How to make good product content

A field guide for getting more distribution on the social timeline

Author

Tommy Clark
November 18, 2024

Hey!

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

I’m writing today’s edition from 30K feet up on the way back to Austin from NYC. I’m becoming more and more NYC-pilled by the week. Feels like a move out here is inevitable at some point in 2025.

I got to meet with 2 Compound team members for the first time. Super cool moment. Also got to hang with a few clients.

Love building a remote company, but there’s something special about meeting clients & team members in-person. Makes the work even more rewarding.

Excited for today’s newsletter. This is a packed one. I’m walking you through how to create bottom-of-funnel product content that still does numbers on the timeline. Got a ton of real examples for you, too.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

How to make good product content

A field guide for getting more distribution on the social timeline

It’s time for an intervention. Product content doesn’t have to be boring, or low-performing.

Most startups just do it wrong. They go through the motions. They don’t involve the content team in launches or product updates.

This is the usual flow in B2B marketing as it stands. But you know the cliche—just because it’s common practice doesn’t mean it’s best practice.

Savvy startups are leading the shift here. They understand that the best marketing—especially on social—is that which people want to consume. You don’t need to force-feed it to them like a crying toddler who doesn’t want to eat his vegetables.

Problem is, we’re only halfway there.

Including a one-off meme or two in your content calendar doesn’t cut it. Having your founder play into the LinkedIn algorithm by sharing top-of-funnel hot takes on the state of remote work doesn’t cut it. Burning your marketing budget on some big-name Linked Influencers (or worse, giving them equity for an ‘advisor’ role) doesn’t cut it.

How do you create product content for LinkedIn that your target looks forward to, engages with, and shares in Slack with decision makers?

We’ll cover that today.

In particular, I’ll walk you through:

  • Why most product content isn’t actually crafted for social, and how to fix that.

  • How to involve your social & content team in the product GTM

  • How to craft a narrative around new features, use polarization to get more visibility, and more tactics to improve the performance of your product content.

All with real examples, of course. Now, let’s talk about the lie startups tell themselves.

Most startups say they post social native content. But they don’t.

By now, in the year of our lord 2025, you probably understand that you can’t have blog articles and case studies collecting dust on your site. I would hope. If you don’t, well, there’s your notice (read this essay asap).

You might even be posting to LinkedIn—perhaps even to your personal account as a founder. Nice!

We’re still not all the way there though. A lot of this content that ends up on SaaS founder accounts is repurposed slop from SEO blogs and half-done case studies. Worse, I still see misinformed founders including the link to the source material in every post.

This content is on social. But it’s not social native.

Social native content is content that can be consumed in feed, without having to click to the poster’s profile.

Take this post from Austin Hughes, for example.

I don’t need to ‘click a link to learn more.’ I don’t even need to click off the timeline to his profile. I understand how Unify stops 75% of your email bounces without needing to navigate away from the piece of content.

There are 2 fundamentals truths to understand here. One, social media users don’t want to click off-platform. Too much friction. Two, social media platforms don’t want them to either. Their entire existence is predicated around keeping users on-platform, so they can serve ads to users.

Platforms amplify content that increases session time. Social media 101. Create your content accordingly.

Social needs a seat at the table.

Social media marketers have been fighting this war of attrition for years. Decades almost.

I’m sure you’ve seen the tired joke whenever a brand has a piece of content go viral—give the social media intern a raise! Ugh.

Thankfully, we’re seeing a shift. Leading founders understand distribution isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. Even then, we’ve still got work to do.

Product and broader marketing decisions get made too often without input from the content org. I can’t tell you how many times I opened Slack to a notification that went something like:

[X feature] is releasing today around 12pm EST. Can we push to social??

I still have PTSD. Even now, running the agency, clients will sometimes hit us with last minute product launches or fundraise announcements.

The math doesn’t math. Social is the most effective way to get distribution for your product, yet updates are only communicated to the social team when the launch is on the one yard line? How can you expect a campaign to be crafted in those conditions?

Startups with winning marketing motions will do this:

  1. Involve content & social in marketing decisions for product releases.

  2. Involve them early, so there’s enough lead time to ideate and create content that performs.

What happens when this is done right? I’ll use Austin and Unify as an example again here. He came to us weeks in advance of their fundraise announcement to start planning. They also planned a guerrilla marketing campaign to run in parallel with the social launch.

The launch pulled in over $2M of pipeline and 208 meetings booked in the first two weeks. If you want to read a full write up on the strategy, check this out.

The best product content has a narrative.

Nobody cares about your product as much as you do.

This is especially true on the social timeline. Think about it. If your content does well enough, it’s going to reach a cold audience—people who haven’t heard of you.

Those folks will just flick past an overtly sales-driven content piece. The “see more” button will go unclicked. The fix?

Make your post more palatable. You know how people will wrap medicine for their dog in cheese or smother it in peanut butter? Yeah. Do that with your product content.

Stories are arguably the most effective lever you have to do this.

Instead of yelling "HERE'S THIS COOL NEW TECHNICAL FEATURE ONLY MY ENG TEAM CARES ABOUT" at your audience in hopes of them allocating budget towards you...

→ Tell a customer story about how they used the product

→ Tell the story about how competitors are falling short

→ Tell the story about how you came up with the idea

Stories hook readers in. Then you can sell 'em.

Here’s an example. I launched my own SaaS about a month ago. It’s a tool that helps you write Linkedin content (free trial here wink wink).

I could’ve made the launch post all about the sick features or the tech that we used to build the tool. Real nerdy shit—that my customers don’t give a shit about. Not the path.

Instead, I told the story of how I’ve been wanting to launch a SaaS for years. I told the story of how LinkedIn landed me my dream job and scaled my dream company. I told the story of how I met my co-founder.

I made myself into a character people wanted to root for. And guess what. The post ripped. The ‘new user’ email alerts wouldn’t stop for days.

Adam Robinson is another master of story-based LinkedIn content. Last week, he launched a community arm of his business, called the ‘$10M ARR Club.’ This is the post he used to launch it.

What do you notice?

  • The hook grabs you with the ‘story’ that “In 2017-2020, Russel Brunson bootstrapped Clickfunnels from $0-$100m ARR.” (bonus tip here: using a popular name in you industry is another great way to stop the scroll)

  • In the next sentence, he refers to the story “we did it for RB2B and two week’s in we’re negative CAC too!”

  • He positions the $10M ARR club as something he wishes he had when he first started building.

He doesn’t just say “he I’m launching this thing.” He crafted a narrative around it. I’m reasonably confident Adam ended up with far more than the 20 applicants he was looking for.

Use tactical polarization to get more visibility.

Polarization pushes your content to more people. The mechanics behind this are simple.

→ You make a polarizing statement or claim.

→ Social media users stops scrolling, and engages on your content.

→ Platform rewards that engagement with more visibility for that content piece.

Now, I’m not saying you need to be a political extremist to get reach on LinkedIn. You don’t even need to get that controversial in the bounds of industry-related topics.

But you do need to take a stance. Playing it ‘safe’ gets you nowhere except off your customers’ content feeds. I call it tactical polarization. Piss people off—just make sure its the people who weren’t going to buy from you in the first place.

This is true in your broader marketing motion (I wrote more about differentiators you can use in your content marketing here), but today I want zoom in on the post level.

As you're aware of by now, nobody aside from you and your product team cares as deeply about your product as you do. So, we need to give these folks a reason to stop scrolling. Stories were one way to do that. Tactical polarization is another.

Adam Robinson is the poster child for this.

He’s not afraid to upset people. And that’s one of the reasons why he has 106K followers on LinkedIn and scaled a business to $3M ARR in months with it.

Just look at this example.

Notice the bolded language.

"We’re launching a new brand for RB2B in January. My whole team hates it. Here’s why they’re wrong:”

As a reader, I’m thinking: Why does his team hate it? Why is he going through with it? Why is his team wrong?

I’m compelled to keep reading.

Here’s another example.

Again, notice the language.

“Yesterday the CEO of GMass said that RB2B was “The WORST SaaS he’s ever used”. Here’s my response to this EPIC shitpost:”

I’m left thinking: Why is RB2B the worst SaaS this guy’s used? Is it actually? How is Adam going to respond? I can’t believe he actually responded to this guy in public.

And, in the words of the great DJ Khaled, another one.

Adam is relentless with these posts. And sure, the polarization rubs some people the wrong way. But it also creates a cult following. Worth the trade for him.

Tyler Denk—CEO of beehiiv—is also quite proficient in polarizing content. The most recent example is their campaign targeting ConvertKit users. They offered 6 free months of beehiiv to anyone who migrated over. And they were loud about it on social.

In a write-up a few weeks post-campaign, Tyler said:

“Fast forward to today and we currently have a couple hundred ConvertKit customers in the pipeline. If that sounds like a successful campaign, you heard right.

Not only has the campaign been successful, but it has been applauded by hundreds of people for its creativity and for – excuse my French – its balls. It was as if the entire internet, exhausted from months of hearing about their rebrand (brands can be tone-deaf narcissists too), collectively embraced and welcomed our campaign with open arms.”

Now, why choose to go this route?

Tyler explains, “There are two killer ways to position a brand.

First, you can proudly shout from the rooftops about what you stand for.

Second—and far more entertaining—you pick an enemy, show why they’re stuck in the past, and tell the world you're their sleek, modern alternative.

And the best part? You can do both at the same time.”

Compelling brands need an enemy. Could be an idea. Could be another company. But there needs to be something you’re fighting against.

Now, you don’t need to go this aggressive. Adam errs towards the extreme end of the spectrum here. Here’s a much more moderate example of what this might look like.

Check out this bottom-of-funnel product demo I created for Bluecast.

For the hook, I wrote “You don't need to make "new" content to grow on LinkedIn with founder-led content.”

I took a clear stance against the idea that every piece of content has to be new (it doesn’t). Then, I transitioned into a demo of one of my favorite repurposing workflows.

See how I used light negativity bias here? I didn’t go full scorched earth against competitors nor make an insane claim. But I did make the content slightly more compelling.

Whatever you do, do not go gently into that good night. Be loud. Get seen.

Dog-food your own product.

There’s this idea in tech around “eating your own dog-food,” or using your own product.

I didn’t come up with the metaphor. I know it’s kinda weird. But it’s already entrenched in the tech world so we’re running with it.

Dog-fooding is gold for content marketing.

Think about it. Documenting how you use your own product allows you to

Unify, a SaaS in the GTM category, is putting on a clinic in dog-fooding. They’re using their own product to book hundreds of meetings and millions in pipeline—and sharing it to the LinkedIn timeline.

Check out this post from their CEO, Austin.

This is obvious social proof. He shows that Unify was able to use their own product to generate $4.5M in pipeline. Showing the chart as a visual is also a smart play.

Here’s another post Austin wrote about how Unify got their own automated outbound up-and-running to generate over 50% of their pipeline.

It’s that simple. One of the questions—probably the main question—B2B SaaS buyers need to answer when making a buying decision is: What is the ROI?

If you can show how someone will make more money than they give you, you're golden. And dog-fooding posts like this are a straightforward way to do that (if your product works).

All this said, keep it simple.

Last week I wrote about some of the mistakes I’ve made marketing Bluecast. One of them? I over-complicated our content a ton.

I took my advice above too far. I was trying to make organic-feeling content that wasn’t salesy. The thought was that it would perform better on the timeline. The intention was correct, but the execution was off.

As I wrote last week, “I was trying to script the perfect viral short-form video that would drive thousands of people to the Bluecast site. I thought one content piece would take us to the promised land.”

The CTA got lost in the content. There was no clear next step.

The fix?

“After a while of beating my head against a wall—along with dealing with some agency fires to put out—I just said “screw it” and posted a repurposed clip from a YT video that demo’d how I use Bluecast to repurpose content. Wasn’t anything flashy, but I just wanted to get a post out that morning.

Ding. New user email alert.

Ding. New user email alert.

Ding. New user email alert.”

Buying into social-native content doesn’t forbid you from pitching.

This is especially true when we’re making bottom-of-funnel content (for a refresher on how to build a Content Funnel, read this). TOFU and MOFU content are primed to grow your audience, and BOFU is meant to convert it. Be direct.

It’s tricky, right? BOFU content tends to under-perform on social compared to MOFU and TOFU content. But we shouldn’t treat them as throwaway posts.

Rather, think of each post type as having a different ceiling for impressions. Our goal with each piece of content is to hit as close to that ceiling as possible, without sacrificing the original intent.

Ignore the numerical values on the Y axis. The purpose of this is just to show that each content type usually has an upper limit on performance.

See how this works?

Your cheat sheet.

I want to make sure you actually take action on this stuff. It’ll help you stand out on the timeline. So here’s a condensed list of strategies to test in your next 3 pieces product content.

→ Get your social & content team involved early if there’s a launch coming up. Coordinate with them on what you want to see from evergreen product content. Create the environment for social to be successful. Social can’t be in a silo.

→ No links. Try to create a piece of content that conveys everything you need it to in the post copy & media. The reader shouldn’t even have to click to your bio. Value in-feed.

→ Frame the product content as a story. Stories make the content more palatable. Lead with a story, then we’ve the features and benefits in.

→ Use tactical polarization. You don’t have to go as hard as Adam Robinson, but you do need to take a stance. Try a spicier hook for your next product demo.

→ Dog-food your product. If relevant, use your own tool. Document your results. Share it with the timeline. If your product is strong, this should be good social proof.

→ For bottom-of-funnel content, keep the CTA direct. Use stories, hot takes, and more to hook readers in—but it should be obvious what the next step is. In most cases, just prompt users to DM you to learn more.

One last thought. The common thread across 99.9% of high-performing social content is that it was intentional. As Emily Kramer often says, no “random acts of marketing.”

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week. It’s not an honor I take lightly.

More to help you bring in revenue from social:

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: Share this essay with a founder or B2B marketer who could benefit from it 🙂