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 my Saturday unboxing my new reverse osmosis water filter & meal prepping with my new Le Creuset pot. Both products 10/10 would recommend.

Today I’ve got a good one for you. I’m going to run you through Gymshark’s founder-led LinkedIn strategy. We must answer 2 questions.

Why the hell do they even have their founder posting consistently on the briefcase app?

What strategies are they using to rack up impressions and audience growth (that you can apply)?

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Why does Gymshark have a Linkedin strategy?

3 content strategy insights for B2B founders from a leading fitness apparel brand

I was scrolling LinkedIn last week during my free time in the evening—because, who doesn’t?

And there was one post in particular that made me stop my scroll. It was a short-form video from Gymshark’s founder, Ben Francis.

The hook read, “I don't think Gymshark would exist without Pizza Hut.”

Huh. Interesting. The post itself was good, but it got me thinking… why the does Gymshark’s CEO have a dedicated LinkedIn strategy?

Gymshark is a massive, Britain-based fitness apparel brand (they did £556.2M in 2023).

LinkedIn is an obvious channel for a B2B software startup. But an apparel company? What’s that about?

So I went down the rabbit hole. And it turns out:

1. Ben Francis has an absolutely dialed content machine on LinkedIn

2. He prints engagement on damn near every post he makes and has an audience of 550K+

3. B2B marketing teams should be taking note of the fitness apparel company’s content motion, and applying some of their marketing strategies to their “boring” companies

I’m on the other side of my weekend-long obsession, and I figured I’d share some of my findings. If you're smart, you’ll read to the end and apply a good amount of this stuff to your founder-led content motion.

Why is Gymshark’s founder posting to LinkedIn?

It’s kind of random isn’t it?

LinkedIn is normally a platform for B2B businesses (that type that Social Files readers run and do marketing for). Why is a gym apparel company going so hard over there?

There are a couple reasons. All of which are applicable whether you're in B2B or consumer. The last one is the most important, though.

What if I told you Gymshark is a B2B business?

Well, kind of.

Yes. Gymshark’s primary audience on social is people buying gym clothes. But apparel brands also do business with suppliers and factories on the back-end. They have to get into retail locations.

And LinkedIn is a great place to reach folks making those sorts of decisions.

So if you look at Ben’s LinkedIn content (more on his content split in a few minutes), you’ll see it reflects this.

For example: take a look at this post highlighting Ben’s recent visit to Gymshark’s suppliers in Vietnam and Bangladesh.

Ben will also highlight Gymshark’s recent success in retail locations like Selfridges or their own London flagship location.

This sort of reminds me of how B2B tech companies can use LinkedIn for sourcing partnerships, integrations with other softwares, or other business relationships that aren’t direct customers.

Regardless of if you’re communicating with customers, partners, investors, or potential hires—the founder is the best person in a company to distribute this information.

Founder-led content performs better. Per usual.

This is just simple math. Engagement on Ben’s personal profile eclipses engagement on the company page.

→ Gymshark’s company posts usually land somewhere between ~100-500 engagements.

→ Ben’s posts usually net 1000-2000+ engagements.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Founder-led content on LinkedIn wins out 9 times out of 10 in 2024. Even massive company accounts get abysmal organic engagement.

I see the same thing with my B2B clients at Compound.

And we see the same with other consumer brands—look at George Heaton and Represent, for example.

[If you want to learn how to set up a founder-led LinkedIn strategy, read this article next]

Owning the narrative.

This is the real gem. The truth?

Savvy founders known how to own & craft the narrative around their company.

And organic social media is the best channel to do this in 2024.

Startup PR expert, Lulu Cheng Meservey, refers to this founder-led comms strategy as “going direct.”

Going direct allows Ben to steer the public’s perception of where the company is headed, like he does in this post sharing why 2024 is “becoming Gymshark’s biggest year yet.”

Going direct also allows Ben to control to narrative when company news drops, like he does in this video running through Gymshark’s 2023 financials.

According to Lulu, “Founders need to take their narrative as seriously as they take the rockets or robots. They would never outsource their product — and when it comes to convincing others to support the mission, the story is the product. Outsourcing comms is as bad as outsourcing code.”

And in Ben’s case, outsourcing comms is as bad as outsourcing fabric selection.

Having a strong founder presence in content is an insurance policy against comms crises.

Go direct now, so you can build a foundation of trust with your core audience before you need to tap into it.

Also, highly recommend reading Lulu’s piece, GO DIRECT: THE MANIFESTO. Should be required reading for all founders and startup comms folks.

Breaking down Ben’s LinkedIn strategy.

Okay, okay. Now that you understand why he’s posting on LinkedIn, we can look at all of the tactical stuff and techniques you can apply to your own content strategy.

There are 2 parts of Ben’s posting playbook I want you to understand: cadence & content types.

Cadence.

This section should be short. Ben posts multiple times per week on LinkedIn—usually 2-3 posts per week.

More importantly, he’s consistent.

Inconsistency multiplies your social growth by 0.

Platforms tend to reward consistency. And consistent posting leads to consistent learnings. Learnings that allow you to improve your content. Posting 1x per quarter ain’t gonna cut it.

Yet, I see so many B2B CEOs fall into this trap. When they do post, it works. Problem is, they only post once every 3 months.

Post at least 2-3x per week on LinkedIn (and even that’s light). Our clients are ripping 5+ posts per week.

Content types.

In my research on Ben’s strategy, I noticed a handful of consistent content angles that are worth emulating for founders.

Behind-the-scenes access.

Ben posts a lot of pictures behind the scenes at suppliers & factories.

He also posts regular updates on retail locations, pop-up stories, etc.

Takeaway: Founders can manufacture the perception of momentum on social. The way Ben posts makes it appear as if Gymshark is crushing 2024 so far (which they very well might be).

Story-based content.

Some of Ben’s best performing content is story-based. That Pizza Hut anecdote that original brought me into Ben’s content funnel is a perfect example (the video cleared 5000+ likes).

I see this trend in the founders & CEOs Compound works with, too. The posts with the strongest metrics and resonance tend to be stories.

Takeaway: Collect stories. On your calls. In your meetings. In your free time.

And if you have a strong track record already, like scaling a company to millions in revenue, lean into war stories from your past as content in your current venture.

Top-of-funnel motivation.

Ben regularly publishes these sort of motivational one-liners and graphics that tend to go viral on LinkedIn.

Be careful leaning too heavy into this as a newer founder. The motivational quotes perform well for Ben because of what he’s built. Build a $1B company first, then post the inspo-graphics.

Takeaway: The right takeaway for founders looking at this particular content pillar is to have some content in rotation that is purposefully broad and “top of funnel” (more on how to build out a profitable Content Funnel in this article).

Short-form video.

Ben leans into short-form video consistently on LinkedIn. Some videos are clips from podcasts, and some are social-native “talking head” style of videos.

He’s been doing this for months, but short-form video is even more relevant on LinkedIn now with the roll out of their video feed in-app.

Takeaway: If you're half-decent on video, test it on LinkedIn. It performs well. And when paired with compelling copywriting, it builds affinity at a faster rate than writing along.

Test a split between:

1. Short-form video recorded specifically for social (example)

2. Video clipped from long-form assets like podcasts (example)

Also, don’t be afraid to use footage from “old” podcasts. Ben is still using footage from his episode on Diary of a CEO from 2022.

Savvy B2B marketing teams use social like consumer brands.

This is one of my theses around how to do B2B social right. Too many B2B software companies rely on lukewarm “educational” posts and god-awful webinar promotions as the core of their social strategy.

Consumer brands and creators understand how to hack attention on social. How to stop the scroll. How to keep users hooked on their content.

The smartest B2B marketers of the next 5 years will lean into learnings from consumer. The smartest B2B founders will let them.

So, if you're wondering why I’m studying a fitness apparel company in a newsletter meant for B2B folks, there’s your answer.

I also like lifting weights. So there’s that.

Anyway, hope this is helpful. If it is, I hope it ends up in a few #marketing Slack channels.

That’s all I’ve got for today.

If you're a content nerd like me and want to study more of this stuff, check out this piece I wrote on Antimetal’s viral launch marketing playbook. It’s genius.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably by David Perell and Steph Smith 🎥

• Antimetal’s Viral Marketing Playbook (2M+ views in 24 hours) by Tommy Clark 📝

• The Art of Storytelling and View Retention by MKBHD 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, I appreciate the space you give me in your inbox every week. I don’t take it for granted.

Quick test I’m running—if you made it all the way to the end of this edition, reply to this email with the “🦈” emoji.

1. There are a lot of lurkers reading this. If you're finding this stuff helpful, I wanna meet you!

2. It helps with deliverability. The game’s the game.

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: If you want Compound to a this founder-led content motion for you… save a spot on our waitlist here. We’re at capacity now, but looking to partner with some SaaS startups in May or June.