Hey!

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

I’ve been in the content game for 6, almost 7, years now. I got what many would consider a dream job straight out of college, and launched a dream company, kind of by accident soon after.

Today I’m gonna walk you through how I thought through getting good at, and getting a job in, B2B content.

Btw - if you're doing the stuff I list out, and you're looking for a job, we’re hiring at Compound. You should apply.

Now, shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Build your public resume.

How I landed my dream job and started my dream company in B2B marketing.

I had my entire life planned out. I was going to finish my Biology degree, go to med school, and become an orthopedic surgeon.

Now I write LinkedIn content for B2B SaaS founders. What happened?

Long story. Some of which I’ll tell you today. But, there are some psychos out there who want to make a similar pivot.

You might be one of them. Today I’ll walk you through how I’d think about landing a dream job in content marketing, if I had to do it over again.

Just get good.

99% of your job search problems can be solved by getting good, and letting people know about it.

I’ll cover how to let people know later in this piece. Getting good comes first.

There’s this gap between the perceived skill level of applicants to a role and their actual skill level. Most content marketers just aren’t as good as they think they are. They watched one YouTube video from a ‘freelancer coach’ and got brainwashed into ‘charging what their worth.’ It’s kinda funny.

If you're just getting into content marketing, you're probably not that good at it yet. So your work isn’t worth much. That’s okay.

My first ‘experience’ in content marketing came by accident back in 2018. I launched a fitness coaching side hustle while I was a college student. Then I had to figure out how to get customers.

I looked around and saw most people used Instagram to get clients for that type of thing. So I created a 2nd IG account and started ripping content on how to count calories.

It sucked.

It was so, so bad. But I kept posting every day. Ignorance kept me going.

Then, about two years in, I started to realize I was getting somewhere. I had internalized enough of Gary Vee’s rants on social that I was half decent at social content. I didn’t listen to him on TikTok though. Maybe I could have made millions doing little dances.

But, I was still in the fitness coaching business. Eventually, I pivoted out of that—it’s mind-numbing to try and get clients to track their damn calories—and got a part time job in content marketing with a company in the fitness education space. Didn’t get paid much, was just a contractor, but learned a shit ton.

1 year later, I got my first B2B content gig thanks to an intro from a good friend I made during my time in the fitness space (shoutout Kendall). Her client roster was full, and I was lucky enough that she sent the lead my way.

She knew I was competent enough by now that I wouldn’t blow the opportunity and ruin her reputation for recommending me.

I guess my point here is that you're not going to get handed an opportunity when you don’t deserve it. Get good, and you’ll get more opportunities.

How do you actually get good though?

Well, here’s what worked for me.

Full immersion.

The COVID era was miserable. But it changed the trajectory of my life, for the better.

I was back home in LA at the time, living with my parents. California was about as locked down as you could get during the pandemic.

So, I had nothing to do besides coast through online classes, lift weights, and create content. I created a disgusting amount of content.

Remember, I was a devout member of the Church of Gary Vee. My YouTube algorithm was a well-oiled machine whose sole purpose was to feed me new episodes of Daily Vee as soon as they went live.

And around this time, he dropped a 270-page slide deck detailing the exact process he followed to produce 64 pieces of content per day. This was my Christmas. I think I read it in an afternoon.

I wanted to copy Gary’s strategy. I was posting daily at the time, but clearly, that wasn’t enough. Needed to ramp production up.

There was a minor wrinkle, though. I didn’t realize that Gary was insulated by a full content team of writers, videographers, designers, etc. He was, and still is, a media company. And I was a 20-year old with no budget and less experience.

Eh. Didn’t matter.

I was posting three times per day on Instagram. I was filming (and editing) three YouTube per week. I was even writing on LinkedIn. Why I thought LinkedIn would be a worthwhile channel for the fitness coaching business is beyond me, but I took Gary’s approach to omnipresence quite seriously.

It was mind-numbing. I’m sure I reached the technical definition of ‘burn out’ a few times. It was also the most effective ‘strategy’ I could have used to get good at content. I was all in on content strategy. Fully immersed.

How do I write strong hooks? How do I craft a compelling story? How do I script a YouTube video? How do I make graphics in photoshop? How do I edit in Adobe Premiere? How do I create a lead magnet to convert those followers? How do I structure an email sequence to nurture those email signups?

I got dizzy writing that paragraph.

Some content worked. Some didn’t. I started doing more of what did, and internalized it because of the sheer amount of volume I was putting out.

Full immersion accelerated my skill-building faster than any university marketing course could have.

I’m not alone here. Kevin Graham, one of my good friends and current Social Media Manager at C4, is also a self-taught social professional. Not a single marketing class taken.

And Kevin’s damn good at his job. He went from working at a bar to filming content with NFL players like CJ Stroud for a multinational brand in the span of 4-5 years.

Full-immersion puts you on the fast track to getting good. Getting good will solve your employment problems.

Not without other people in high places knowing you’re good, though. How do you get in front of them?

Glad you asked.

Make your resume public.

I was able to circumvent the traditional interview process.

Crazy story. My first, and last, full-time role out of college was secured off of a cold DM on Twitter.

I think I had two 15-minute interviews after this DM exchange. Then an offer letter appeared in my inbox. That simple.

Why did Rabah bother to respond? Hard to say. But, I have a feeling it was because I was posting my thoughts on marketing every day on Twitter. By this time (January 2022), I had a modest following of a few thousand people. I also had a nice freelance case study I could point to.

I kept posting on my personal account after I got the Triple Whale gig. I launched Social Files. Had a few viral Twitter threads. Got more active on LinkedIn. All while the company itself was on the way up—and all over the social timeline.

I had a public case study of my work. And I was sharing my formula for all to see.

I had no intention of leaving anytime soon. But ~8 months in, I started getting inbound from other companies in the DTC SaaS category.

“Hey—do you do any consulting?”

“Love your newsletter. Are you taking on freelance clients?”

Sure. And sure. Over the next 4-5 months, I ‘accidentally’ built up a freelance business on nights and weekends. It was a lot, but it was working.

That freelance side hustle turned into Compound, my agency.

I credit the original job offer, and the overflow of inbound leads when I wasn’t even looking, to my content. I pretty much had a public resume.

I don’t think you understand how helpful this it. Being on the other side of the table now (sifting through applications), let me tell you.

If I can click on a link to an article and immediately understand how you think about doing your job, you pretty much guarantee a first-round interview at minimum. If I’m hiring you to write LinkedIn content, and you wrote a case study of a founder you love on LinkedIn, I learn two things about you.

1. You can write. Important for this role.

2. You’re also a nerd about LinkedIn content. Weird. But our kind of weird.

Jack Butcher calls this a ‘permissionless apprenticeship.’ You don’t need to wait for someone to over you a job to do great work and put it on the internet. But most will. Unfortunate.

It’s actually kind of crazy how far you can get in your career by posting your thoughts on the timeline.

It’s a cheat code.

The playbook.

Ok, so far you understand:

• You gotta be good at your job (crazy)

• You gotta get fully immersed

• You gotta post about it

Before you go, I want to give you a playbook to follow. This is what I’d do if I wanted to land a content job in B2B tech.

Step 1: Pick the medium you enjoy most. Writing? Cool. Video? Cool. I don’t care, but you have to enjoy it enough to stick with it.

If you're feeling a bit directionless, I’d point you towards copywriting for LinkedIn. Such an in-demand skill, and the supply is tiny. I would know (hiring here).

Step 2: Pick the platform where your ‘target audience’ hangs out. If you're trying to get into B2B marketing, that’s LinkedIn. You know this.

Step 3: Commit to a realistic cadence. I’d recommend ~3-4x per week. In this case, you're not trying to ‘get customers’ so I don’t care as much if you're on the timeline every day. But you do need to be consistent.

A one-and-done article 7 months ago doesn’t tell me much if I’m looking at your LinkedIn.

Step 4: Find a repeatable format. Case studies worked well for me. I’d find popular brands in the industry and write pieces on what I loved about their content strategy. I still do this—see my piece on beehiiv.

Pro-tip: Find companies who are popular enough for your piece to get traction, but early-enough that you can get in contact with their team. If I wrote a piece about Salesforce’s marketing, I don’t know if it’d make much of a dent. If you happened to write a piece about how Compound does marketing, and tagged me in it, I’d for sure see it. Make sense?

Step 5: Relentlessly publish for months until you get good. While you’re doing that, consume whatever content you can about the industry. Full immersion.

It took me a few years of writing for momentum to pick up. The difficulty of content marketing is a good filter for people who care enough to get good at it.

The playbook is not complex. It’s also not easy. But I don’t think you understand how much of a cheat code publishing niche B2B content is to your career. I got a dream job using it. I launched my dream company using it.

What will you do?

By the way, if you enjoyed this piece, forward it to an aspiring B2B marketer.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• Brutally honest LinkedIn content advice for SaaS CEOs by Tommy Clark 🎥

• Learn Copywriting in 76 Minutes by David Perrell and Harry Dry 🎥

• Crypto Confidential by Nat Eliason 📚 (great read)

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

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

This was a fun piece to write.

Side note. I just released a template pack, with 50+ of the prompts we use with B2B CEOs at Compound.

I kept the price low at $27. And I plan to keep adding to the database of prompts. Already added 20 new ones since launch last week.

You know what’s crazy? If you use these prompts, you’ll have enough content for at least 2-3 months (that’s being conservative).

Grab it if you want. And like I said last week, let me know what else you want me to add. Want to make this a no-brainer for anyone who’s considering launching founder-led content this year.

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 August.