Lesson 4 of 9 · 7 min
Write a comment that earns a reply
A comment has one job: to make the post’s author and the people reading it think “this person actually knows this.” Everything about the structure follows from that.
The shape
- One or two paragraphs of specific value. Not agreement. Not a compliment. Something the post did not say that the reader is glad to know: a number from your own work, a step the author skipped, a case where the advice fails, a sharper way to do the thing described. It must be obvious you read the post.
- Then the free ask, tied to that post. One sentence. It offers the front end from lesson two, phrased in the terms of the post you are under, and it ends in a question so the reply is easy: “want it?”, “happy to add you”, “shall I send it over?”
The specificity test
Read your comment back and ask: could this be pasted under a different post about the same topic? If yes, it is not specific enough and it will read as what it is. The ask in particular should be different under every post, because it names the thing that post was about.
The one variable that moved our reply rate more than format was whether the first line mentioned something from the person’s last post. Same template otherwise, 4 percent to 11 percent over about 300 sends. Format mattered less than we expected.
I keep a sheet where a few of us compare format tests like this one against actual reply rates. Want me to add you?
Question three on your list is the one that gets skipped when the call is going well, and it is the one that predicts whether the deal closes. We started scoring calls on whether it was asked at all, and the ones where it was closed at roughly twice the rate.
There is a small group where SDRs compare qualification questions like these against booked-to-held numbers. Happy to add you if useful.
Great post! Totally agree, consistency is key. I help agencies scale with done-for-you outbound, DM me if you want to chat.
The bad one fails every test. It could sit under any post. It offers nothing. It asks for a sales conversation from a stranger. And it is the comment LinkedIn’s readers have learned to skip, so it damages the reader’s opinion of the four good comments you wrote earlier.
Small rules
- No link in the comment. Make the ask, and send the link when they say yes. A comment that is only a link is a comment nobody reads.
- Under 120 words. Two paragraphs and a question. The post is the main event; you are a footnote worth reading.
- Never the same ask twice on the same day. If your front end is one thing, describe it differently every time, in the post’s terms.
- If you cannot find something specific to add, do not comment. A day with four real comments beats a day with fifteen empty ones.
Checked The comment structure is the source’s, and it is the reason the method works.
The video describes exactly this: “the first two paragraphs are just about the value and the last one is the call to action, which has to be free,” and it shows the ask changing under each post (“we are not pitching a generic thing, we are pitching a very specific thing to that particular person”). The two good examples above are rewritten from the ones on screen in the video. The numbers in them are illustrative, and yours should be real.