Hey!

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

Took a short hiatus from the newsletter last week. Honestly, I was kinda slammed hiring for a Content Editor role and a Content Writer role (still open!).

I did drop this YouTube video, though.

And today, we are so back.

I want to chat through what “success” looks like for B2B founders who bring in a team to outsource content production. Do you rely on them forever? Should you write your own stuff?

Let’s unpack it.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

How to outsource founder-led content

There’s a lot of highly opinionated takes on the timelines about whether founders should outsource their content production or not.

There’s a hesitation around working with an agency to ‘ghostwrite’ content. I hate the term, by the way. But that’s a topic for a different post.

According to the purists, content produced with the help of a team isn’t “authentic.” I get it. It’s misguided. But I get it.

Today I want to unpack this for you. I do have some bias, as I run a content agency. But I’m going to do my best to give you a neutral POV (I actually don’t think every founder should bring in an agency or ghostwriter).

First, a quick detour. This is going somewhere related to your content strategy. I promise.

A lot of people don’t know this about me. Before I got into B2B marketing, I got my degree in Nutrition Science. I wanted to be a registered dietitian (the team dietitian for the Lakers, specifically).

My first side hustle in college was a fitness coaching business I launched in my spare time. I spent two years doing that before I realized that I enjoyed marketing that business better than running that business.

Looking back on my experience in the fitness industry, I found an interesting parallel to what I’m doing now.

The best content agencies are like the best personal trainers.

When you work with a personal trainer, you still have to show up to the sessions. You still have to lift the weights.

When you work with a content team, you still have to show up to the Content Interviews. You still need to give some creative direction.

A lot of founders have this misconception that using an agency or a freelance ghostwriter for founder-led content is ‘hands off.’ Some will tell you this. Those are the shit ones.

This is how you end up with copy-pasted Wikipedia garbage on your personal profile.

In reality, the best clients at Compound view our work as collaborative. They suggest post ideas. They give detailed feedback on our content to help refine their tone of voice. They show up to every Content Interview.

This leads me to my next point.

Because working with a great content partner is a hands-on experience, the founders we work with often learn the ropes of content writing themselves.

They learn what a scroll-stopping hook looks like.

They learn what proper formatting on LinkedIn looks like.

They learn what topics and angles resonate with their ICP.

And many of them end up pausing with us after ~9-12 months to take content creation fully into their own hands. This is a win for me. I want this to happen.

Our poster child for this flow is Adam Robinson, founder of RB2B. If you're in SaaS, you know Adam from his LinkedIn content.

Back in 2022-2023, we helped him launch his LinkedIn presence from 1K → 25K followers. We showed him how to think about content strategy and writing. And in the summer of 2023, Adam got to a point where he wanted to take posting into his own hands. He was ready.

Alex Hormozi also talks about this approach to agencies in his book $100M Leads. When he works with an agency, his goal is to learn as much as possible so he can build out an internal team to run it within 6-12 months.

Back to the fitness analogy.

Any good personal trainer thinks about their clients the same way.

They teach their clients how to squat and deadlift with proper form. They correct any movement patterns that are off. They show clients how to measure their food intake and count their macros.

When you're a competent personal trainer, a client canceling after 1-2 years because they feel so confident in the skills you taught them is an obvious win.

You want to build competence, not dependency.

That said, sometimes clients just vibe with you. They don’t need to keep working with you, but they keep it going. They enjoy the conversations between sets in your coaching sessions. They appreciate the accountability. So they don’t cancel.

Some people stay with the same trainer for years.

Same thing happens in content production.

In this case, we often see that founders who stay with us beyond that 9-12 month mark either:

(A) Still lack time to write their own stuff. They might be fundraising (if you're raising, you know it’s a second FT gig). They might be head down on other components of the biz that are more urgent. Content may not be ‘urgent,’ but it is important. So they keep working with us.

(B) They supplement their own net new content with content Compound produces. This could be an entire other post. But in short, writing your own stuff isn’t “either-or.” You can do both, and often this helps founders maintain a daily content output.

I have a client right now who uses us for 5x LinkedIn posts per week (our typical cadence). He’ll then write 1-2x posts to go out on weekends. See how that works?

But like I said, I don’t want this to turn into an agency shill. There is one more scenario to chat through here.

There are some folks who can go from couch to beach-body-ready completely on their own, with the guidance of a course or a few YouTube videos.

And there are some founders who can build a founder-led content motion off the back of their output alone. They fit writing in between meetings. They stay consistent despite the firefighting that’s needed in the day-to-day of a seed stage or Series A company.

I love that. And I put out this newsletter and my YouTube videos for that founder. Take this stuff and do it on your own. I actually think this is the ‘ideal,’ since the content is coming directly from you.

The purists have a point. It’s often just not practical.

For a lot of founders (most of them), they just don’t have the time or skill at first. That’s where bringing a content partner in can help.

[I wrote more in-depth on the pros and cons of hiring an agency VS freelancer VS in-house here]

TL;DR

A few tactics for you to take away from this.

(1) The majority of B2B SaaS founders would benefit from partnering with an agency or freelancer for 6-12 months to launch on LinkedIn and learn the ropes.

(2) Working with an agency won’t erase the time commitment to post social content, but it will reduce it a ton. Usually takes it from 8-10hrs per week to ~1-2hrs per week. And you’ll start making better content, faster.

(3) Consider taking founder-led content in-house when you have the foundation in place and you feel confident in your abilities. In-house, with a consultant is often a good move here (see what Adam is doing). I usually see this around the 9-12 month mark.

(4) Another option (my preferred option for LTV reasons 🤣). Run your content agency alongside your own content writing to increase output and completely take over the timeline.

There’s a lot of nuance when deciding how to launch and scale your content motion—just like there’s a lot to consider when picking a personal trainer who’s the best fit for you and your goals.

You need to decide the best fit for you.

Just please, don’t take marketing advice from jaded people on the internet with zero context around your business or your bandwidth.

Last thing. If this was helpful, forward this to a SaaS founder who’s thinking about launching founder-led content.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• This Simple Productivity System Made Me $100 Million by Alex Hormozi 🎥

• How I went from 0 → 80K followers on LinkedIn by Adam Robinson 📲

• 5 SaaS content marketing mistakes early-stage founders make by Tommy Clark 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, appreciate you allowing me into you inbox every week.

If you want more deep dives on B2B SaaS social strategy, check out my full library of essays or my YouTube channel.

Just dropped this video on the 5 problems that keep SaaS startups from getting leads with content.

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

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