Founder social posts

What founder social posts are

Founder social posts are short pieces written in one person's voice and published from that person's own account rather than the company page. They come out of a recorded conversation each month in which you talk and I ask questions, and they say things you already think, in the words you already use.

The premise is not new and it is not a trend. A personal account outperforms a company account, and always has. People follow people, reply to people and buy from people. A company page is read as advertising because it usually is, and every platform sends less reach to a page than to a person. The gap is decades old and it has not closed.

This is not social copywriting, which writes announcements and captions for the business account. It is not LinkedIn posts either, though the method is the same one; that page exists because for many businesses LinkedIn is the only platform that matters, and this one is for founders whose customers are elsewhere, or on more than one platform.

Who this is for

A founder or owner who is the reason people buy, and who knows it. The business has a page that posts occasionally and a founder with a personal account that has a photograph and nothing else. Customers already mention things the founder said at a trade night or on a job, and none of it exists anywhere a stranger can find.

The second case is a founder who tries. They write something on a Sunday, read it back on Monday, decide it sounds pompous, and delete it. Three months later they try again. The problem is rarely the thinking and almost always the writing-it-down, which is a different skill and not one they should have to acquire.

You do not need this if you would rather not be visible. It only works when the posts are genuinely yours, which means half an hour of your time a month and your name on the result. If that is unwelcome, put the money into the business account with posts written per platform instead, and it will still do useful work.

What goes in it

Everything starts with a recorded conversation, usually forty-five minutes a month. I ask what happened: the job that went wrong and what you changed afterwards, the question a customer asked for the hundredth time, the thing everyone in your trade believes that you think is wrong, the decision you made and the reason. That recording is the raw material. Nothing is invented.

• The answer. A question buyers ask, answered plainly. The most useful kind, and the one people save and send to a colleague.
• The story. Something that happened, in order, with what it taught you. No customer named without their agreement.
• The position. Something you believe that not everyone in your trade agrees with, with your reasons attached. This is the kind that gets replies, and the kind a company page can never post.
• The working note. A photograph from the week with two sentences about what is in it. The cheapest post to make and often the most read.

Each post is written per platform, because a post that works on LinkedIn is too long for Instagram and too formal for Facebook. Where a subject suits two platforms, it is written twice.

What you get

The batch. Eight to twelve posts a month in one document: the full text of each, the platform it is for, the suggested date, and a note on any photograph. You read it in one sitting and strike anything you would not say out loud.

The voice note. After the first two months, a short document recording how you actually speak: the words you use, the ones you never use, the way you open and the way you close. It is the reference anyone writing as you should work from.

A monthly note. One page on which posts drew replies, which drew profile visits, and what that suggests for the next conversation.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. The founder of a small Quebec company that refurbishes industrial sewing machines sells to factories and to individual tailors. The company page posts machine photographs with model numbers. The founder posts nothing.

The first recorded conversation produces material for eleven posts. Three are answers to the questions every buyer asks about what is worth refurbishing and what is scrap. Two are stories, including a machine from 1954 that outlasted three replacements. Four are positions, the sharpest being that most factories replace machines that a day of work would fix, with his reasons. Two are working notes with photographs taken on the bench that week. Nine go to LinkedIn where the factories are, five to Instagram where the tailors are, and three subjects are written twice. The company page keeps posting stock, and the founder account carries the argument. Eleven posts, one conversation, one number tracked: enquiries that arrive naming something he wrote.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Who buys from you, which platforms they use, what you have posted before, and what you would never discuss in public. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Posts per month, platforms covered, interview length, revision rounds, and whether I schedule them or you do.
3. The first interview. Forty-five minutes, recorded. I also read anything you have written before, so the first batch sounds like you rather than like me.
4. The first batch. Delivered within seven working days. You approve, strike or change, and what you strike tells me as much as what you keep.
5. The monthly rhythm. One conversation, one batch, one note, on the same days each month.

What it costs

This is quoted as a fixed monthly price in CAD after the half-hour call. The price follows the number of posts, the number of platforms and whether the scheduling is mine. A single batch, to see whether you can live with your own words under your own name, is quoted the same way and is the way most people start. The pricing page shows the four ways of working, and the number is agreed in writing before the first interview.

What happens next

Two things usually follow. Where the posts are working and the voice needs to survive being written by more than one person, executive voice development turns the voice note into a full profile, with examples of right and wrong side by side, so a second writer or an agency can work from it without the result sounding like somebody else. Where a position keeps drawing replies and cannot be argued in two hundred words, founder thought leadership takes the same voice into long pieces on your own site, which is where a reader who wants the full argument can find it and link to it. The posts are the short form and the articles are the long one; the voice note sits underneath both. The profile those readers land on is profile and bio copy. This is complete work on its own, and nothing further is assumed.