Hey!

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

Hope all of you in the path of the winter storm are staying warm. I managed to time a trip to LA well enough to avoid the worst of it in Austin. Spent the weekend in ~60-degree weather reading the second book in Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy: Royal Assassin.

Now, what you’re here for: content stuff.

I talk to sooo many founders wanting to post on LinkedIn. Many look to hire agencies. And there are a lot of bad agencies out there. I’d like to give you the criteria to avoid working with one of them and pick a partner who’s the right fit for your needs.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

How to vet your LinkedIn content agency.

5 filters to make sure your content partner (actually) knows their stuff.

I take ~5-10 calls per week with founders who want to post more content. I’d say ~50% of them have tried working with a content agency before. It didn’t go well.

So, they end up at our doorstep.

You don’t have to go through this pain. If you're going to work with a content agency on your personal brand…run them through this gauntlet.

(1) Ask who will actually be writing for your account.

If the agency is charging less than ~$4000 per month (and it’s an agency, not a freelancer), you’re probably getting passed off to a junior writer—or every agency bro’s favorite new coworker, Claude.

Get the name of the person owning your account. Meet them. If the founder or salesperson balks at that, I’d be wary of that agency.

When you speak to the writer, run them through the gauntlet of LinkedIn content questions. A few potential options.

• What have you seen change on LinkedIn over the past year?

• How do you think about the hook of the post? (the hook is the first 1-3 lines, but you shouldn’t have to tell them that)

• How do you adapt to your client’s tone of voice? (more on this in a second)

Even if you aren’t a content expert, you should be able to tell if they’re using specifics or vagaries. Their tone will also tell you a lot about their competence. They should sound confident, but not rehearsed. The call should feel like a conversation.

So you know: we run Compound prospects through 2 calls, minimum. First is discovery. Second is a follow-up with my Head of Content, Rachel, to make sure the vibe is right.

(2) See if the founder likes content.

This seems silly. But plenty of people start LinkedIn ghostwriting agencies for the promise of easy money (LOL - different essay topic). It’s in your best interest to work with an agency whose leadership loves the craft of writing and comms.

My real-one verification: I decided to write a 160,000-word science fiction novel in my ‘free time’ (again - LOL).

(3) Observe whether the agency is qualifying you.

We say ‘NO’ more often than we say ‘YES.’ Savvy agencies know which clients they’re best equipped to support. They aren’t afraid to turn folks away.

When I was but a silly, young agency founder, I took on anyone with a pulse.

Now, I know we work best with companies in GTM tech, marketing tech, and HR tech—all categories that are active on LinkedIn. We’ve started doing more work in dev tools and finance, so I’m open to expanding our ICP. But we’re never going to promise we can nail content for a deeply technical category we’ve got little experience in.

We also won’t touch companies pre-Series A. Not that they shouldn’t be posting founder-led content. It just doesn’t make sense to invest in an agency at our price tag during that time.

Founders unwilling to spend 2-3 hours per week (on average) on the engagement across content interviews, content review, etc., are also disqualified. Oh, and if the ‘marketing guy’ is the middle-man between my writer and the founder we’re writing for…immediate no.

Whichever agency you work with should have a similar set of criteria and be willing to stand on business, should you not meet them.

(4) Understand how they adapt to your tone of voice.

There are plenty of people who can ghostwrite LinkedIn content based on generic best practices. Hell, even Claude can.

But they tend to lack the ability to adapt away from LinkedIn ‘broetry’ and formulaic hooks. In my experience, founders are particular about their tone. Rightfully so.

I spoke with a dev tools founder last week who chose another agency over Compound. One month in, it was obvious there wasn’t a fit. The complaint: “They just couldn’t get the tone right.”

How to mitigate: ask for case studies and samples so you can get a sense of the agency’s range of writing styles. Some might be open to a sample post. Right now, we don’t do this due to our capacity and waitlist. But if we were less proven, I’d be open to it.

Keep in mind: if you're hiring an agency, the proper expectation is that they’ll get the content 95% of the way there. You might always have some word- or line-level edits based on preference. That’s OK. But there should not be any stupid mistakes as a result of laziness or incompetence.

(5) Make sure you like each other as people.

I cannot stress how important this is. For a founder-led content engagement to work, you’ll need to sit down with these folks on a biweekly basis and communicate over Slack almost daily.

Lack of vibe creates friction. That friction ruins the content creation workflow.

Again, speak to the person physically writing for your account.

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Anyway. This should save you some time, money, and most importantly…headache as you start to post more on LinkedIn.

Stay safe out there, my friend.

If you want to work with Compound, here’s our waitlist. We’re booked out through March 1, but would love to chat and see if there’s a fit.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• The NEW Rules of LinkedIn (2026) Tommy Clark 🎥

• The HYPER guide to Youtube by Oren John 📝

• Master the Creative Process by Andrew Huberman and Twyla Sharp🎥

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