Social Files by Tommy Clark
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The state of B2B social...May edition

The state of B2B social...May edition

A trend report: what’s (actually) working for in content for startups

Tommy Clark
May 20, 2025

Hey!

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

Hope you had a great weekend. I spent it reading—still on Empire of Silence—and doing some packing for a trip to NYC this week. I also kept chipping away at a draft for my first fiction novel. Currently 1 week and 9500 words into writing. It’s a lot of fun.

Today I’ve got an updated trend report for you. What’s working in B2B social?

I'll run you through what to do about the dip in LinkedIn’s organic reach, current formats that are working, and more. If you're trying to grow your audience and get distribution for your startup, you’ll want to read this.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

A trend report: what’s (actually) working for in content for startups

I spend a concerning amount of time on LinkedIn. My team produces over 150 LinkedIn posts every week for our clients. I have a lot of visibility into what’s working, and what’s not. So I thought, why not share that intel with you?

A few field notes:

(1) Yes. LinkedIn reach has dipped. No. You're not going insane. Also no. It is not the end of the platform.

I consider myself platform-agnostic. If TikTok were the way to sell high-ACV B2B SaaS products, I’d be over there dancing. Okay. Maybe that’s a bit far. But you get my point. LinkedIn is still the obvious platform for B2B tech companies. Perhaps X as well, though it will require a lot more of your time.

(2) The quality bar for content has gone up.

There was an arbitrage on LinkedIn just three to four years ago. If you posted at all, you’d build a massive platform. You ever seen those accounts with 150,000 followers and wonder…how?? It pays to be early.

Even last year, while the arbitrage was not as exaggerated, the game was still on easy mode. Now, it doesn’t feel that way. And I don’t think it is helpful to pretend the macro trend is not happening. Some will say “skill issue,” and while there is truth to that, it is also true that there are more headwinds today.

Now, still, it is a “skill issue” for many folks. You can grow on LinkedIn. It’s still quite straightforward, if you know what you're doing. The bar for content has just raised.

You cannot get away with a half-assed hook. You cannot get away with generic, how-to content that is indistinguishable from Claude. You must put real effort into each and every asset.

I wrote more about how to do this, in this essay. So I’ll let you read that, rather than repeat myself here.

(3) Lead magnet posts still work. Though, the LinkedIn audience is getting fatigued. You know those “Comment for PDF” posts that trigger a lot of people?

Yeah, they work quite well. Though, as usual, marketers ruin everything. And we’ve found ourselves near the end of the format’s lifecycle.

If the format has worked well for you, I’d recommend keeping it in rotation, just don’t spam it as often. Perhaps once per month rather than once per week.

More on how to execute these posts well in this essay, The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Lead Magnets.

Again, I am format-agnostic. I suggest you be as well. It’s not worth your time to take genuine offense to an inert piece of LinkedIn content. If it upsets you so much, I would recommend counseling.

(4) Narrative posts with real, risky opinions are table stakes. Whenever a client has a dip in performance, the reason is almost ways the same.

Not enough story-based content. Too many how-to and educational posts.

Look. Story-based content doesn’t mean you need to build in public. Most people shouldn’t. Quite overrated if you don’t sell to other founders or aren’t trying to raise a giga-round of VC cash.

Narratives can, and should, also be used in thought leadership content. You know this. Especially if you’ve read more than two of my newsletters. AI is commoditizing the generic slop.

Pair every ‘takeaway’ with a story to support it. If you haven’t yet—please, please, please experiment with a story-based hook in the coming week. I would be shocked if it’s not one of your best posts yet.

(5) Media preference is quite balanced. A text-only post can win. A post with an IRL image can win. A post featuring a video—vertical or horizontal—can win. There isn’t a clear media format arbitrage, so spend less time worrying about this and more on the meat of the content itself.

One trend that still holds up, no surprise, is that overly branded graphics which look like ads underperform compared to IRL photos or video.

(6) Build a Content Ecosystem. A lot of the companies who are winning with content have multiple people active on the timeline.

This gets you more shots on goal with your content, and creates an echo chamber where a prospect can't log on to LinkedIn without seeing something from your company.

Two B2B companies I’ve seen do this well: Cold IQ and Exit Five.

(7) AI still isn’t “there” for writing from scratch. I wish it was. It would save me so much time. Tools, like Bluecast, help a a lot—and will get you ~80% of the way there as a founder who is very strapped for time. But you should be careful over relying on our soon-to-be robot overlords to crank out content.

I’ll resurface a few real use cases we can for AI at Compound, as of May:

Using Chat GPT’s ‘Deep Research’ to run a report on a new client.
Chatting back and forth with GPT to better understand an industry specific topic (I used it recently to learn about RevOps terminology)
Using Claude as a Content Editor. Specifically, I like to prompt it to find logical gaps in content. This is especially useful when writing for a new industry.
Repurposing content. AI isn’t great at writing net new content. But it is strong for repurposing. I’ll use Bluecast or Claude to accomplish this.
Using Granola for note taking. This tool is wild. The hype for it on the tech social timeline is warranted.

(8) Start testing Thought Leader Ads. I mentioned this in my last roundup, and it's even more true today.

If you put your tin foil hat on quickly…one of the reasons for LinkedIn's declining organic reach may be because they're pushing more users to thought leader ads. Think about what happened to Facebook.

As a refresher, thought leader ads are the ad placements where you boost a post from a personal account, not the company page. And currently, these barely look like ads on the timeline.

The only indication that there's paid spend behind the post is a small “sponsored” text below the profile picture.

Two ways to test thought leader ads:

Take winning organic content that has been running for one to two weeks and put some spend behind it.
Create a post from scratch that you intend to run as a thought leader at. For example, if there's a certain feature you want to highlight, you might do a demo video and then put some spend behind that.

Your next steps

Okay, so what do you do?

Here are a few action items:

LinkedIn is still the obvious winner for B2B startups who want to get more distribution with content. Post from your founder's account.
I still recommend posting five times per week, but the content bar has gone up. If you feel like you would get better quality posts going down to 4x or 3x per week, I'd actually be okay with that.
Make a deliberate effort to include more narrative in your content. As an action item, pick one “educational” post this week and turn it into a story.
Turn the dial up 20%. I didn't mention this in the above list because I mentioned it in the last report I did. Another common reason founders struggle on LinkedIn is that their content is sterile. You need to share opinions about your category that other people will disagree with you on. Of course, make sure these are genuine.
Take your winning organic content and test some thought leader ads. I'd start with $20/day as a minimum, but even that is low.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

I Studied 200 LinkedIn Creators - This is How You Grow On LinkedIn by Tommy Clark 🎥
Storytelling Masterclass for Normies by David Perrell and Nat Eliason 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

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