My favorite social content frameworks

Happy Tuesday!

If you're reading this, I hope you're starting your week strong and ready to tackle what's ahead. Before I get into today's deep dive, I want to share something that's been on my mind.

I've worked with dozens of B2B founders and marketing teams over the past few years, and I keep seeing the same pattern. They're posting constantly. They're trying to be consistent. They're following all the "best practices." But they're getting nothing back. No shares, no meaningful conversations, no pipeline.

The problem isn't effort. The problem is structure.

You need frameworks. Not complicated ones, but simple mental models you can apply before you hit publish. Today I'm walking you through the 8 frameworks we use at Catalyst to create B2B social content that actually gets shared and drives pipeline.

Let's get into it.

Think in Slack channels

Here's the lens I want you to adopt right now: optimize for shares, not likes.

The highest-leverage content you can create is what your ICP feels compelled to drop into their internal Slack channel. Not just scroll past. Not just double-tap. Actually screenshot, copy the link, and share with their team in #marketing or #growth or #founder-chat.

This completely changes what you create. Benchmark reports get shared. Detailed playbooks get shared. Teardown threads that reveal something non-obvious get shared. Generic business inspiration does not.

Before you post anything, ask yourself: "Would someone on my ICP's team share this in their work Slack?" If the answer is no, either make it more useful or don't post it.

Here's how to use this today: Go audit your last 20 posts. Which ones are genuinely Slack-share worthy? What made them different? Now go make more of those.

OMG / WTF / LOL

Every piece of shareable content evokes a strong emotional reaction. In B2B, that breaks down into three categories:

OMG = Surprising insight. Non-obvious data. A stat that changes how your audience sees a problem. Like when you see a chart showing that 73% of B2B buyers have already made a decision before they ever talk to sales. That's an OMG moment.

WTF = Provocative tension. Bold claims that challenge industry norms. Stuff that makes people go "wait, really?" Example: "Your LinkedIn engagement is meaningless if none of those people have budget." It's a little uncomfortable, but it's true, and it gets shared because people want to see how others react.

LOL = Relatable humor. Not standup comedy, but memes or stories about real frustrations your audience deals with every day. Like a screenshot of a "quick 15-minute meeting" calendar invite that's scheduled for 90 minutes. Everyone in B2B SaaS has lived that.

Before you publish, label the dominant emotion: OMG, WTF, or LOL. If it's none of them, the post is too flat to earn shares. It'll get lost in the feed.

Write for Debbie at her desk

BuzzFeed writers reportedly wrote for "Debbie at her desk" — one specific, bored office worker scrolling on her break. This is brilliant.

When you write for "the market" or "B2B founders" or "marketing leaders," you write for no one. When you write for one hyper-specific person, you write for everyone who matches that profile.

Here's my version: I write for Sarah, a VP of Marketing at a Series A SaaS company. She's drowning in board pressure about pipeline. She's got a lean team. She's scrolling LinkedIn at 7am before her day explodes, looking for something useful she can actually implement this week.

When I write for Sarah, my tone changes. My specificity increases. I write "you" instead of "people" or "marketers." I cut all the fluff because Sarah doesn't have time for it.

Your exercise: Write a short profile of your version of Debbie. Where do they work? What's stressing them out right now? What problem are they trying to solve when they're scrolling? Then sanity-check every post against that person.

The over-the-shoulder test

This one comes from YouTube shorts creators: visual content should be so instantly compelling that someone walking past your screen would stop and ask, "What is that?"

In B2B, this means your visuals need to tell a story immediately. A chart showing surprising benchmarks. A before/after dashboard. A meme that perfectly captures a shared frustration. The kind of thing where if you had it open on your laptop in a coffee shop, someone would glance over and actually pause.

Most B2B content fails this test completely. Generic stock photos. Boring bar charts. Text-heavy slides that require context to understand.

Here's the test: Pull up your last 10 visual posts. If each one was on your laptop screen and someone walked behind you, would they stop? Would they ask what you're looking at? If not, your visuals aren't working hard enough.

Three formats that pass this test: (1) Data visualizations that reveal something surprising, (2) Side-by-side comparisons that show dramatic differences, (3) Memes that nail a specific pain point your ICP feels constantly.

Build a content funnel

Most B2B social strategies fail because they're either too broad and generic or too product-heavy. You need balance across the funnel.

TOFU (top of funnel) = Broad-interest content that grabs attention. Industry insights, hot takes, relatable stories. This is what grows your audience and gets you in front of new people. Think frameworks, contrarian opinions, behind-the-scenes stories.

MOFU (middle of funnel) = ICP-specific value. Deep dives, playbooks, benchmarks. This is what makes the right people raise their hand and think "this person gets my exact problem." Think detailed breakdowns, tactical how-tos, templates they can actually use.

BOFU (bottom of funnel) = Explicit product and revenue-driving content. Case studies, feature teardowns, founder stories tied to the product. This is what turns attention into pipeline. Think customer wins, product demos, specific outcomes you've driven.

For a lean team, I'd suggest something like 50% TOFU, 35% MOFU, 15% BOFU. But you can dial this up or down based on whether you're optimizing for growth or conversion right now.

The key is being intentional. Map your last month of posts to this funnel. Where are you over-indexed? Where are you missing completely? Then fix the mix.

If you're struggling to get your founder-led content off the ground and need a system for this, we actually built a 90-day playbook that walks through exactly how to structure this.

IRL to URL

Some of your best-performing social content will start as real-world activities and experiences.

Strong B2B brands run on two content tracks:

Track 1: Daily, consistent posting. The baseline.

Track 2: Occasional IRL activations that feed huge online moments. Events, billboards, campaigns, stunts.

Here's what this looks like in practice:

You run a customer dinner. You capture photos, record a few quotes, maybe get some quick video testimonials. That one dinner becomes 10+ pieces of social content: event recap, customer quotes, behind-the-scenes setup, lessons learned, poll about what topic to cover at the next one.

You put up a billboard or create swag. You don't just do the thing — you document the whole process. The brainstorm. The design iterations. The installation. The reactions. Each step is content.

You're building in public as a founder. You share screenshots of internal docs (sanitized). Whiteboard sessions. Real Slack conversations. The messy middle of actually building something.

Every time you do something meaningful offline, you should be asking: "What's the social version of this?" Build a simple checklist: anytime we run an event, we need minimum 3-5 social assets from it.

This is how you create content that actually feels different. Because it's rooted in real things you're doing, not just generic business advice you're repackaging.

Quantity earns quality

Early on, volume is a learning engine. You can't discover what works by posting once a week.

Here's the truth: when you start on a new platform or try a new format, you don't have enough data to make good quality judgments. You think you know what will work, but you're probably wrong. The only way to find out is to ship volume and collect data.

I'm not saying post garbage. I'm saying commit to a 30-60 day window where you post daily and learn aggressively. Track what's working: which hooks stop the scroll, which topics get shared, which formats drive replies and DMs.

After that testing window, you'll actually know what quality looks like for your specific audience. Then you can post less frequently but with much higher hit rates.

Most people do the opposite. They post sporadically, never build momentum, never collect enough data to learn anything, and then wonder why social "doesn't work for them."

If your LinkedIn content isn't working, there's a good chance you're not posting enough to actually figure out what resonates.

Known well vs well-known

Last framework, and this one matters more than all the others combined.

In B2B, being known well by 500 of the right people is infinitely more valuable than being well-known by 50,000 random business followers.

Well-known = Large but broad audience. Low intent. Lots of likes on generic business inspiration posts. Almost no one buying from you.

Known well = Smaller, highly-targeted audience. They see you as the go-to expert in a narrow problem space. High intent. They DM you. They refer you. They become customers.

This ties back to the content funnel. TOFU grows surface area and makes you more well-known. MOFU and BOFU deepen trust with the right segment and make you known well.

Here's how you measure "known well": Are you getting inbound from ideal customers? Are people DMing you with specific, high-intent questions? Are existing customers referring you? Are you getting invited to speak or write about your niche?

If you're getting lots of engagement but none of those things are happening, you're optimizing for the wrong metric. You're building an audience of business inspiration seekers, not buyers.

Evaluate your content honestly: Is this attracting my actual ICP, or is this just getting me vanity metrics? Then shift more of your mix to MOFU and BOFU content that speaks directly to the specific pain points your ideal customer is dealing with.

Your 14-day challenge

That's all for this week. Here's how to actually use these frameworks starting tomorrow:

Days 1-2: Define your "Debbie" and the Slack channels you want your content living in. Write out the profile. Get specific.

Days 3-7: Publish daily. Use at least one framework per post. Label each post with which framework you're applying.

Days 8-14: Keep publishing, but now start tracking. Which frameworks are working best for you? Which ones generate shares, saves, and DMs? Double down on those.

Seriously, if you do this for two weeks, you'll learn more about what works for your specific audience than you have in the last six months of sporadic posting.

If you want help building and running a founder-led content engine using these exact frameworks, get in touch. This is literally what we do at Catalyst — we help B2B founders and lean marketing teams build social content systems that actually drive pipeline.

But regardless of whether you work with us or not, just use the frameworks. They work.

I'll see you next Tuesday.

– Will