Hey!

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

Hope your week is off to a good start. I’m recovering from a 10mi run yesterday. Felt great during it, then felt like I got hit by a truck later that day. Good thing I don’t need my knees to write this newsletter.

Today’s deep dive:

A look at an A+ example of how to distribute webinars and drive sign-ups using social content.

Death to crappy webinar posts.

Let’s get into it.

🔎 DEEP DIVE

3-pronged webinar distribution formula for SaaS companies

How to drive more quality signups for your webinars using organic social (with examples)

I’ve been outspoken about my disdain for the way companies ‘promote’ webinars on social.

Company leadership decides they want to run a generic webinar with product updates that nobody cares about—outside of their core users. The content team then gets tasked with ‘driving signups’ to this event. And then we end up with a handful of half-baked promotional posts with corporate-looking graphics that grace the LinkedIn timeline.

It’s sterile. It’s counter to what works on social platforms. It’s just ineffective.

Then Troy from sales is breathing down your neck asking your Content Lead, “Why didn’t we drive more leads from the webinar?”

Well, Troy:

• You gave the content team a 13-hour heads up.

• The topic of the webinar appeals only to power users of the product. A cold audience doesn’t care about product updates unless you're leading a technological revolution like ChatGPT or Perplexity or something like that.

• The social team was badgered into including tracking links in every social post that hits the timeline—the algorithm looooves that

Shall I continue?

My point is: I don’t hate webinars. I hate the way most companies package them.

There’s hope. Earlier this week, I did stumble upon an example of webinar distribution done right. I want to use this essay to walk you through why it hits and give you a cheat sheet of simple strategies you can apply to your next webinar distribution motion.

Let’s walk through it now.

A+ Example: Foreplay’s ‘Fireside’ event series

Foreplay is a SaaS that lets ecommerce marketers save ad ideas, make better creative briefs,

It was actually founded by one of my former coworkers at Triple Whale, Zach Murray. Great product. They just rolled out a new webinar series called Fireside, and it’s an A+ example of how to execute a webinar distribution strategy on social.

(The landing page is 🔥 too — check it out here)

They nail 3 specific levers in their distribution playbook:

(1) Social-native content assets

(2) Influencer distribution flywheel

(3) Premium design + aesthetics

I’ll unpack each of those in more depth. Shall we?

I. Social-native content assets

This is so simple. Yet so many companies royally mess it up.

Rule of thumb: distribute content in formats that platform algorithms reward, and limit formats that algorithms suppress.

Platforms don’t love links. In most cases, a link in a post will limit reach. There are exceptions. But this does hold up well.

On Twitter, one method that works well for driving link clicks without tanking reach is to use a thread format. Don’t link in the first tweet. Then drop the link later in the thread.

Here’s how Zach did it when promoting the Fireside webinar. Notice the hook tweet (the first one in the thread) does not have a direct link. Click here to see the full thread if you’d like.

Also, notice how the angle for the webinar isn’t something like ‘join us for an update on Q1 feature launches.’ The topic is valuable to Foreplay’s ICP—DTC marketers & media buyers—even if they don’t know of the product yet. That said, the topic is targeted enough that it will only be relevant to people within the ICP. Fine balance.

Takeaway: If you need to promote a webinar, frame it in a way that a social audience will find interesting. And use favorable formats so it doesn’t get tanked by the algorithm.

II. Create an echo chamber using influencers

The term ‘echo chamber’ has a negative connotation. Thing is, an echo chamber is a powerful tool when you're marketing something. You can manufacture one with the right set of tools.

Here’s the playbook:

• Feature key influencers in your niche as guests in your event series

• Provide them assets & copy to post from their LinkedIn and X (and Instagram if applicable) accounts promoting the event. Follow the rules above and make it social-native content, not just a spammy link.

• Coordinate with them to post and drive new traffic to the webinar.

It works the same as when consumer brands will send product to influencers for them to post. When they do this with enough people in their niche, it looks like the product is everywhere.

We want to create the same illusion for your webinar.

Foreplay got this right by making the Fireside Series a guest collaboration with thought leaders in marketing and ecommerce like Rory Flynn and Savannah Sanchez.

Pro-tip: Pre-write the copy for influencers when you want them to post and provide them with all the assets needed.

When I was in-house at Triple Whale, I used to always think “Why can’t they just write their own post for this? Ugh.” But now that I’m a founder, I get it. The folks you’ll be working with on this type of stuff are usually in leadership positions or have their own companies. They’re busy as hell.

It’s way easier to edit a line of copy than it is to draft a compelling post from scratch. Factor this in when planning distribution with B2B influencers.

Law of Social Media Strategy: Decrease the friction to post (and increase your visibility) by providing assets to guests. Make it a no-brainer to post.

I’m not sure if Zach did this, but regardless, worth doing if you have influencers collaborating with you on a webinar promotion.

Another pro-tip for this. When you announce the event, have your team, your investors, your friends and family—anyone you can call on, really—engage with the post. Especially when you're an early-stage company, there’s nothing wrong with hustling like this. In fact, I encourage it.

Create an echo chamber.

III. Premium design

Premium design is still underrated on social.

Premium design doesn’t mean it’s over-produced. Premium design means it’s intentional.

Foreplay brought in a designer, Christian Cardenas, to build out bespoke branding for the Fireside Series:

According to Christian, the goal of the design project was “to create a direction that resembled fire, while also straying too far from Foreplay's sleek/apple-like aesthetic.”

Design isn’t just for vanity:

A) It makes for more compelling graphic assets that stop the scroll on X or LinkedIn. Treat your social assets like MrBeast treats his YouTube thumbnails.

B) It builds familiarity and contributes to the echo chamber effect that you can manufacture using influencers. If all of the media going out from the brand, the founder, the guests, etc. are aesthetically in line… the target audience literally cannot escape.

It should be cohesive, not corporate. Foreplay nailed this in the example we’ve explored today.

TLDR

Here’s your cheat sheet for promoting webinars that actually work:

• Engineer the topic of the webinar with social in mind. Less product updates. More valuable content that is relevant to your ICP.

• Use social-native content to distribute the event. Stop with the link blasting. It works sometimes. But most of the time you should be using formats that the platforms favor. X threads. LinkedIn carousels. You get the point.

• Tap into influencers in your niche as guests for the event if possible. You can reach new prospects in their audience and leverage them as a distribution channel.

• Be mindful of design. It matters more than you think.

• Provide assets and copy to the influencers you are working with to decrease friction to post. Don’t make them write their own copy. They’re busy.

If you nail this, I’m confident you’ll see:

(1) More signups.

(2) More attendees on the actual webinar.

(3) More affinity built with your audience that moves them from social to owned audience

Shoutout to Zach at Foreplay for nailing this, and Christian for crushing the design assets per usual (if you have design needs for your SaaS he’s my only recommendation). Great example to study.

That’s all I’ve got today.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• Artist vs Creator by Kevin Espiritu

• Mastery by Robert Greene (still my current read)

• Why your LinkedIn strategy isn’t working by Tommy Clark (new YouTube video)

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, I appreciate you letting me into your inbox—I don’t take the responsibility lightly!

One quick ask: if you're on YouTube, head over to my channel and hit subscribe (only if you want more deep dives on B2B social & content).

About to cross 100 subs over there. Baby steps!

Talk soon,

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.