Hey!

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

I hope the first half of January has been a good one. It’s been a busy start to the year at Compound. We onboarded a new hire, and are currently looking to hire another Content Writer (US-based). Here’s the job description.

Now, for this week’s walkthrough. We’re continuing our 3-part series on building a Content Funnel. Think of this as a guide on how to organize your social content in a way that generates pipeline (instead of vanity metrics).

Last week, we talked about top-of-funnel content. Today we’ll run through the next layer: middle-of-funnel content.

This is arguably the most important content that will go out from your social profiles, so make sure you read through to the end. If you nail this, you’ll be in a great spot.

Let’s get into Part II.

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Building a social media Content Funnel that generates leads

Part II. How to use middle-of-funnel content to position yourself as a legitimate authority.

The term thought leadership has been bastardized. Marketing gurus throw it around left and right. But what does it actually mean? And how do you position yourself as one, in a way that actually works?

What it means: I view being a thought leader as being the default source of information & advice for someone in a specific niche.

I hope that I become the default option for content & advice around social content strategy for B2B companies. That’s why I have an unhealthy obsession with it.

How to position yourself as one: Post relevant content for that niche that builds an audience, but speaks specifically to the person you want in your ecosystem. In other words, no B.S. platitudes or LinkedIn growth hacks if you want to be a thought leader in data engineering or in ecommerce logistics. Please.

Middle-of-funnel content is the most powerful lever you have to insert yourself into the conversation with a specific type of person. In this case, that person will be the ICP you want to book a demo for your software.

[Note: I’ll refer to middle-of-funnel content as MOFU content for the rest of this piece.]

The function of MOFU social content.

In Part I of this series we walked through top-of-funnel (TOFU) content. It has its purpose, but it’s too broad to rely on as the bulk of your content strategy.

TOFU content casts a wide net. The goal of this content is to generate impressions. It functions more like a shotgun.

MOFU content is meant to have the precision of a sniper rifle. The person who consumes your MOFU content and thinks it’s dope needs to be in your ICP.

MOFU content can (and should) still get great visibility, though. This is the magic of it. It speaks directly to your target audience but functions in a way that makes them want to engage & share, which will grow your audience full of the right people.

We’ll talk about BOFU content in the next piece, but it’s worth establishing the distinction here. MOFU content more industry-related—BOFU content is product-related.

Here’s an example.

Assume you're selling an email marketing platform for DTC brands.

MOFU content: A LinkedIn carousel from the founder about the upcoming Gmail updates that are going to affect deliverability for marketing emails.

BOFU content: A LinkedIn post from the founder about a highly-requested feature update for a segment of your customer base.

Both serve an important purpose. But notice how MOFU content is inherently valuable, without having to mention the product. It creates trust in the company’s ICP, so it will become the default option whenever that person is ready to buy.

Properly executed MOFU content ‘fills the room’ with people that will make great customers of your company & builds deep trust with them.

How to systematically construct MOFU social content.

There are a few components that every great piece of MOFU social content has:

• The topic is adjacent to the business, but not a direct sales pitch.

• As such, the content should speak directly to your company’s ICP.

• The topic should still have broad enough appeal that it can gain traction on LinkedIn or X.

The ideal outcome of a piece of MOFU content is twofold:

• The piece of content should be so good it get’s shared in group chats and Slack channels where your target audience hangs out.

• The content should go ‘niche viral’ on social platforms. This means that the content gets a lot of impressions and converts new followers—but mostly in your corner of the internet.

There are two types of topics that you can choose from for MOFU content:

(1) Industry-related topics.

The name is pretty self-explanatory. These would be topics that are related to your industry as a whole.

Here are a few examples:

• If you’re growing a email marketing SaaS for Shopify brands, the industry would be ecommerce.

• If you’re growing a SaaS that helps designers make mood boards for their projects, the industry would be design.

• If you’re selling a B2B sales SaaS, the industry would be sales.

The content topics you select here aren’t product pitches. They are just topics that someone in your industry would find valuable and want to engage with.

(2) Niche-related topics.

Your product likely solves a specific problem within an industry. For the sake of naming things, we’ll call this sub-category within the industry your ‘niche.’

For example: Assume you are trying to grow an subscriptions app for brands using Shopify. The ‘industry’ would be ecommerce. The niche would be subscriptions strategy for Shopify brands.

Posts on ecommerce (i.e. 2024 ecommerce predictions) cast a wider net and will likely get more attention than posts specifically about subscription strategies (i.e. how to reduce churn in your DTC subscription program). But it’s also important to position yourself as the leading influence in the specific corner of your industry where your product operates. It’s a fine balance.

Think of this like the difference between TOFU and MOFU content, just on a smaller scale. I don’t think it’s as important to have a specific % split here, but just to give you a specific recommendation—try a 50/50 split between industry and niche topics to start.

One more note here: Your niche will influence the split between ‘industry’ and ‘niche’ content. Some niches will have a larger total addressable audience than others.

Here’s what I mean. Compare two SaaS companies that sell to Shopify operators: an SMS platform and a one-click upsell tool.

There is a much larger audience in ecommerce/Shopify that cares about SMS strategies and insights than there is an audience that wants to consume content only about upsell strategy (there’s only so much you can talk about here). So for the upsell SaaS founder, it would make sense to skew MOFU content more towards general ecommerce strategies & insights than to upsells.

What about content formats?

Which formats are best for MOFU content? LinkedIn carousels? X threads? Text-only posts? Short-form text-only posts?

TLDR: Lean into the formats that are working on the platforms at the moment. The ideal formats for a post will not vary a ton across different points in the Content Funnel.

Wherever you are at in the funnel, the goal is to use whatever format will maximize the performance of that content piece.

Your main objective is to understand what’s working on the platforms currently.

For example, as of January 2024 (when I’m writing this):

• LinkedIn carousels are still performing well and getting rewarded

• X/Twitter threads are making a bit of a resurgence

• Long-form text posts can work well, especially with images/media (no media isn’t as good)

So when I select my topics for client content, I would organize them in one of these formats (or others) that are being rewarded by platforms.

This line of thinking applies to TOFU content. It applies to MOFU content. It applies to BOFU content. Your job as a content marketer (or founder writing your own stuff) is to package social content in a way that will maximize on-platform performance.

What’s the ideal amount of MOFU content in the Content Funnel?

MOFU content makes up the majority of your Content Funnel.

This makes sense, right? It’s the one type of content that simultaneously:

(1) Speaks directly to the correct ICP.

(2) Builds deep trust with them and positions your founder as the authority in the space.

(3) Still has the opportunity for a post to go viral on LinkedIn or X and drive significant traffic.

Rule of thumb: MOFU content should make up 60-70% of your Content Funnel.

How to plant product seeds in MOFU content.

This is some high-level ninja stuff.

You can allude to your product in your MOFU content without coming across as a desperate door-to-door salesman trying to get you to sign up for solar.

Just drop hints. Casually mention the product in the content, without an explicit CTA. We do this all the time for clients at Compound.

See. I literally just did it right there. Do I care if you apply for the waitlist right after reading this post? It would be sick, but it’s also not the purpose of this content piece.

Another way to do this is to allude to an upcoming feature release in the post. Let’s go back to the email marketing software example I mentioned earlier in this article. A sample post hook could go something like this:

“I spent some time last week talking with ~15-20 email marketers at 7-8 figure brands about the upcoming Gmail updates. They’re freaking out.

Here are 3 simple preventative steps you can take to make sure your emails make it into your customers’ inboxes:

(1) Take the time to warm up your domain before sending to your entire list at once. I recommend this to every brand that onboards at [Company]. Here’s how to do that.

Etc etc…..”

See how that works? You can mention the company or the product in passing without being super thirsty. Being thirsty never works. Just play it cool.

Also, if anyone reading this is in email marketing—I have no idea if that advice is sound. So don’t come at me, please. Lol.

Specific examples of MOFU content in action.

Example 1) This article. Lol.

But honestly, this is a great example of MOFU content—it’s valuable and not a sales pitch, but specific enough that anyone who reads it and finds value from it will likely be in Compound’s ICP.

Example 2) ‘SaaS Social Strategy 101’

Also notice how this topic is industry (social media/marketing) and niche (B2B SaaS) specific. Again, no sales pitch. Just building trust with my target audience.

Another note here is that the content is presented in a format that is being rewarded by the platform (carousels are crushing on LinkedIn as of writing this piece).

Example 3) Rohit’s Kosas acquisition breakdown

Rohit runs a SaaS company in the Shopify ecosystem called Zamp that helps brands deal with sales tax without pulling their hair out.

This topic checks all the boxes when it comes to targeting and adding value to his ICP:

• Kosas is a well known DTC brand (industry-related to the Shopify/DTC ecosystem)

• The breakdown covers the finances behind a potential acquisition (niche-related to finance)

One other call out: Notice that middle of funnel content still has a significant total potential audience size. This post popped off!

See how this works in action?

TLDR:

If you scrolled all the way down here without reading (not judging), here’s a concise summary of the tactics you can takeaway from this piece:

• The goal in building your founder (or anyone on your team’s) social media presence is to construct them into the default source of information & advice for someone in a specific niche.

• MOFU content is the primary vehicle to do this.

• MOFU content is tailored to speak directly to your ICP—but it is not a direct sales pitch. We pick topics that will appeal to your ICP without heavily plugging the product.

• There are 2 sub-divisons of topics within the MOFU content bucket: ‘industry’ topics and ‘niche’ topics. Example: if you are marketing an SMS marketing platform for DTC brands, the industry would be DTC/ecom and the niche would be SMS marketing strategy.

One more thing. If this was helpful, share it with your marketing team in Slack. I always appreciate it.

That’s all I’ve got today.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• 5 content assets every B2B company needs to test on LinkedIn & X ASAP by Tommy Clark (this week’s YouTube video!)

• Mastery by Robert Greene (my current read)

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, I appreciate you letting me into your inbox every Monday. I don’t take it lightly.

Hope you have a great rest of your week!

Talk to you next time,

Tommy Clark

PS: If social is going to be a part of your GTM motion in 2024, apply for Compound’s waitlist here. We may be opening up some capacity soon, so if you want to be first off the waitlist, get ahead now.

PPS: We’re also hiring a Copywriter with experience in LinkedIn & X/Twitter content writing. Apply here if you think you’re a fit!