Compound Content Studio

This time last year, Compound Content Studio was just me. Demand was crazy—but I was going crazy. Today, we’re a team of 9 ultra-talented writers and content marketers. There are a few lessons that stand out to me during my transition from ‘solopreneur’ to CEO: (1) I should have made my first hire earlier. It’s kinda silly. Looking back, I made such a big fuss over it. What if it doesn’t work out? Well, so far so good. (2) It is possible to delegate content creation. This is a hot topic. There’s a narrative out there right now that you can’t scale content writing. It’s too hard, they say. Creative work doesn’t scale, they say. This is a limiting belief. It’s just too hard for *you* to uphold the standard needed to scale great content. (3) You’re gonna repeat yourself. A lot. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s just the reality of being a leader. Nobody can read your mind (though I wish they could at times). You need to get stuff out of your head and onto paper (or a ClickUp document). It’s kinda cool, hiring went from something I was terrified to do to something I’m excited about. The talent density on this team is nuts, and the pace at which we move is rapid. How could I not get hyped about that? If you're a founder, I want to selfishly ask you: what’s your best piece of advice for scaling a team beyond 10 people? I’m all ears.

There are BIG 5 problems that 90% of early-stage SaaS startups deal with in their content marketing. Here’s the breakdown (and what to do about them). Founders. Are you running into these? (1) Nobody knows who you are. I know. Your product is so great. It has this feature you’re drooling over. I get it. Small problem. Nobody knows about it. You’re trying to sell to an empty room. The solution? Content fills that room, so more people can see your precious product and make it commercially viable. (2) Cold outbound is getting harder. Inboxes are a war zone. Your prospects are getting bombarded with AI slop and swarmed by random BDRs who they have no reason to respond to. How do you stand out in the fray? Familiarity. And you can manufacture this familiarity by having a strong, founder-led presence here on LinkedIn. (3) You have no time and your calendar is a dumpster fire. When I was in-house, I never understood this. “Why don’t founders take content more seriously?” Turns out, a lot of them do. But like you, their calendars are a total mess. Mine has trended more and more in that direction as I’ve grown my agency over the past 15 months. I don’t know how I’d keep my output consistent if I didn’t have systems in place, and the reps I got before I had this new responsibility. (4) Your content isn’t differentiated. In other words, people don’t have a reason to care about what you have to say. Do you even care what you have to say? To win in your marketing, you need to have a strong POV. Social content is an amplification of that. (5) You’re chasing useless metrics. I tell all my prospects, “We’re here to get you customers—not make you a celebrity.” Impressions, follower growth, and engagement rate are great. But they’re all leading indicators. And all the followers in the world don’t mean much if they won’t even buy a $17 PDF from you. Build for real intention, not empty attention. So…TLDR? You need people to know who you are, so they become familiar with you and your differentiated point of view. You need to target this content to the right people. And you need to sustain this output even when your calendar is a dumpster fire. Simple. Not easy. If you need more guidance on how to do this, follow me here or subscribe to my newsletter, Social Files.

Ok. You’re a B2B SaaS founder who wants to start posting more on LinkedIn. Maybe you’ve seen one of my videos. Or an investor told you about founder-led content. Or you saw a competitor who’s apparently cleaning up with LinkedIn content. Probably that last one. Anyway, you want to post more. But, there’s a problem. Your calendar is an absolute dumpster fire. You’re on more and more sales calls. Maybe you raised a round and are in a hiring push. You have team meetings that fill any open spot in your calendar. And you for sure don’t want to use that random 15-minute block between meetings to draft a content piece for LinkedIn. Even if you did want to, good luck getting into any sort of ‘flow’ state. So, you’ve thought about hiring a ghostwriting agency to help you produce content, without the time. But you also have a founder friend who did that. And his content is unbearably cringe. Like, how did he let that on the timeline…under his name? There’s hope. Done right, you can outsource your content production. You can do it in a way that gets a post 97% of the way there. Then, you just clean it up in 5-10 minutes. And boom. You have founder-led content, in a fraction of the time, in a writing style that feels like you. Because it is you. But…how? Today I want to open source the framework I use with all of my clients here at Compound. I call it the Content Interview. We interview you. To make content. Mind. Blown. The cool part is that you can adapt this with your internal marketing team, if you want. I just dropped a full guide with the exact framework we use with our clients to craft 5x pieces of founder-led LinkedIn content every week for a busy SaaS CEO. Check it out here (and bookmark it for your marketing team): https://lnkd.in/gX27PS5U

One of our Content Writers at Compound Content Studio recently asked me about my best advice for ramping up and succeeding in a writing role at an agency. Here’s what I told them (bookmark these 8 pieces of advice). 1. Obsess over content quality. Make this your North Star. It’s ours. 2. Have immaculate attention to detail. Don’t leave room for grammar errors and ‘simple’ mistakes. Leave room for more productive mistakes. 3. When you do receive critical feedback, try your best not to make repeat mistakes. 4. Make it your life mission to reduce the number of edits your Editor has to make to zero. 5. Fully immerse yourself in your clients and their industries. Read newsletters. Listen to podcasts. Learn their lingo. The better you understand their category, the stronger your content will be. 6. Communicate your thinking in writing. If you make a certain stylistic decision, and you're not sure if it will be the right one, leave a comment on the document. If you have an idea you think will perform well, propose it. Communicate your thinking. 7. Work on your pacing. Agency work is high-volume. Figure out when you write best during the day. The more you can work in alignment with your creative energy, the more efficient you’ll be. 8. Use social as a consumer. Notice what stops your scroll. Save inspiration. Use these strategies in your writing. Not an exhaustive list, but a good start. The single biggest piece of advice I can give you is to be coachable and open to learning. Feedback is good. It’s to be expected, and occurs regularly. PS: if you're a content writer with Linkedin experience and want to join our team...check this out: https://lnkd.in/dW24ic5V

It's actually so simple to win on social as a founder. 1. Have a unique point of view and experience to back it up. 2. Pick a platform where your ICP hangs out, and post daily. 3. Have the patience not to give up after 2 weeks. Course coming soon! 😆

My agency Compound Content Studio has been at or near capacity since we launched 15 months ago. LinkedIn content is to blame for that. What most people don't realize is... We were able to build so much momentum using content this early on in the business because I built our content motion BEFORE we 'needed' it. I didn't start posting 30 days before launch. I didn't start posting 365 days before launch. I didn't start posting 730 days before launch. I had been posting my thoughts on social, building trust, for 5 YEARS before cashing in some goodwill to drive leads for the agency. Even now, my hardest 'CTA' for my agency is in the PS line for my newsletter. If I was an early-stage founder starting from scratch in 2024, I would: - Pick 1 platform where my customers hang out (probably LinkedIn) - Focus on posting valuable, founder-led content for at least 90 days (no you don't need to wait 5 years, don't worry) - Prioritize becoming a go-to resource for your ICP over trying to cash in from Day 1 Build your content engine before you need it.

If I was helping an early-stage SaaS founder (pre-seed - Series A) launch a founder-led content strategy here on LinkedIn to increase inbound leads—here’s the playbook I’d run: CONTEXT: Over the past 14 months, I’ve helped 30+ SaaS CEOs and execs launch organic social content. My agency Compound Content Studio has also been at or near capacity since we started and on pace for [redacted] in revenue (sorry, not sharing that yet)…most of which has come inbound from social or referrals. Content works. Here’s how. PLAYBOOK: STEP 1) Pick your platforms. For SaaS companies—post on LinkedIn and post from your founders account. Once you nail LI, consider X. But start here in 2024. STEP 2) Establish your content positioning. This really isn’t a ‘content’ problem—it’s a company problem. If you are unclear around who you help and the problem you solve, translating that into compelling social content will be hard. Example: I won’t shut up about B2B SaaS social strategy. I attract B2B SaaS founders and marketers who want to use social to get leads 🤠 STEP 3) Make sure your profile is presentable. → Clear, high-res PFP close up to your face → Good headline using the formula [ROLE + COMPANY + VALUE PROP] - look at mine → Update your featured link in bio to be either a newsletter/lead magnet OR a client case study Now, you’re ready to ~start shipping~ STEP 4) Commit to a cadence. Ramp up to 5x per week. Nobody is concerned about you “posting too much.” You can’t post 2x per month and expect to win on LinkedIn. That’s like lifting weights 2x per month and expecting to build muscle. Not gonna happen. Frequent posting does 2 things: A) You build the SKILL of content output. B) You collect data on what performs and what doesn’t. STEP 5) Start posting. Of those 5 posts per week, start with these formats: POST 1: Business-related personal story. POST 2: Story-based listicle. POST 3: Customer anecdote. POST 4: Polarizing industry opinion. POST 5: Case study post. STEP 6) Assess what works. Break this down by: -Topic -Hook style -Content format What ‘works’ can mean 2 things. What maximizes content performance? What drives the most inbound interest? STEP 7) Double down on what works and prune the rest. Hit your winning angles over and over again. Ideally, you want to find repeatable topics, stories, etc. Think of it like finding a winning pitc when fundraising. When you find a winning pitch, you're not just gonna throw it out in the next investor meeting because you're scared to sound ‘repetitive.’ Run it into the ground. STEP 8) Commit to at least 90 days of shipping consistently. Going to the gym for 7 days straight won’t give you a chiseled six pack. Sending 100 cold emails won’t get you a calendar full of sales calls. Posting for 1-2 weeks and going dark won’t build you an inbound engine. 5 content pieces per week for 90 days. Then you can tell me if it ‘didn’t work.’ That’s all. Out of characters. If helpful, fwd to your fav SaaS founder 🤝

I launched Compound Content Studio (then Clark Media) 13 months ago. To this day, haven't rolled out a proper site. Thankfully, filling capacity hasn't been a problem. Over the past 13 months, we've helped 30+ B2B companies stand up social content motions. But, it's about time we have a proper site for prospects, or prospective team members, to see what we do. Excited to roll this one out. My guy Christian Cardenas created a work of art. Check it out: https://lnkd.in/gZb9n7S3

Honestly? I’m shocked by how many big companies fumble hard on social media. Especially in tech. One example of a large B2B company that bucks the trend and does a GREAT job in its social strategy is HubSpot. → They post social-native content on LinkedIn & X (not just posts plastered with links) → They lean into humor, memes, & trends tastefully (and get strong engagement bc of it) → They have a distinct brand voice in their social content Great example to look to as a B2B founder or marketer (shoutout Chi Thukral and team 🙂) PS: If you want to grow your B2B company on social… follow me here on LinkedIn. #b2bsaas #socialstrategy #b2bmarketing

Hit a cool milestone today. I officially launched Compound Content Studio (then Clark Media) 1 year ago today. 1 year in agency life. Since then, we've: - Helped 25+ B2B companies launch social content motions - ~3x'd average monthly revenue (from launch) - Gone from solo to FT team of 7 It's insanely cool to work hand-in-hand with so many talented founders and marketers in the space. I don't take that for granted. Keeping my foot on the gas for year 2 🤝