Hey!

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

One of my favorite parts of doing B2B social and not consumer, sports, etc. is that it doesn't require you to be "online" during the weekend (barring an event or something). Also less reactive to annoying pop culture trends. Relatively peaceful.

So, hope your weekend was relaxing.

I’m excited for today’s edition. I get asked by a lot of founders and marketers, “What’s working now on LinkedIn & X?”

I figured I’d just lay it all out in this essay.

Let’s dive in.

🔎 DEEP DIVE

What’s working now in B2B social strategy?

Trends and front-line observations from posting 150+ content assets per week

We post a sh*t ton of content every week at Compound. The number fluctuates week-by-week, but it’s usually somewhere around 150 assets per week total.

So, we get a good look into what’s performing well… and what flops. And most importantly, how it’s changing as the year progresses.

Social strategy is a lot more fluid that say, long-form text content like ebooks or blogs. You need to stay tapped in to understand what’s working on these platforms. That’s why I think you’ll like today’s edition.

What I’ll cover:

• Are carousels still working on LinkedIn?

• What’s up with video on LinkedIn?

• Short-form making a comeback on X?

• And much more.

For clarity, these observations will be relevant to both LinkedIn & X. I’ll specify anything that is unique to the platforms. Shall we?

(1) Stories are the secret ingredient.

No surprise here. So many of our top client posts are personal stories—either from their current venture or a previous experience at a company relevant to their ICP.

My advice? Harvest personal stories wherever you can.

A few examples of prompts for you to play around with:

• What’s the founding story of your startup?

• What’s 1 customer story from the past 1-2 weeks that’s stood out to you?

• Did anything catch your attention on the calls or meetings you took in the past week? (More on the “I was on a call” framework here)

• What was a recent problem you faced in your business, but fixed?

This isn’t close to an exhaustive list, but should get the gears turning.

My biggest “actionable” piece of advice for story-based content is to keep a running Apple Note where you log any kernels of ideas as you go through your day to day.

Also, bookmark killer story-based content you see when you scroll. How does that founder frame the hook? How do they keep the reader engaged? Build this skill and you will have no problem winning with founder-led content.

[Click here to watch a video that outlines who we harvest A+ stories predictably with our SaaS founder clients]

(2) Carousels are still “in” on LinkedIn.

On client accounts, and my own, a lot of the posts with the highest “baseline” of impressions and engagement are carousels.

4 of my 10 top posts (by impressions) in the past 30 days have been carousels.

I’m opting to post 1-2x per week at the moment.

Not much else to add to this one. Just keep testing carousels.

(3) Short-form is making a comeback on X.

For a while in late 2023 & early 2024, long-form text was the new meta. As I’ll cover next, long-form still works. But I am seeing the more traditional, scrappy one-liners make a resurgence.

Here’s the thing. On X, the audience is a lot more sensitive to lack of authenticity. It’s almost like posts that are formatted “too pretty” don’t do as well as a post that reads like stream of consciousness.

We’re not in the 2021 threadboi era anymore.

Consider testing variations of posts that ditch the perfect grammar. Omit the period at the end of the tweet. Don’t write like you're trying to fill the word count in a high school English paper.

In contrast, the perfectly constructed hooks and templated formats still do quite well on LinkedIn.

And as always, exceptions apply. There are more ‘polished’ tweets that do well. All I’m saying is to try injecting your personality into your content, and I think you'll be happy with what you see in the analytics.

(4) Don’t skip out on media.

Long-form text still works, but the best long-form text posts on X (and often on LinkedIn) usually have an image now.

True text-only on X is hit or miss. The key with images is that they should often be scrappier. Super branded graphics often don’t hit the same as a true picture or even something like a Notes app screenshot.

The BEST images to use are ‘real-life’ pictures that relate to the post or story. Same goes on LinkedIn. Morgan Ingram does a great job doing this consistently in his content.

5) What’s up with video on LinkedIn?

Video is super “hit or miss” on LinkedIn as of March ‘24.

Just look.

But when it hits, it hits. So it’s worth testing.

A few observations in my own video content:

• 2 of my top 3 posts in the past 30 days are videos

• Even videos that ‘flop’ lead to inbound DMs and potential deals

• More people are saying “I love your videos” that never ‘engage’ with my videos

Video accelerates trust-building. Your social followers get to see and hear you, not just read your writing.

We haven’t tested as much video for clients, since a lot of the founders we work with don’t have the bandwidth (or desire) to film.

But, if you have a flare for video, I’d run it. Easy opportunity to stand out on the timeline. The lifecycle of video on Linkedin is also quite early. Simple talking head videos have the potential to pop off.

Another example I refer to often is Chris Walker. He posts ~daily videos. My favorite element of his content strategy is how he pairs a high-quality video clip with insanely in-depth copy.

Click here and read this post. Notice how the copy and the video could stand on their own as separate posts. But together, they 10X the outcome.

IMPORTANT REMINDER

There are exceptions to literally all of these observations. I’m aware of that, so please spare the comment about the text-only long-form X post you saw go viral last week. Lol.

But actually…

Curious if any of you founders posting content on social, or marketers leading social at early- and growth-stage companies are seeing the same. What are you seeing?

Reply to this email and let me know.

Also. One more thing. If this was mildly helpful, share it in your marketing team’s Slack channel. It’ll make you look smart. I promise.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

• The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary 📚

• The easiest way to use LinkedIn content to close B2B SaaS deals by Tommy Clark 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, honored that you let me into your inbox every week. I don’t take it lightly.

If you get “value” out of my stuff, you should help me end up in more inboxes. Forward today’s piece to your favorite B2B founder.

Deal?

Ok cool.

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: You should check out my newest YouTube video. I am being told it’s a good one (not biased).

PPS: Join Compound’s Q2 waitlist here (only if you want to grow a B2B SaaS using social content)

PPPS: Here’s the house mix I wrote today’s edition to. Enjoy :)