Hey!

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

I said I was going to publish 52 editions of Social Files this year. One per week. I was tempted to skip this week—had every reason to, if I’m honest.

Can’t let that happen. So you're getting this on a Thursday.

Today’s essay will be quick, but it will give you a handful of tactics you can use to generate more pipeline from your social content. Our best clients are using these well. You can steal them.

Shall we?

Quick note: I also started writing more building-in-public content about learnings from growing Compound. Just published a behind-the-scenes January update. Was a record month for us, and learned a lot. Read that here.

🔎 DEEP DIVE

How to convert LinkedIn content into pipeline

3 simple tactics to move prospects from the social timeline to sales calls

Founder-led content, done right, will get you more leads.

Perfect-fit customers will see your content, come inbound, and sign up for your product. I see it weekly at Compound. I see it daily at Bluecast.

There’s a whole other cohort of customers you can secure from social. Most startups fumble here. They don’t have a motion to convert social engagers into sales calls using warm outbound.

Social engagement—liking your posts, viewing your profile, etc—is an underrated signal.

Here are three simple tactics you can use today to take advantage of it. This isn’t some overly complex outbound workflow. It might actually seem elementary to you. depending on your experience.

Consider this an ‘MVP’ for outbound. You can use this ASAP.

(1) Send outbound connection requests to ICP accounts.

LinkedIn let’s you send 100 connection requests per week. And whenever someone accepts your connection request, it’s a mutual follow. So they’ll see your content going forward. Use this to your advantage.

If you have a list of target accounts and are doing ABM (account-based marketing), send connection requests to them, so they start to get fed your content.

If ABM isn’t your play, I’d still recommend connecting with folks that fit your ICP. For example, if you're selling to CROs at Series B startups, use LinkedIn search or Sales Navigator to find these folks.

Sending connection requests to relevant accounts manually builds an audience of potential buyers.

They start seeing your content daily. If your content is good, they engage. If it’s not, well, you should probably binge-read the rest of Social Files.

A few quick-and-dirty tips for running the connection motion:

Pro-tip: don’t go for the sale right when they accept your connection request. Your goal with this is just to get them seeing your content. Then you’ll use other signals (more below) to inform your reachouts.

Pro-tip x2: you don’t need a ‘personalized’ message in this connection request. Just keep it blank. Tends to perform better, and saves you time. Win-win.

Pro-tip x3: Send these manually. Some folks use automated connection tools. LinkedIn doesn’t play nice with these. Use them at your own risk. I have a low risk tolerance, so I just send them manually.

(2) Send personalized outreach to profile viewers.

If you have LinkedIn Premium, you can see who views your profile.

And as you start posting more content, you will see an uptick in profile viewers. Something about the content you posted interested these people enough for them to do some more snooping.

Some of these folks will convert into followers and content to see more content. But some of them, who may still be ideal buyers, will slip through the cracks and bounce without hitting follow.

Regardless, you want to monitor your profile views for potential ICP accounts. I’d recommend checking 1-2x per day. Each session should take you 5-10 minutes.

Look for people in roles and from companies that fit your ICP. For example, I would be looking for founders & CEOs at B2B SaaS startups that have raised a Series A.

For each of these folks:

• Send them a connection request, if you're not connected already.

• Send them a personalized, 60-90 second Loom video.

The Loom video framework is not complicated:

• Start off with some social proof (who else have you worked with that is similar to the prospect)

• Add some sort of value relative to the product you're selling (this is not a hard pitch)

• Make a soft CTA to give the prospect the opportunity to convert

For example, if I’m doing this outreach for Compound:

• I might spot a founder of a Series A startup in the GTM category who viewed my profile. Great candidate for a personalized Loom.

• I’d start off the video with a brief, specific mention of how I’ve helped founders in the category use LinkedIn to generate pipeline.

• I’d then transition into 1-2 quick wins that founder could implement on thier LinkedIn profile. For example, maybe I notice none of their posts have images. Or maybe I notice their Featured Links section isn’t set up. Addressing these gets the prospect a win, and shows that I know my stuff.

• I’d end with a quick CTA that mentions how we do this for other founders.

These Loom videos should take you 2-3 minutes each to rip. You’ll also notice patterns across prospects you reach out to. They all need the same stuff.

Sure. This isn’t ‘scalable.’ But when you're running a sales-led motion for a product with a nice ACV (> $20K), the extra 30-40min per day to implement this is a no brainer.

(3) Use LinkedIn engagements and comments as intent signals.

Similar idea to the profile viewer motion here. If someone is engaging on a piece of LinkedIn content, something caught their attention.

This is especially relevant if they’re engaging on bottom-of-funnel, product content:

• New launches

• Feature demos

• Case studies and testimonials

Here’s the process I’d use to take advantage of engagement as an intent signal:

(1) Use a tool like Trigify to keep track of social engagers. You can set up filters in the platform so you only track accounts that fit your ICP criteria. You don’t actually need to connect your profile to Trigify for this to work, so no risk of getting struck down by the LinkedIn gods.

(2) Each week, review the list of engagers. Trigify will also tell you exactly what post(s) the person engaged with.

(3) Send connection requests to anyone on that list who isn’t already connected with you. This makes sure they’ll see your content going forward.

(4) You can also export the list to CSV, enrich the data to find their emails, and use automated outbound tools like Unify to send these social engagers outbound email.

Funny enough, Unify actually uses their own product to power this motion for themselves. It’s cracked.

Their founder (and a Compound client), Austin Hughes, wrote about how they used founder-led content to generate $15M in pipeline last year. Check that out here.

Takeaway: having this bridge between social engagement and their sales motion played a huge role.

Inbound is great. But don’t leave your LinkedIn pipeline generation up to chance.

The Compound clients who generate the most revenue from LinkedIn have a clearly defined motion for connecting content to sales.

Think of your LinkedIn account like a bowl with a ton of little holes in it. You’ll catch some items (prospects) in that bowl, even if you don’t patch the holes. But some will slip right through. Lost forever. Your outbound motion patches most of those holes and helps you catch everyone.

On top of that, pairing founder-led content with a well-run outbound motion contributes to a feeling of omnipresence. Your customers see you everywhere. When they’re ready to buy—whether it be from a LinkedIn post of a cold email or a paid placement—your startup is top of mind.

This piece should give you a starting point for layering in some easy outbound flows. I’m not an outbound expert, and I can run these easily. Give them a try.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• 16 Algorithm Hacks to Grow Your LinkedIn In 2025 by Tommy Clark 🎥

• Compound January ‘25 Update (building in public) by Tommy Clark 📝

• How to run your marketing team day-to-day by Emily Kramer 📝

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 2025

• Try my LinkedIn content writing SaaS

• Steal my founder-led content templates

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark