Hey!

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

I spent my weekend catching up on some reading, and chipping away at my debut novel. I’m nearing the end of Draft II. Currently sitting at 152,000 words. Will need to be 125,000 when it’s all done. That’s a problem for ‘editing Tommy.’

Now, marketing.

I talk to a ton of marketing leaders who’ve been burned by content agencies. Today, I break down one of their most common pitfalls and how to avoid it.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

The siren song of Founder Slop.

Why your CEO’s content gets lots of likes, and no leads.

Last week, I was on a call with a Head of Marketing at a Series A fintech company. She’d brought on a ghostwriting agency for her CEO a few months back, and, well, the content was lackluster.

What she told me (paraphrased for readability):

“It all felt so fluffy,” she said, with a sigh. “[CEO, redacted] was pissed. The writer told us this type of content [founder stories, new hire highlights, company-building hot takes] would perform well…”

“Well, did it?” I asked.

“Sometimes. The LinkedIn posts would get good impressions…I think? A hundred or two hundred likes. But it was always other founders engaging, and not CFOs.”

I took a sip of my Diet Coke (my one vice; sorry). “Did you try to push them to write more middle-of-funnel stuff?”

She nodded. “They couldn’t do it. It was too generic…almost sounded like AI.”

“And so they defaulted to the ‘easy’ topics?”

“Pretty much.”

Her story is not unique—like at ALL—among the marketing leaders I talk to.

Why does this happen?

TLDR: Laziness.

“Top-of-funnel” content is easy—both to source and to write.

Here’s what it looks like from the agency side:

You sit down with the CEO, ask them for a hot take on company building, and you're off to the races. The forty-five-minute Content Interview flies by, and the CEO seems to have enjoyed themself.

Why did I spend the better part of my workday in an anxiety loop over a client call? You wonder.

Then comes the writing. There’s no industry research needed; no need to learn your client’s product or category or terminology. All of the source material comes from the transcript. Your job is equivalent to that of a Claude Skill. But that’s okay, you tell yourself, because it’s easy.

And most insidious of all: the content does well!

One of the formats we run with almost every client is the Origin Story. It rips! And because of that, it can be tempting to lean into founder stories, company-building advice, new hire posts.

If you are selling to other founders, have at it. But odds are, you aren’t. You’re selling to sales reps, to CFOs, to HR leads or procurement teams. And so you must resist top-of-funnel founder slop for the hard, boring work required to develop category expertise.

This isn’t new. The GOAT, David Ogilvy, wrote in Ogilvy on Advertising:

“Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss, and be ready to succeed him.”

Still relevant. Just replace gasoline with Agentic Revenue, whatever the hell that means.

Ok. So if I were a Head of Marketing wanting to build a cracked content program for my CEO, here’s how I would avoid this dilemma in the first place:

(1) Compile an ‘essential curriculum’ on your industry that any hire must consume.

Podcasts, newsletters—books, even. The strategist you hire should also be terminally online in your category. If you're working with an agency, hold them to the same standard.

(2) Hold a hard line with your Content Funnel.

Say you're posting 3 times per week. At least 1 (probably 2) of those posts should be “middle-of-funnel.” You can use the remaining post for an ‘easy win’ top-of-funnel post. I write more about Content Funnel architecture here.

(3) Don’t let the lower engagement ‘floor’ scare you.

MOFU content experiences more volatility than TOFU. What I mean by this:

A post announcing that you're moving into a new office will ALWAYS do well. Unless you completely f*** it up, it’s pretty much guaranteed engagement.

An infographic targeting CFOs could still blow up. But it could also get 5 likes. You’ll have some idea, if you know what you're doing, but it’s still a dice roll (this is assuming you're testing a new angle).

You must accept the flop. Each flop is a brick laid in the path to an outlier.

(4) Double down on MOFU winners.

When you do have a MOFU post that does well, squeeze every bit of juice out of it that you can.

• Run the same idea using a different media format (IRL photo → infographic).

• Run the same idea using a slightly tweaked hook.

• Run the same post, copy-pasted (trust me).

MOFU outliers are precious. When you find one, ride the lightning until it stops.

“How do you find one,” you ask? As we said earlier, don’t be a lazy piece of **** and spend some time researching and staying up to date with industry trends. Sorry. I feel strongly about this. Great content is hard. That is your moat.

Otherwise, here are some perennial bangers:

• Trend-jacking. Take a piece of industry news and add your take (using the popular name or company in the hook). [Example]

• AI hate. If you can come to your ICP’s defense against the perceived threat of AI replacement, they will engage because it reinforces their own identity. [Example]

Not an exhaustive list. Would you like one? Hit me back and let me know. Could write something up for next week’s edition.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful.

TOMMY’S BOOKSHELF 📚

Current read: Young Money by Jack Raines. I don’t read much self-help these days. But my friend Jack wrote a book. I’m also writing a book, and know how much of a slog it is; so I put down my current epic fantasy read to support a homie during his book launch.

Pleased to report: Jack wrote a damn good book.

Per the Amazon listing, Young Money is “a guide for Gen Z professionals fed up with the traditional career path and ready to rethink their relationship with money, work, and what it means to live well.”

If you're having an existential crisis over a meaningless job you hate, this is for you.

I knew this wasn’t going to be like the typical personal development book when, in Chapter 1, Jack included an anecdote about messaging his boss at UPS on Hinge. Lmao.

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.

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