They want to post tomorrow and they can’t explain, in one sentence, why their customer should care.
Welcome to founder-led content (minus) positioning.
If you’re the strategist, marketer, or writer responsible for helping a founder build a brand, remember this:
"No amount of smart writing can salvage vague positioning. It just spreads the fog faster"
Follow this:
1. 𝗘𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲, 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.
Don’t ask for a pitch. Ask for stories.
Ask for what frustrates them.
Ask where they feel misjudged by the market.
I"d always start with this:
- What bad advice do people in your space keep repeating?
- What would a smart customer still misunderstand about your product?
- If this company shut down tomorrow, what idea would you still want to push into the world?
Record everything.
Then listen back not for clarity but for heat. The phrase they didn’t plan to say but said with conviction? That’s your lead.
2. 𝗡𝗼𝘄 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻.
Good positioning names a tension your ICP already feels but can’t yet articulate.
Founders rarely start here. Your job is to translate the emotional spike into a structural insight.
3. 𝗠𝗮𝗽 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆.
Stop planning content by category (product, hiring, founder story). Instead map belief shifts:
Before: This isn’t a real problem.
Middle: Maybe there’s a smarter way to do this.
After: We need to solve this now and your approach makes sense.
Now map your content, post angles, and narratives against each stage of conversion.
4. 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹.
Don’t test your messaging in a post. Test it in varous formats:
- A cold outbound email
- A discovery call
- A newsletter
Ask yourself: Does someone repeat it back to you? Does it stick without explanation? That’s positioning doing its job.
Great founder-led content starts upstream.
If you skip the positioning work, if you don’t push for truth before templates, you’ll spend months writing words that resonate with no one.
This is how the market learns what to believe, one POV at a time.
Do the real work first. Every post gets sharper from there.
This post was originally shared by on Linkedin.