Hat Tip Social

Ghostwriting social content for B2B execs.

Founder

Clients include Our Future (acq. by Morning Brew) Laskie, Growletter, ProperExpression.

Writing compelling short and long-form copy for brand emails, social posts, and static Facebook/Instagram ads.

Scripting and editing Facebook/TikTok video ad creative.

Copywriter and Creative Strategist

Deebo

Business brokering influencer marketing brand deals between some of TikTok's top creators and kick ass brands.

Notable clients include:

Daniel MacDonald, Mark Tilbury, Frank Michael Smith, and more.

Notable brand campaigns include:
Honey x Mark Tilbury
Public x Daniel MacDonald
Wealthfront x Daniel MacDonald
Public x Frank Michael Smith
Gal Akbari x Mary Brown's
Momento NFT x TMT Racing

Neuro

Influencer Marketing Coordinator (Internship)

Writing high-converting social content for B2B Execs | Founder at Hat Tip

If you:

→ Make social content
→ Want to make social content
→ Tried making social content but were unsuccessful

… you’re in the right place.

Truth is, publishing content you’re proud of on a consistent basis is tough.

You get busy. Things come up.

And for most founders, content takes a backseat to whatever fire they’re putting out at their company that day.

That said, its 2023.

Content is king — and the benefits for B2B founders are clear:

→ Drive low-cost brand awareness
→ Generate inbound leads from a new lead source
→ Become a “thought leader” in your space (even though you may hate that word)

And after meeting tons of founders while working in influencer marketing, starting Hat Tip felt like a no-brainer.

You can still benefit from publishing high-quality social content — without worrying about blocking out time to write, being inconsistent, or if you’re making content the “right way”.

Hat Tip handles that for you—while maintaining your voice—through:

→ Bi-weekly content interviews
→ Product and industry-specific thought-starters
→ The will to edit and revise until you’re proud of the content being published

If high-quality, consistent social content sounds like something you’re interested in, DM me or visit the link in my profile to book a call.

Thanks 👋

Christian

📧 christian@hattipagency.com
🐤 Twitter @dibratto

The truest sign you're a terrible writer:

You stuff every post—regardless of its topic—with a selfie.

I understand that posts with media tend to perform better, but seeing people add sad selfies to posts about their client leaving is where I draw the line.

To the average viewer, the added likes and impressions may look impressive. To anyone who spends any sort of time on this platform, it looks silly.

Remember: 

You are not Mr. Beast.

You're trying to sell B2B services on LinkedIn.

Christian Di Bratto

Get Leads From Your LinkedIn On Autopilot | Founder @ Hat Tip

I've written 100+ case study posts in the last year.

Here's the raw truth about them:

Sprinkling properly-written case study posts throughout your content calendar can turn your LinkedIn profile into a lead machine.

I'll teach you exactly how to write one. Really, case study posts have 7 distinct parts. The posts needs each to work as-intended.

Let's break them down:

1) Company Background

Share 2-3 sentences on what the company does. Detail the industry they serve, accomplishments they have, and any other necessary info.

2) Their Issue

Then, get into the issue they were facing that you would later solve. Explain what the issue meant for the company, and what the cost of not solving it would be.

3) How You Connected

Briefly explain how you got in touch (referral, cold outbound, content, etc).

4) What You Did For Them

Detail how you went about solving their problem. This is your chance to show off your tools, processes, and workflows. Don't be shy.

5) End Result

Share the end result of what you did in Step 4. Any numbers you can lean on to drive home your impact is a bonus.

6) Quote

Ask your client for a 1-3 sentence quote about working with you, if possible. This helps humanize the case study, as well as builds additional trust you wouldn't have otherwise.

7) CTA

As I said, these posts are lead-generation gold. You need to do whatever's necessary to capture them.

After explaining exactly how you solved a problem, and showing the impact of it, include a call-to-action for prospects wanting you to do the same.

I've written 1,000+ LinkedIn posts in the last year.

One specific type outperformed others 100% of the time:

Of the posts:

Some were text + podcast clips.
Some were case studies.
Some were memes.

But no matter the client, posts that showed off immense expertise in the client's service vertical outperformed others by a mile.

To put it bluntly, posts that show off "sauce" around a topic are the ones that perform best.

It makes sense, too. 

Not because people absolutely love reading about B2B software tips, but because people:

1) Spend the most time on the post to understand it
2) Save the post to come back to it later
3) Share them in company Slack channels (h/t Tommy Clark)

Those three actions alone drive retention and viewership in ways other posts don't.

And that's why they work.

My advice for you:

Think about the tips, strategies, and tactics only someone in your position, with your expertise would know—and write about them.

And if you want to learn exactly how to use that content to drive leads for your company, follow me 🤝

Most agencies in our space retain clients for 6-8 months.

65% of ours have been with us for over a year.

This isn't to say we're perfect, but we do have measures in place to improve client experience, and thereby retention.

Here are the most important:

1) In-depth Social Reports

Every Monday morning at 7:30am, clients get a Slack message sharing a snapshot of results from the past week.

Linked in the snapshot is a Google Sheet covering results more in-depth, if they want to view it that way.

2) No client goes 48 hours without hearing from us. 

On Mondays they get social reports.
On Thursdays/Fridays they get content for review.
On Tuesdays and/or Wednesdays we'll have content interviews, share wins via Slack, or even just check in.

This sounds more methodical than it actually is. We aren't tracking this. We care about clients and want them to know we're always working for them.

3) Holiday/Birthday Gifts

Working with us is more of a partnership than a transaction. We don't act like we care about clients—we really do.

So, on their birthdays and around holiday season, they can expect a gift from Hat Tip.

This isn't to say clients never churn. Of course they do. But we've found this definitely helps reduce it.

So, if you want a social agency who does all of those things for you, DM me!

Social Content Engines for B2B Execs | Founder at Hat Tip

How To Predictably Generate Leads In 8 Weeks On LinkedIn:

[FREE GUIDE]

1) Profile Optimization

The boring stuff.

- Profile Picture: Clear headshot.
- Banner: Your value prop + social proof
- About Section: Why you started the business.

2) Creation

On Day 1, come up with 6-7 "Content Buckets". Check my past posts for samples you can steal for yourself.

Starting on Day 1, and continuing one time every two weeks for the next 8 weeks, schedule 2 hours to write 2 weeks of content.

Each week should have 6-7 posts—1 in each of your buckets.

Schedule the content out for the same time every day.

3) Engagement

Starting on Day 1, and every day for the next 8 weeks, set aside 20-30 minutes for engagement on other accounts.

Scroll your timeline and leave insightful* comments on as many posts as you can.

Each comment is an advertisement for your profile. So, don't just comment to comment. Comment because you have something to add to the conversation.

A couple weeks in, you'll start to notice people who's content you comment on comment on yours.

The more insightful comments you leave, the better.

4) Outbound

Sales Nav makes this easier, but you don't need it.

Search for your ICP using LinkedIn's filters, and send 10-15 personalized connection requests per day, Monday through Friday.

Once the prospect accepts, start a conversation. Find out if they could use help with what you offer.

You're not there to sell. You're there to help.

PS — A bonus of outbound connection requests is that after accepting, they're served your content much more.

5) Reporting

Every week, keep track of:

- Connection requests sent
- Impressions + follower growth
- Lead flow (if applicable)

I do this in a simple Google Sheet every Sunday. This keeps you accountable, and shows you what's working/what isn't.

There is quite literally 0 possibility you can do this for 8 weeks and not see results.

Now, I have to ask, anything to add to this?

Two weeks ago, I talked to a prospect who had trouble staying consistent with their content.

They told me they'd post when things came to mind, but couldn't generate ideas consistently enough to fill out a social calendar.

Because of this, even though they were "trying", they never got any true traction—impressions or leads—from their content.

It made them wonder if social content was worthwhile at all for their business.

Now, it was, but it would only work if they fixed this one issue:

Their lack of "Content Buckets". These are a group of evergreen ideas you can consistently create content in—eliminating the writer's block for good.

Here is a sample content calendar with buckets I gave her:

Monday — Story about your entrepreneurship journey (make sure each has a big “takeaway” at the end).

Tuesday — Breakdown of big companies' [SERVICE] strategy. Example: If you run a performance marketing agency, you can break down how Athletic Greens makes ad creative. 

Wednesday — Breaking down common misconceptions about your service/industry (ideally with proof from past experience).

Thursday — “If I were [performing service] for [Big company], here’s how I’d do it”. Walk the reader through how you'd approach delivering your service for a big company. Paint the picture of an ROI if possible.

Friday — Social proof post. Break down a case study or client result. Start with the problem the client was facing, explain how you connected, share what you did for them, and disclose the end result (a quantified ROI helps a lot here).

Saturday — Meme about your service, or a broader topic around it. The idea with this is you want people to feel like you “get” them. The more niche you can get, the better.

I checked in with the prospect on Friday, and she said she filled out her calendar for the next 3 weeks.

The stuff works.

Do you do this or something similar?

How to get addicted to writing clearer copy:

Turn it into a game, and refuse to lose.

Everyone knows the first draft of your copy should never see the light of day. That’d be like the final cut of a movie showing the actors’ table read.

99% of the time, you’ll fix obvious grammatical mistakes during editing. But you must go deeper than that to make the post perfect.

The game I like to play (which I most definitely didn’t invent):

Imagine someone offered you $100 for every word you can cut without changing the post’s messaging.

You’ll quickly start to notice:

1) Filler words that don’t add to the sentence.
2) Ways to rearrange sentences to cut their length.

Note: Grammarly helps with this too.

Do this long enough, and you’ll train your eyes to pick up on this while writing, as opposed to after (although it’s always a good exercise to do after as well).

Do you do this or something like it?

PS — I didn't come up with this game. I believe it’s a common copywriting tactic (because it works).

Last week, my client made my day with one comment.

During our weekly content interview, I asked a question I was using for all clients:

“Was there a single decision you’ve made in the last 12 months that’s been most impactful for growing your company?”

In the last 12 months, this person:

→ Hired 10+ new team members
→ Blew past revenue records out of the water
→ Automated a huge portion of their repeatable tasks

Their answer to the prompt: “Hiring you, funny enough”.

Partially frustrated that—for obvious reasons—this answer wasn’t going to be turned into a post, I asked them to elaborate.

They said before hiring me a year ago, they couldn’t find the time to write content consistently.

They’d write for a week here and there, get a few leads, and then have to get back to running their business.

Their accounts, and eventually lead flow, stagnated—and they couldn’t do anything about it. 


At the time, they were averaging 40K monthly impressions on the other app, and less than 1,000 on LinkedIn (they rarely posted).

Today, they average 900K-1.2M monthly impressions on the other app, and ~175K on LinkedIn.

More than that, they’re getting more leads from both accounts, spending just 30 minutes per week on their social accounts total (for our content interview).

The additional free time and lead flow allowed them to remain a “thought leader” (everyone’s favorite word) in their space, and make more money spending less time on social media.

I’m thankful for them. If you want more leads spending less time on social, DM me—I’ll be thankful for you too.

I've written 1,000+ LinkedIn posts in the last year.

Here are 10 copywriting tips I've learned from the top 1% of them:

1) People love bullet points. Use them in sections of 3, 5, or 10.

2) People love lists. Use them in lists of 3, 5, 7, 10, or more.

3) Turning a regular topic into an engaging story is like gasoline for your posts' performance.

4) People don't like blocks of text, but don't like line breaks with every line either. Find a happy medium.

5) Specificity breeds performance. Whatever tactics you're writing about, get extremely granular. Share what you would consider "the sauce" around it. I guarantee it'll perform better.

6) Great hooks lean on authority. Authority is conveyed with numbers (read this post's hook). Share numbers around things you've done or results you've got that others haven't.

7) Alternatively, great hooks promise desired outcomes without undesirable actions. Example: "How to [sign 5 clients in 60 days] without [spending 3 hours per day on LinkedIn]."

8) Shorter sentences win. Rarely should you have more than two commas in a sentence. Use Grammarly to shorten your writing.

9) Each post, especially story post, should have one big takeaway. It's incomplete without it.

10) Visual symmetry only goes so far. Don't line break halfway through a sentence to "optimize for mobile". People see right through it. You look silly.

That's all.

Anything to add?

I'm 21.

I run a social agency serving agency owners and venture-backed startup founders full-time.

Every day, I have one goal:

Follow these 7 Rules For Running A Social Agency (the business would've died long ago if I didn't):

1) Clients come first. Anything to do with my personal brand (I hate that term) or agency operations takes a backseat to client work.

2) Be more visible than you need to. I probably annoy my clients. I Slack them a lot. Reports, updates, content ideas I want to try for them—anything to make each one feel like we work for them and only them.

3) 30 mins of outbound engagement per day from my personal LinkedIn. This has been scheduled in for the past 6 months. Having a pre-determined time for it lets me adhere to rule 2.

4) No long-term contracts. All contracts are month-to-month. I don't want the reputation of the agency who locks clients into 12-month terms and subsequently under-performs.

5) Never answer a message about a problem without a proposed solution. Problems happen. Obviously. All messages back to clients must have a proposed solution. Social problems are ours to deal with—clients shouldn't have to think of fixes.

6) Don't let money get in the way of client services. I am frugal. I rarely spend money on myself. But when it comes to my clients, I'm a different man. Whether it's talent for graphics, tools, or anything client-services related, I'll swipe my card happily.

7) Prove yourself first. I offer every lead samples. We aren't the cheapest agency out there, and have no problem proving why. I've never got the "never work for free" crowd... it's working well for me.

That's it.

Drop one self-imposed rule you have or deal with a May full of late invoice payments.

Your favorite LinkedIn guru when the "buy a LinkedIn course, write about growing on LinkedIn, sell a LinkedIn course" pyramid scheme runs out of potential buyers:

Should every LinkedIn post have a picture?

The answer's fairly simple:

Yes—but on one condition.

It's not exactly a secret: images help post performance. 8 of every 10 of your posts should have them, at the very minimum.

But you can't just upload and picture. It must:

1) Be valuable enough to that it'd work as a standalone post (think guides, cheatsheets, infographics, etc).

2) Act as a curiosity-driver and prompt readers to click "see more."

So, to all growth gurus out there—put the selfie camera away and open Canva (seriously though, people know selfies are a crutch for post performance, and can see right through it).

My advice to you:

With each text-based post you write, ask yourself if you can create a visual (shareable, ideally) that conveys the same message as your text.

If that's not possible, I recommend making a simple text-based post or fake Tweet teasing the content (see past posts for examples).

Let me know if you have any questions on this.

“I can’t come up with content ideas”

I call BS.

Content ideas are all around you. You just aren’t looking hard enough.

Next time you feel like you couldn’t come up with a good post if you were paid $1M, check:

1) Your past posts → What common themes or points can you re-position or add to?

2) Past comments on your posts → What are your followers most curious about?

3) Adjacent accounts → What are their posts’ common themes? What’s your take on them?

4) Adjacent accounts’ comments → What are their followers most curious about?

5) Sales calls → What common objections or FAQs do prospects have?

You can’t tell me you could run through all 5 places without thinking of one (1) post idea.

They won’t be perfect.
They’ll take a while to polish.
You may not even use some of them.

But they’ll get the wheels spinning in your head, and your content calendar will be full before you know it.

Where else do you look for content ideas?

Hook writing advice I wish I got 1,000 posts ago:

You can use small changes in your hooks to position the same idea in multiple ways.

This works best for tutorial-style posts.

First, think about the following for what you’re trying to teach:

→ The common objections
→ The desired end-result
→ The benefits of the end-result
→ The pain points of not having end-result

After you have these, hook-writing becomes plug-and-play. Below are 3 of my favorite templates. I will use my own service as the example:

How To, Even If ✅

→ How to [get end results] even if [common objection]

Ex: How to generate more leads on social even if you only have 1 hour per week.

How To, So ✅

→ Positive: How to [get end result], so you [benefit of end result]

Ex: How to generate more leads on social so you have predictable lead flow.

→ Negative: How to [get end result], so you never [deal with pain points of end result]

Ex: How to get more leads on social so you never panic about losing clients.

You Can, Without ✅

→ You can [get end result] without [common objection].

Ex: You can get more leads on social without spending 10+ hours per week on it.

The hooks largely convey the same message, but get framed completely differently. That’s the point.

Do you have any questions about this?

How I’d generate leads for any B2B founder on LinkedIn:

(in 60 days or less)

1) Ideate Content Buckets

Some people call these “Content Pillars”. The point is that they’re broad topics we can tap into repeatedly to fill their content calendar with high-quality content.

Here’s how I’d make sure we capture the full funnel:

TOF → Their story, breakdowns of big players in their spaces’ strategies, etc.
MOF → Industry commentary, pro tips, mistakes to avoid, etc.
BOF → Case studies, answers to FAQs, product launches, etc.

2) Schedule Weekly/Bi-weekly Content Interviews

Here, we’d ask the founder prompts based on the buckets above. Calls are transcribed for us to refer to when writing. 

Prompts would be sent 48h pre-call, for them to take a look and start thinking about answers.

3) Personalized Connection Requests

As content begins being published, we’d take a Sales Nav search of the client’s ICP, and personalize connection requests to 15-20 of them per day.

This effectively lets you “choose” who sees your content— who you’d obviously want to be potential buyers. I’m currently building this out for clients at scale.

4) Weekly Reporting

Every Monday at 7:30am, the client would a Slack message showing:

→ Impressions: [NUMBER] [% change since last week]
→ Follower count: [NUMBER] [change since last week]
→ Profile Visits (Trailing 14 Days): [NUMBER] [% change since last week]
→ A link to their best-performing post
As well as a written summary of what worked, what didn’t, and how we’re improving it moving forward.

They'd also get a link to a Google Sheet, that shows these stats every week from kickoff.

This helps the client understand that we’re on top of their account, and holds us accountable to deliver the best service possible.

If you have any questions about how this works, drop them below.

If you’re ready to have this done for you, DM me.

The best-performing post I've ever written got 770,000 impressions.

That's not a regular occurrence, but I've had 2-3 others crack 100K impressions.

When I study those posts to determine what made them perform so much better than other content, I come away with three points:

1) Valuable Asset Other Than Text 📑

Every single one of these posts had a shareable, saveable resource or template attached. These were not giveaway posts. The resources were attached to the post when uploaded.

This made sense, as it embodied one of the most impactful content frameworks there is—that content should be optimized for:

 - Group chat shares
- Bookmarks/saves 

Each of these resources fell into one of those two buckets.

2) "Sauce" 🥫

The text content and resource were not information a reader could find anywhere but my clients' accounts. 

They were documents created to help the clients' ICP, only possible because of their expertise.

To be frank—the pictures posted were industry "sauce" for each client.

3) All Comments Responded To 💬

We do this on all posts, but on ones that are taking off early, this is like adding fuel to the fire—for a few reasons:

- The post just has more comments, signalling it's a "good" post to the algorithm. 25 true comments on your post turn to 50 when you respond.

- A high comment count can act as social proof, leading to more comments, leading to more responses, so on and so forth.

That's the template. Use it.

Also, if you want us to run this playbook for you—so you can generate leads on autopilot—DM me.

Last week, I was desperately trying to solve a problem my agency's faced since we passed 4-5 active clients:

Engaging with comments from each of their accounts is extremely time-consuming. 

While it's a vital part of our service offering, handling it myself for 7-8+ accounts is an inefficient use of my time as the Founder.

What came next is the perfect example of the indirect ways content leads to revenue.

Realizing how big of an issue this was, I decided to hire myself out of engagement. 

While writing the job post for a Social Media Specialist, I realized something that derailed my initial plans:

I don't want a new team member who I'm just getting to know having my clients' passwords. Yes, I'll vet and train them as well as possible, but I'd feel more comfortable if they got access with a password manager.

I needed to find an easy-to-use password manager I can trust for my clients, or I'd be stuck engaging on their accounts—and not having the time to grow my business.

So, I Googled "Password Managers". On the first page, I saw a familiar name. I hadn't seen it in over a year, but I knew I saw it somewhere:

"Dashlane".

7 seconds later, it hit me:

They're a longtime sponsor on a YouTube channel I watch fairly often, "Half As Interesting".

Dashlane bought multiple ads on the channel, presumably over the course of a few years. I never converted with the link in the description, because it wasn't a need for me.

Over a year later, when it did become a need, guess what password manager I went with.

I couldn't help but draw comparisons to founder-led content:

- Get in front of your ICP or your future ICP
- Build trust over a long period of time
- Convert them when the time is right

So, even if every post doesn't drive 3-5 piping hot inbound leads (which they won't), don't make the mistake of thinking your content isn't working.

It is. You just don't know it yet.

The easiest way to tell if a post is worth publishing is to ask yourself one question:

"If I were [ICP], would I find this valuable?"

It sounds simple, but the more you put it into practice, the more you realize the question's importance.

To this day, across 10+ client accounts and my own, I catch myself starting posts the intended ICP wouldn't care for.

Even if it's an interesting topic, you must run it through this mental filter.

Your ICP should do one of 3 things with each post:

- Take away something they can implement
- Learn something they find interesting
- Trust you more

If it doesn't do one of those, it doesn't make the cut.

No exceptions.

Taplio

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