How To Use Psychology to 10x Your Audience
By Nader Alnajjar
TLDR
You scroll past thousands of LinkedIn posts a month and remember maybe five. The difference is psychology: a few deliberate choices about colour, copy and structure make you one of the five rather than one of the thousands.
Colour is processed 60,000x faster than text, so people form an impression before they read a word. Chris Donnelly, Alvin Huang and Gareth Lloyd each use a consistent palette that reinforces the emotional tone of their content.
A hook has 1 to 2 seconds to work and needs to trigger urgency, curiosity or relatability. Loss-aversion framing performs 20 to 30% better, and "validated keywords" (the exact phrases your ICP uses to describe their struggles) create instant recognition and trust.
Stories engage far more of the brain than facts and are 22x more memorable. Four frameworks (Before-After-Bridge, the simplified Hero's Journey, A FOREST, the Golden Circle) structure any long-form piece, and consistency across all of it builds the mental tags that turn attention into leverage.
You've scrolled past thousands of LinkedIn posts this month. You remember maybe five.
This is the difference: psychology.
A few strategic tweaks to how your content is processed by people’s brains can make you one of the five people someone remembers instead of the thousands they forget.
Build Leverage By Learning:
Why Psychology = Leverage
Colour Psychology in Content
Copy Psychology & Validated Keywords
The Psychology of Storytelling
Why Psychology = Leverage
What do you think of when you see these two colours?
If you thought about McDonald's, then you’ve experienced the power of well-engineered psychology firsthand. Just by the pure colours alone, you were able to make that association. That’s brand recognition working at its best.
Equally, which one of these two statements below intrigues you more?
“Start saving £200 per day.”
“You’re losing £200 every day."
They’re saying the exact same thing, but using different emotional triggers. The first one simply states a feature. But the second one taps into loss aversion, resonating more because our brains are hardwired to avoid loss more than seek gain.
Content works the same way. The strongest content resonates so well because it ‘hacks’ your brain to create this emotional response and connection.
And people remember things most when it makes them feel something.
With a few conscious choices around colour, design, writing and structure, you can engineer this emotional response consistently (not in the sense that you’re manipulating people, rather just making it easier for your message to stand out in busy feeds).
Let’s break down exactly how.
Colour Psychology in Content
Fun fact: your brain processes colour 60,000x faster than text. So before someone reads a single word of your post, they’ve already formed an impression based on your visual identity.
In terms of the science behind it → different colours/wavelengths of light trigger different neurological responses. A few common ones you might be aware of:
Red: Urgency, passion, energy, danger
Blue: Trust, stability, professionalism, calm
Yellow: Optimism, creativity, attention-grabbing
Green: Growth, health, balance, wealth
Purple: Luxury, creativity, wisdom
Orange: Enthusiasm, confidence, warmth
Black: Sophistication, authority, power
Let’s look at how some creators use this to their advantage:
This cheat sheet from Chris Donnelly is absolutely packed with information. Yet, it somehow doesn’t feel overwhelming. That’s because the use of green as its base creates a sense of calm and trust, while also tying into his content’s messaging of brand growth and building wealth.
Alvin Huang’s designs are based around three main colours: orange, yellow and green. The vibrancy of these colours a) matches the occasional eccentricity of his copy, and b) maps out onto his 3 content pillars, making every piece of his content easy to categorise and recognise.
Gareth Lloyd’s content centres around health, wellness and sustainability, making his colour palette of dark greens and browns (plus other earthy colours) highly resonant, contributing greatly to building a strong brand identity.
Notice the pattern: these aren't random aesthetic choices. The colours reinforce the emotional tone of their content before a single word is read.
Copy & Messaging Psychology
On LinkedIn, your hook is everything. You have 1-2 seconds to stop someone scrolling. That’s it.
The hooks that work best trigger one of three emotional responses: urgency, curiosity, or relatability.
If you want to create urgency, using negative framing and tapping into loss aversion works; fear is a stronger motivator than desire, which is why these hooks perform 20-30% better. For example, this hook by Gareth uses fear to challenge people’s assumptions about food, resulting in a high-performing post on what is otherwise quite a niche topic.
If you want to build curiosity, go for more positive framing or challenge assumptions. Things like:
“I’ve read 1000s of business books. These are the ones I come back to:”
“Lighting someone else's candle doesn't dim yours. It just makes the room brighter.”
Both of these a) grab attention (either through stats or metaphorical language), then b) generate intrigue and compel the reader to click ‘see more’.
Copy psychology also ties into your overall messaging.
"Validated keywords" are words or phrases that directly mirror your ICP's pain points. If you want to connect with your audience, you have to speak their language. For example, terms like "stuck", "ignored", "burnt out", "not getting leads", "wasting time", "spinning my wheels" might be the exact language your audience uses when describing their struggles. Using these phrases creates instant recognition and, therefore, trust, priming your audience for any conversion.
How to Find Validated Keywords:
Use this ChatGPT prompt to analyse Reddit threads that discuss your ICP’s pain points:
"Analyse the top 20 comments in this Reddit thread about [your ICP's pain point]. Extract the most frequently repeated phrases, emotional language, and specific terminology people use to describe their struggles. Group them by theme and rank by frequency. Focus on visceral, emotionally-charged language."
Then weave those exact phrases into your hooks, posts, and landing pages.
The Psychology of Storytelling
Stories activate multiple parts of the brain simultaneously. When you read facts, only the language-processing areas light up. When you read a story, your motor cortex, sensory cortex, and frontal cortex all engage as if you're experiencing the events yourself.
This is called "neural coupling", and it's why a well-told story is 22x more memorable than facts alone (Stanford study, 2019).
So here are a few storytelling frameworks you can use to structure any long-form piece of copy:
Before-After-Bridge: Share where you were (relatable struggle) → where you are now (transformation) → how you got there (the insight or method).
The Hero’s Journey (Simplified): Challenge appears → obstacle faced → lesson learned → outcome achieved.
A FOREST: A persuasive structure: Anecdote, Fact, Opinion, Rhetorical Q, Emotive Lang, Stats, Triples.
The Golden Circle (Simon Sinek): Why → How → What. Start with purpose, then the process, then the product.
Each framework works because it mirrors the way humans naturally process experience: tension, resolution, transformation.
Build Consistency = Build Recognition
Although it’s fun to talk about these things as ‘hacks’, psychology isn’t about tricks. It’s understanding how humans process information and designing content that works with the brain, not against it.
When you use consistent colours, mirror your audience's language, tell stories, and design for attention, you're creating "mental tags” that allow someone to instantly summarise who you are and why you matter.
So instead of posting a bunch of content and hoping something sticks, start engineering recognition from day one.
That's how you turn attention into leverage.
Until next time,
Nader 🫡
What this means for you
If you are a founder or executive building a brand in your own name, the point of this issue is that recognition is designed, not earned by volume. Nader's McDonald's example is the whole argument in miniature: two colours, no logo, and you still name the brand. Your presence in the feed works the same way. A consistent palette, a hook that leads with what your reader stands to lose rather than gain, and the exact words your ideal client uses when they describe being stuck or ignored all do their work before anyone has consciously decided to read you. Most founder content skips this and relies on the quality of the idea alone, which is why so much of it gets scrolled past by the very people it was written for.
The practical move is to audit your last month of posts against the four levers in this issue. Does your visual identity carry one consistent emotional tone, or does each post look like it came from a different person? Do your hooks trigger urgency, curiosity or relatability in the first line, or do they warm up slowly? Have you pulled the language your ICP actually uses (the Reddit prompt in the body is a ten minute job), or are you guessing at their pain points? And is your long-form copy structured as a story with tension and resolution, or as a list of facts? Fix those and you stop hoping something sticks. You start engineering the mental tags that make a buyer, an investor or a board remember who you are and why you matter.
Frequently asked questions
Why does psychology give founders leverage on LinkedIn?
Because people remember content that makes them feel something. Nader's example is two statements that say the same thing: "Start saving £200 per day" simply states a feature, while "You're losing £200 every day" taps into loss aversion, and our brains are hardwired to avoid loss more than seek gain. The strongest content creates that emotional response and connection deliberately. With a few conscious choices around colour, design, writing and structure you can engineer it consistently, not to manipulate people but to make it easier for your message to stand out in busy feeds. That is how you become one of the five posts someone remembers rather than the thousands they forget.
How does colour psychology shape the way content is read?
Your brain processes colour 60,000x faster than text, so before someone reads a word of your post they have formed an impression from your visual identity. Different colours trigger different neurological responses: red signals urgency and energy, blue trust and professionalism, yellow optimism and attention, green growth and wealth, purple luxury, orange confidence and warmth, black sophistication and authority. Chris Donnelly's green-based cheat sheets feel calm and trustworthy while tying into his messaging on growth and wealth; Alvin Huang maps orange, yellow and green onto his three content pillars so every post is easy to categorise; Gareth Lloyd's earthy greens and browns match his health and sustainability content. The colours reinforce the emotional tone before a word is read.
What makes a LinkedIn hook stop the scroll?
You have 1 to 2 seconds to stop someone scrolling, and the hooks that work best trigger one of three emotional responses: urgency, curiosity or relatability. For urgency, use negative framing that taps into loss aversion; fear is a stronger motivator than desire, which is why these hooks perform 20 to 30% better. For curiosity, use positive framing or challenge assumptions, as in "I've read 1000s of business books. These are the ones I come back to:". Hooks also draw on validated keywords: the exact phrases your ICP uses to describe their struggles, such as "stuck", "ignored", "burnt out" or "spinning my wheels", which create instant recognition and trust.
Which storytelling frameworks work for long-form content?
Stories activate multiple parts of the brain at once. Facts light up only the language-processing areas, while a story engages the motor, sensory and frontal cortex as if you were experiencing the events yourself. This is called neural coupling, and it is why the newsletter cites a well-told story as 22x more memorable than facts alone. Four frameworks structure any long-form piece: Before-After-Bridge (where you were, where you are now, how you got there); the simplified Hero's Journey (challenge, obstacle, lesson, outcome); A FOREST (Anecdote, Fact, Opinion, Rhetorical question, Emotive language, Stats, Triples); and Simon Sinek's Golden Circle (Why, How, What). Each works because it mirrors how humans process experience: tension, resolution, transformation.
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About the author
Nader Alnajjar is co-founder of LeverBrands, where he builds personal brands and content ecosystems for founders and executives. More at leverbrands.com/about and on LinkedIn.