🗃 The 2 types of social content

Which is better for your startup?

Author

Tommy Clark
May 20, 2024

Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

I know. We skipped a week. But hear me out.

My Head of Content was OOO, so I was pulled into a few higher-priority tasks on my calendar.

Happy to report:

We’re so back.

Hope you had a great weekend and are ready to get better at B2B marketing (I know I am).

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

The two types of social content

How winning SaaS startups get customers from social

Over the years, I’ve noticed a lot of startups lean into 2 types of content in their social strategies.

Type 1: the slow, daily grind of uploading value-based content over a long time horizon.

Type 2: loud, ambitious campaigns that make tons of noise in the short term.

Think of it like the composition of muscle fibers in an athlete. Type 1 muscle fibers are meant more for long-haul activities like running a marathon or completing an Iron Man. Type 2 muscle fibers are meant for quick, explosive activities like sprinting 100m or rising up to dunk a basketball.

Our muscles all have type 1 and type 2 fibers. Some of us skew more towards type 1, and others toward type 2. I, a washed-up D3 basketball player who never dunked in-game, likely lean towards type 1. Lol. My point is, all startups have their own, unique combination of Type 1 and Type 2 content.

Today, we’ll walk through each content type a bit more in-depth, with real examples for you to study. We’ll also establish how to find the right balance for your company. Shall we?

Type 1 content.

Type 1 content refers to the consistent, compounding output of value-based content.

Founders like Adam Robinson from RB2B or Chris Walker from Refine Labs publish content to the LinkedIn timeline daily, without fail. If you look at my own LinkedIn, most of the content fits into the Type 1 category.

It’s harder to exhaust Type 1 content. There’s always material that can be shared, because a lot of Type 1 content for B2B founders comes from personal anecdotes and stories. As long as you're doing your job, you’ll have raw material for content.

You can even remix posts you’ve already published if you're truly “out” of ideas.

Type 1 content can be viral—or niche viral—in some cases. But most of the time, the trend line for growth is consistent. You can build a profitable social presence off of Type 1 content alone, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore Type 2 content. Let’s see why.

[For more on how to launch founder-led content with this approach, read this playbook]

Type 2 content.

A few weeks back I wrote about how Antimetal pulled millions of impressions on social by delivering 1000+ boxes of pizza to prominent founders and VCs. The boxes were branded ‘Slices as a Service’ and the recipients flooded the timeline with posts.

This launch is an example of Type 2 content. Type 2 is characterized by a short, quick burst of output that generates a ton of attention on the social timeline.

It’s hard to sustain that level of output over an extended time horizon. Impossible, even. But it sure as hell makes a lot of noise—and I mean that in a good way.

Fundraise announcements would be considered Type 2 content, too. Unify reportedly generated 500+ inbound demos off the back of their seed round announcement. FERMAT, another client of ours at Compound, also saw a huge uptick in inbound post-Series A announcement.

It’s easy for startups to lean totally on Type 1 content. This can work. But most companies would be better served by using Type 2 content on a monthly, or at least quarterly, cadence.

Let’s talk about how to find the right balance between the two.

Finding the right content composition.

Usain Bolt and Eliud Kipchoge are both phenomenal athletes. It’d be unfair, and impossible, to declare one as ‘better’ than the other. The composition of their muscles, their anatomy, their skillset, is different. But they’re both perfectly suited for the sports they’re competing in.

The same line of thinking applies when assessing approaches to content. Both Type 1 and Type 2 content ‘work.’ The composition of your content calendar just depends on your company.

It depends on your company’s goals. Is your goal with content to build a sustained lead-generation engine? Or is it to make a big splash and get a ton of visibility?

It depends on your company’s resources. Do you have the influencer network and team needed to pull off a massive activation? Or do you have a single marketing generalist tasked with generating demand (or are you the marketing person as the founder)?

It depends on the skillset of your team. Is your marketing team comprised of copywriters who can crank out LinkedIn content like crazy? Or is it made up of creatives who can craft up an unhinged idea to take over the timeline?

See what I mean?

Now. If I had to choose one content type to prioritize first, the answer would be Type 1 content for 95% of early-stage companies.

I’d rather you get your CEO posting somewhat consistently on LinkedIn than spend all your bandwidth crafting up some moonshot campaign.

It’s easier for someone to consistently train for a half-marathon than it is to take someone from couch to dunking a basketball like a D1 athlete.

Nail the basics first. Build yourself into a go-to resource for customers in your industry. Then start to take some bigger bets on brand marketing campaigns

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, appreciate you allowing me into your inbox every week.

If you want to get into more of this Type 1 content we just talked about (consistent, compounding content that generates leads), check out these resources next:

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: If you want Compound to run a founder-led content motion for you… save a spot on our waitlist here. We’re at capacity right now, but looking to partner with some SaaS startups in June or July.