Hey!

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

Hope you had a great weekend. Spent my weekend working on the draft of my debut novel. Passed 150,000 words and nearing the end of Draft 1! I share more about that side of my life on Instagram.

Now, let’s chat marketing & content. 2026 is coming up fast.

I couldn’t call myself a “thought leader” if I didn’t publish a predictions piece. So here we are.

Where do I think founder-led content is going in 2026? How can SaaS & AI companies best position themselves to take advantage of it?

Let’s discuss.

🔎 DEEP DIVE

2026 content marketing predictions

8 B2B personal branding predictions ahead of 2026

We’re halfway through December (this year has passed scary fast), so…you know what that means.

It’s prediction season.

Remember the Golden Rule of marketing predictions: it doesn’t matter if they’re correct—you just have to make them.

That said…I feel confident about these.

(1) Founder-led content is no longer fringe. It is the default.

Every founding team needs someone who is willing & able to build an audience online.

A16Z is building a “New Media” department.

(2) IRL stunts provide a moat against AI.

Anyone can write an ‘OK’ post with Chat GPT or Claude (or Bluecast 😆). When the barrier to create content has been nuked, how do you stand out on a crowded timeline?

One trend I’m seeing: IRL activations with social in mind.

Here are a few examples:

• Ramp hired Office star, Brian Baumgartner (aka Kevin) for a campaign that went viral on social.

• Delve has turned their OOH campaigns in Austin, NYC, and SF into tons of social content

• Unify did a simple, low-cost stunt at Dreamforce that led to a LinkedIn post with 600+ likes

If I were in marketing at a B2B technology company, I’d run at least one experiment with an IRL stunt in Q1 of the coming year.

(3) Storytelling is marketers’ favorite buzzword—but for good reason.

Your defense in the age of AI is to do what the robots can’t copy.

IRL stunts, as mentioned above, are one variant of that.

Another is simply storytelling. Including personal anecdotes in your copy that your competitors can’t duplicate with the right Claude prompt.

The first story I recommend all founders start with is an Origin Story post. Share how and why you began your company. If you want a full walkthrough of this content format, watch this short video.

A couple of other story variants to test:

• Adversity Story (example)

• Customer Story (example)

Pro-tip: if you want to get better at storytelling, read more fiction. I love the Red Rising series as a place to start, if you're into the fantasy/sci-fi genre. Hail Reaper.

(4) Savvy founders have a system to capture B-roll and BTS footage.

Your office is your content set.

I know it feels cringe. I wish it wasn’t so. But, the trend is clear: LinkedIn posts with relevant images and B-roll outperform text-only content (when all other elements of the content are equal).

Most founders rely on the sparse photos that are already in their camera roll. This is better than nothing, but as you post more often, you will run out of media.

You’ll notice most of the founders who grow fast on LinkedIn have a flow for capturing media in-office.

Marty Kausas often posts BTS videos filmed in the Pylon office. Many of Austin Hughes’s posts include photos and videos from the Unify office. If you work in-person with your team, there is no reason not to do the same.

Simple, low-effort addition to your content with high upside.

You can never have ‘too much’ footage.

(5) LinkedIn is not the next TikTok (no matter how hard they try).

Fight me.

Short-form video did have a moment in late 2025. Remember when you could post a half-decent talking head video and rip 500K+ impressions on repeat? What a time.

I keep seeing the same three ads from the LinkedIn team talking about how “video is winning” on the platform. But the numbers just don’t back it up. Video is the lowest-performing media type at the moment.

That said, it is still valuable. It’s a good idea to post the occasional video as a way to build trust with your audience. Also, “launch” videos can still rip. But your basic podcast clips or talking-head yaps are going to yield pretty mid growth.

To the LinkedIn product team: we don’t need another TikTok. Stop. Please.

(6) Companies must graduate from “founder-led content” to building a Content Ecosystem.

To be clear: having one founder active on LinkedIn is a win. Start here.

But what happens when you’re posting 5-7x per week? Do you post 10x per week?

I mean…you could. But LinkedIn is volume-constrained in that it’s usually not best to be posting more than once per day. There are exceptions. But this generally holds up.

The way you scale output on LinkedIn is by layering in more accounts.

For example:

HubSpot has several team members active. So does Cold IQ. Exit Five. The list goes on.

When you have your founders plus employees active on the platform, you create an echo chamber. Your audience cannot escape (sounds ominous…lmao).

At Compound, we have three team members who actively post:

• Me

• Rachel, our Head of Content

• Nick, one of our Content Leads

I am going to be pushing for more of our team to get active in 2026. You should too, once you have a consistent founder brand.

(7) Companies that win on LinkedIn will supplement organic thought leadership with signal-based outbound and Thought Leader Ads.

This is the area I am most focused on building competency in. With LinkedIn organic becoming a bit volatile, you can guarantee ICP impressions with TLAs (the ad unit that allows you to boost personal content).

I have limited data here, but will be testing this more on my own profile in Q1 as we look to grow Compound’s pipeline.

(8) Most founders who “try” LinkedIn will give up within 3 months.

If you remember one idea from this piece, let it be this: commit to 12 months of posting online. Not 12 weeks. Months. If you go into founder-led marketing with a long term POV, you will outlast most of your competitors.

Example: Austin Hughes, CEO of Unify, posted consistently for 6 months (seeing OK results) before hitting the inflection point. Now, LinkedIn drives millions in pipeline for them.

If you want to accelerate your results with founder-led content:

• Read the rest of my Social Files essays. I’d go here next for a full walkthrough of my founder-led content systems.

• Check out my YouTube channel if you're more of a video person.

That’s a wrap on my predictions for now. Do you think these are on point?

Hit me back and let me know. I’ll be waiting!

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• How Businesses Win LinkedIn's NEW Algorithm by Tommy Clark 🎥

• Alex Hormozi's best frameworks for business and beyond by Sam Parr and Alex Hormozi 🎥

• 10 Writing Lessons that Changed My Life by David Perrell 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week.

More from Social Files:

• Read the rest of my essays

• Work with my agency in 2025

• Try my LinkedIn content writing SaaS

• Steal my founder-led content templates

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark