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’m writing today’s edition on a flight to my new home: New York City! Moving here after four years in Austin. I’m afraid I won’t miss Texas. If you're in NYC, hit me in the replies—would love to meet some folks out here.

After I finish this write-up, I’m either going to (1) continue my current read, The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell, or (2) keep binging my new favorite podcast, The Rest is History (seriously, so good).

Anyway…here’s the marketing stuff you signed up for.

Super quick one for you today. Just wanted to compile a list of a few learnings re: what’s working now in executive content, specifically on LinkedIn.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

The state of Executive-led Content (April 2026)

Quick pulse check: What’s (actually) working now on LinkedIn?

Hey. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind. I’m writing this piece on a flight to my new home, New York City. Compound just turned three today. We’re hiring for a critical role, and onboarding two new Content Leads—and three new clients. Woo!

In the spirit of time (both yours and mine), I thought I’d keep this as value-dense as possible. My goal in the next 3 minutes of reading time is to download as much of “what’s working now” on LinkedIn as possible from my brain to yours.

Here we go:

(1) Winning posts either have a story or unique, proprietary data. Generic, “how-to” content is dead. Turn your “5 tips to XYZ” listicle into a personal narrative that conveys the same message. This isn’t ‘new,’ but I still see some of y’all spewing Claude-adjacent ‘value’ content. Stop it. Say it with me: stories or data…stories or data…stories or data.

Posted more about this here.

(2) I’m changing my tune on posting frequency. I think this is a result of Compound marching upmarket. When ur seed or Series A, and LinkedIn is a straight lead-gen channel, 5x per week is your prescription. But once you mandatory. Volume (a) gets you in front of your buyer more often (b) gets you more data on what’s ‘working,’ and what’s not.

These earlier-stage companies also tend to sell into SMB, which is more of a volume game. When you sell into mid-market and enterprise, your potential market shrinks. Your content, therefore, must be more targeted. You also want to position yourself more as an Executive than a ‘content creator’ (derogatory). Following classic ‘personal brand’ advice from folks with bright-colored profile pics and ‘Comment for PDF’ posts can do more harm than good.

On top of all this, the executives themselves just get busier (ask me how I know).

This could warrant its own post, but for now, I just want you to be intentional about how you present yourself on the timeline.

(3) If you're in-office, for goodness’s sake, take some photos. IRL photos—relevant to the body copy—are the consistent, winning media type across our client roster.

(4) It’s in your best interest to have multiple people from our company posting on LinkedIn. I’d recommend trying to get 5-6 people from your org active on the timeline (2-3+ posts per week, each). If you can accomplish this, you will be in the Top 1% on LinkedIn.

If you want to learn more about building a Content Ecosystem, read this classic of mine.

(5) Thought Leader Ads are worth testing. This is especially true if you have a target list of accounts you’d like to reach. The LinkedIn algo (360Brew or whatever the hell the new version is called) is tweaking out right now. You can’t really trust it to just get your content in front of the right people. TLAs can brute force your content onto ICP timelines.

Anyway, hope this helps.

If you have any questions, hit me in the replies. Hoping to get back to more consistent publishing, with the NYC move—and some other chaos—behind me after this week.

PS: If you're a founder or marketing leader at a growth-stage company, you can apply to work with Compound here. We’ve got an opening or two heading into May (yeah…we’re a month out).

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• Keeping it real, I don’t think I’ve consumed a business podcast or article in the past week. My entire podcast rotation has been overtaken by The Rest is History. I’m 100% OK with that.

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 2026

• Steal my founder-led content templates

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark