Your Customers Don't Give a Damn About Your LinkedIn Posts (And Here's Why That Should Terrify You)

Get in here, I'm going to level with you.

You're hemorrhaging money right now. Like, actively bleeding cash while you obsess over your latest social media campaign, congratulate yourself on that 0.003% CTR, and pray to the algorithm gods that someone—ANYONE—will care about your SaaS platform enough to renew.

They won't.

Because you're doing the digital equivalent of screaming into the void, while your competitors are building actual relationships with their customers. You know, those things that keep companies alive during "uncertain market conditions" (which is corporate-speak for "oh shaet, everything's on fire")?

This week on The Human Connection Podcast, I sat down with Todd Nilson, founder of Clocktower Advisors, who helps companies stop treating their customers like ATMs and start treating them like, you know, humans. Wild concept, right?

The Problem: You're Building Audiences When You Need Communities

Here's Todd's hot take that made me want to flip a table: Most companies are still stuck in Mad Men mode—saturating the market with messages, doing social ads until their credit card weeps, and basically bludgeoning people with "BUY NOW" energy.

And yeah, that might get customers in the door.

But then what? You ghost them harder than a bad Tinder date and wonder why your churn rate looks like a hockey stick pointing straight to hell.

"There is a tendency to treat them as audiences that you're just advertising to, bludgeoning with messages," Todd told me. And honestly? I felt attacked. (In the best way.)

The companies that actually get it—the ones not spiraling into panic mode every quarter—are the ones building online communities. Not audiences. Not followers. Not "engaged users" according to whatever bullshaet metric your marketing team invented last Tuesday.

Real. Farcking. Communities.

Why Communities Are Your Secret Weapon for Surviving Whatever Fresh Hell 2026 Brings

Todd shared two words that hit different: emotion and resilience.

On the emotion side, these online community spaces are like backstage passes to your brand. Your superfans get insider access, they feel belonging, they're emotionally invested in your success. Todd even works with a smoking cessation community where people literally say, "I would be dead if it were not for this community."

That's not customer retention—that's life-changing connection. And last time I checked, dead people don't renew their subscriptions.

But here's where it gets spicy for you exec types trying to navigate this dumpster fire of a market: communities make you resilient to market shocks.

Think about it. When the economy implodes, regulations change, or some AI startup threatens to eat your lunch, who's going to tell you first? Your customers. But only if you've actually built a space where they can talk to you—and where you'll actually listen.

"Online communities can provide organizations with better resilience to the shocks of the marketplace," Todd explained. "You're going to hear from your customers about something that maybe has an impact on your product or service, something that's affecting your vertical... You can address those things more quickly."

Translation: While your competitors are still figuring out what hit them, you're already three steps ahead because your community gave you the heads-up.

The "Just Build It and They'll Come" Fallacy That's Killing Your ROI

Okay, so you're sold. You're ready to spin up a community platform, invite your customers, and watch the magic happen.

WRONG.

Todd dropped this truth bomb that made me want to send it to every startup founder I know: "The platform itself is not the community."

You can't just turn on a platform and expect people to show up and start vibing. That's like opening a bar with no alcohol, no music, and expecting it to be the hottest spot in town.

Before you launch anything, you need:

• Clear goals for what you want people to DO in this space

• Events, resources, discussion prompts that aren't boring as hell

• A journey for members to go on (not just "introduce yourself and farck off forever")

• Actual cool people for them to meet

• Special offers, contests, insider content

"You'll get your friends and family coming into that space, very politely introducing themselves and then never logging in again," Todd warned. "Which is a great way to waste some dollars."

And here's the kicker: Your marketing personas? Useless here. The people who use your product aren't the same as the procurement executives who buy your product. Community members are the actual humans in the trenches with your tool—not the C-suite decision-makers your sales team is chasing.

What Actually Works: A Case Study That'll Make You Rethink Everything

Todd shared this killer example of a foundation he worked with that wanted to promote entrepreneurial thinking among engineering students. They started by wanting "just a database" (classic engineer mindset—give me the spreadsheets!).

But Todd and his team pushed back and built something way better: A platform where engineering professors could not only access curricula but collaborate on creating new content together, have conversations, build relationships across universities, and co-create resources in real-time.

The result? Deeper faculty relationships nationwide, better content quality, and a thriving community that actually enhanced their annual conference instead of being a sad afterthought.

The lesson? Your customers might think they want a static resource library, but what they actually need is connection, collaboration, and a reason to keep coming back.

The Bottom Line for Health Tech & MedTech Leaders Who Give a Damn

Look, I get it. You're busy. You're trying to scale. You're navigating regulatory nightmares and fending off competitors who raised $50M last quarter.

But here's what Todd made crystal clear: If you're still treating customer relationships as transactional, you're already losing.

The companies that will survive (and thrive) are the ones building authentic human connections—creating spaces where customers feel like they belong, where they have a voice, and where they're invested in your success because you're actually invested in theirs.

It's not rocket science. It's just... human.

Watch the full episode to hear Todd break down exactly how to build communities that don't suck, why your marketing team is probably wrong about what your customers want, and how online communities can be the difference between "surviving" and "thriving" in whatever chaos 2025 decides to throw at us next.

Because let's be honest: Your next social media campaign isn't going to save you. But the relationships you build with your customers just might.

P.S. — Still reading? Good. That means you're not one of those executives who treats "relationship building" like a buzzword you drop in board meetings while secretly Googling "how to reduce churn fast." If you want to stop bleeding customers and start building a community that actually gives a shaet about your success (because you give a shaet about theirs), this episode is your blueprint. Todd even said "farck off forever" in the nicest possible way. Well, I paraphrased. But you get the point. Watch it. Your future CFO will thank you when they're not crying over your retention metrics.

Karl Pontau hosts The Human Connection Podcast, where we talk about the stuff that actually matters in business: the humans running it. Because whether you're B2B or B2C, it's really H2H, human to human. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode where we probably say something that'll make your HR department uncomfortable.