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. I spent mine catching up on some reading. Currently reading The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell. Great book.

Now, for marketing stuff.

Today, I want to run you through how to avoid a common trap so many executives run into with their content: Authenticity Erosion.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Authenticity Erosion

How to avoid the trap of over-optimizing your Executive Content motion

I’m all for building ‘systems’ to help you make more, better content. My entire business is predicated on helping tech companies do this. But you can go so far with optimization that your content becomes soulless, sterile.

I call this Authenticity Erosion.

Has a nice ring to it, no?

The desire to over-optimize usually comes from one of two places:

(1) A desire to avoid the work.

This is where most tech execs fall. They see their competitors winning on LinkedIn, but they couldn’t be bothered to spend a few hours per week writing their own content. So they have their Head of Marketing bring in a content agency (or try to use Claude) to ‘automate the content workflow.’

I’ve seen a million versions of these people. Somehow, their content all sounds the same.

Understand this: there is no easy button in content.

This is a positive. If there were an easy button, there’d be no moat.

(2) An addiction to in-platform metrics.

This variant is less common, but it’s worth addressing now in case you do blow up on LinkedIn, so you know how to handle yourself.

When you have your first post get above-average impressions, your next impulse is “DO MORE OF THAT.” Generally, a good idea. But at scale, the type of content that reaches the most people looks quite similar: generic business advice that is simple enough to be digested by noobs with little real acumen.

This is why you probably like Alex Hormozi’s second, ‘clips’ channel better than his main channel. The former is raw, uncut—his actual personality; the latter is hyper-optimized, A/B tested content meant to feed the algorithm. And it works! But it strips the video of the elements that made you like him in the first place.

You must fight the desire to conform to the algorithm.

I detest the advice, “The audience is the algorithm.”

Yeah, if you're selling mass appeal bizop info products to people who can’t afford it. If you're selling to a more sophisticated audience, you must understand Audience Quality. In my experience, these more sophisticated buyers prefer niche, hyper-valuable content over business-adjacent slop.

Ok, so what do you do about this?

(1) Executive involvement in content is non-negotiable.

If you’re gonna stand up an Executive Content motion, said ‘executive’ must be involved. It just won’t work otherwise—I don’t care what that suspect early-20s agency bro with the weird haircut told your Marketing Manager.

The executive’s time is best used for raw material extraction (that sounds morbid, lol). For Compound clients, this looks like showing up to Content Interviews every 2 weeks for 45 minutes. If you cannot commit to this, you do not deserve an audience. Like, come on.

(2) Use ‘scrappy’ media.

When media—whether it be photo or video—looks too polished, it makes the reader distrust you. This is why the best-performing media type on LinkedIn at the moment is a simple, IRL photo.

Infographics can work, but a simple graphic quote card that looks like it’s straight out of 2019 should, well, stay in 2019.

If you work in-person, you have a huge leg up. You need to treat your office like a set. Task someone on your marketing team to snap photos and take B-roll footage at least on a monthly cadence.

(3) Be mindful of format variation.

A lot of the executives I talk to during the sales process are nervous about posting 5x per week on LinkedIn. I used to be very dismissive of this; but I’ve since softened a bit.

I’m still bullish on an aggressive cadence. 3-5x per week gets you more exposure to your audience, and more ‘shots on goal’ to see what’s hitting.

But if every post sounds the same, and looks the same, you risk your audience tuning you out as ‘just another content creator.’

The simple fix for this is to CHANGE IT UP! It’s so so so simple. One day, post a long-form ‘value-based’ listicle. The next day, post a short-form hot take. The next, a meme. A carousel. A short-form vertical video. Then another long-form post. You can vary ad infinitum. Yet, every exec thinks ‘posting on LinkedIn’ means a long-form, educational text-based post.

I also think it is OK to post less in a week if you have less to say. Forgive me for the unironic 48 Laws of Power reference, but Robert Greene does make a point when he advises in Law 16 to ‘use absence to increase respect and honor.’

There is a time to thug it out and repost an old winner or write a quick one to get a post up, but I do believe varying posting cadence along with format lets you're audience know you're human.

(4) Just don’t use AI to actually write your shit.

Be so serious. If you use Claude to one-shot a post that you couldn’t be bothered to write, why should a LinkedIn scroller bother to read? Hmm? Hmmmm?

Even ghostwritten content is the result of time spent on Content Interviews, collaborating with real writers and strategists, and some of the executive’s own handiwork.

Overly-polished writing screams AI. So just write like you talk. I’m doing it now. Read this back and you might be able to hear my voice. Creepy, isn’t it? Ok. Done with that.

But yeah, just close the Claude tab, my guy (or girl). Open the Google doc and type it out. Or use Wispr Flow—I’ll allow it.

You can do all of this, at scale.

Rookie comms people look at this as binary. You either approach content as the scrappy exec who writes their own stuff or you hire a 27-person media team and try to automate your personal brand away.

What if…

What if you could build that media engine AND still lean into what worked when you first caught that wave of momentum?

I think Oren John does this well in the marketing niche. He is dialed, and absolutely has systems around his content, but it still very much feels ‘him.’ TBPN is another case study, though we shall see what transpires post-OpenAI acquisition.

Narrowing in on tech founders and execs, I think Adam Robinson has done an exceptional job preserving his personality and ‘aura’ all the way up to 150,000 LinkedIn followers. Alina Vandenberghe at Chili Piper also comes across as very authentic in her content. Dave Gerhardt—the Founder Brand OG—is another beacon of authenticity at scale.

So yes, build systems to decrease friction around content creation. But be careful not to get lost in the sauce, and smooth away the elements of your personal brand that made it compelling in the first place.

Hope this was helpful.

And if you’d like help with your Executive Content motion, consider joining my agency’s waitlist here.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• Still haven’t read or listened to much business stuff, if I’m being real. My entire podcast rotation has been overtaken by The Rest is History. I’m 100% OK with that. I just finished their mini-series on the rise of the Samurai.

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 2026

• Steal my founder-led content templates

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark