Proof of originality

How to stand out on the social timeline amid the deluge of AI-slop.

Tommy Clark
June 15, 2026

Hey!

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

It’s been a minute.

Being real, the last month has been a slog. Mostly been head-down with recruiting and re-orging the Compound team a bit as we gear up for the next phase of growth.

Shit’s hard. Worth it, though. Treated myself to Game 3 tickets at MSG last week.

#thankyoub2bcontent

Anyway, have a quick one for you today to get back in the groove with newsletter stuff. I think you’ll find it helpful.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Proof of originality

How to stand out on the social timeline amid the deluge of AI-slop.

I’ve written and reviewed an ungodly amount of social content for executives. Somewhere in the thousands of posts. Today, I’d like to share with you one, simple frame you can use when writing content to make it hit harder.

Proof of originality.

Content that falls flat feels generic. This is why the AI slop you see on the timeline is so repulsive. Anyone could have written it.

‘Great’ content in 2026 is content that can’t be copied.

A few ways I’ve found to do this in practice:

(1) Pair every take with a story.

AI has commoditized ‘value’ content. I could get away with posting something like ‘Here are five tips for B2B founders to grow on LinkedIn’ a couple of years back. Not now. Value content still works, but you have to deliver that value with something else: a story, tasteful humor, etc.

(2) Use unique, proprietary data.

Some of the best content on LinkedIn these days is data visualizations. The team at Ramp does a great job of this. Peter Walker at Carta is another example.

Candidly, this is an area I’d like to improve at Compound. We have 150+ posts per week going live across our clients. I should be sharing more specific learnings from that data. Perhaps I’ll have time to do this once we hire our new VP or Ops, lol.

(3) Make media a priority.

Text-only content still works. I mean, this post of mine got 1,700+ engagements, and it’s a text post I wrote in 5 minutes before an All-Hands meeting.

But, whenever you can, try to include a piece of media that pairs with the post. For example, I was on a Content Interview with a founder last week who just hired a new Head of Customer Success. Naturally, I recommended we do a New Hire Highlight post. That post should be paired with a photo of said founder with their new hire. Such low-hanging fruit.

Action steps:

Next time you write a post, think of me looking over your shoulder, nagging you to include proof of originality in the content. Pick one (or multiple) of these levers to include, and I suspect you’ll end up with a better-performing piece of content.

Hope this helps.

PS: If you have any questions, hit me back. And if you’d like help growing your own CEO’s account on LinkedIn, you can sign up for our waitlist.

📚 TOMMY’S BOOKSHELF

Current read: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. I soft DNF’d WoK a few months back. Don’t come after me. I liked it, but I wanted a quicker read at the time. Now, I’m back and committing to reading the first installment of the Stormlight Archives.

Evergreen reminder: if you haven’t yet, do yourself a favor and read Red Rising. This is the gateway drug to fiction reading as an adult.

If you want more book content, I’ve built a little audience on Instagram where I post about fiction and writing.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week.