watched a manager triple her Slack volume trying to fix a trust problem, and her team just muted the channel.
The fix wasn't more communication. It was fewer, better-timed updates that actually answered the question people had. Volume isn't the same as clarity.
Short answer:
"How do you know when a process actually needs documenting versus when it's fine as tribal knowledge?"
One test: if the person who knows it took a two-week vacation tomorrow, would anything break? If yes, document it this week, not eventually. If no, it's fine living in someone's head a while longer. Not everything needs a wiki page.
Monthly review
Once a month, pull your last 8 posts and score each against the archetype rotation and the hook pattern, not against likes. A post that used a real number and got 12 reactions is doing its job better than a generic post that got 80. Likes measure reach; the archetypes and hook bank are what keep the reach worth having.