Our organic social game plan

How it works

• Today's five: video 2 ("6 years"), the top 3, top 5 and top 7 videos, and video 6. No ad spend; the only cost is the time to edit and post.
• On TikTok, each goes to the accounts Nick's team picks, never the main one. Mike, 13 October: "Check to be sure you're posting on the right account. Not the main one." So far: @nmn.science (video 2) and @sulforaphane.longevity (top 3 and top 5).
• Instagram and Facebook get the version with the "see the link in our bio" ending Mike is shooting.
• Shorter versions are cut only from files Mike has named as ready, and Mike approves each one before it posts. Files go up clean, with no other app's watermark.
• Mike's time splits as 2 to 5 minutes naming which files are ready to cut and 10 to 15 minutes approving shorter versions, alongside the approvals he already gives. Nick's team's 10 minutes a piece covers all three platforms. Claude cuts the versions, adds subtitles in each platform's style, and puts the files in MIKE/VIDEOS TO POST/FOR NICK TO POST/, with a line in _SYSTEM/TELL-NICK.md.

The experts

• Gary in full: "post every piece of content you make for a sale or an ad organically first. If it performs well in views compared to your norm, that's what you start running media on." Feel Goods says the same: "TikTok is really our testing playground, and then we funnel the winners into Meta."
• Founders on camera. Here the experts broadly agree: the founder owns the point of view, and a team does the production. "Founder ownership does not mean founder execution." This adds no time on camera for Mike; it reuses videos he already wrote and shot. Hormozi's route to volume, filming work that's already happening, is a separate option (choice 3D).
• A tweak per platform. Gary: "slightly tweak those videos and pictures and the copy that supports it based on the platform you are on" (14 October 2026).
• Originality. Instagram, Facebook and TikTok only show posts to non-followers if they're original. Facebook says content filmed by the Page owner is original, and the same content can be shared across one's own Pages. The knowledge base reads our own ad video, posted from our own account with no other app's watermark, as original on Instagram too. That's the knowledge base's own reading, since no platform's originality rules address ads directly.
• Our buyer's age group. Pew, 2025: Facebook reaches 80% of US adults 30 to 49 and 74% of those 50 to 64; Instagram 62% and 40%; TikTok 44% and 30%. Gary calls Facebook "still a monster", and says organic Facebook "is likely to hit an older demo than if you're going to post on TikTok."
• The other side. Several experts say organic and paid behave differently: "what performs well on organic social is often very different than like a paid ad" (a Marketing Operators speaker, 19 May 2026). Hormozi warns that "the algorithm will give you the wrong signal for your business" (said as someone who sells to business owners). So the organic post is a first test, and the paid test in recommendation 3 is the second.

The numbers

• Where the 2% comes from. MHI Media reports one anonymised supplement brand where organic was 2% of revenue at six months (self-reported, so weak). We applied that to our August sales of $122,400. The 1 to 3% range around it is our own. MHI's other page puts organic at 3 to 8% after 90 to 180 days, with no study given; the plan keeps the lower figure because it at least comes from a supplement brand.
• The indirect value, and its limits. The five current videos already run as Meta ads, so for them, how a post does organically can only guide budget moves on ads that are already live. Using organic posts as a free test, before any ad money goes in, applies to new cuts and slideshows, and to new videos only if Mike picks 10B (choice 10). Mike also believes TikTok spills over to Amazon and the site at about 1.0. And Gary himself says a view isn't a sale: "does that equally mean that they want to buy? No."
• How we'd know. Tagged clicks from the bio and Story stickers, TikTok Shop orders on tagged posts outside GMV Max, survey answers naming a platform, and branded search (people searching for our name) against its baseline.

• The slideshows are scheduled only through Saturday 17 October, 11am Pacific. The Instagram posts are scheduled through Monday 19 October, and week 3's plan comes next. The Monday scorecard is Step 6 of Nick's daily social project, and the first one is due on 19 October.
• Claude prepares each batch through that project's own process. Buffer's August 2025 Instagram study found the biggest step up is from 1 or 2 posts a week to 3 to 5. And Gary says "the first three, four weeks are going to be a disaster" for a new poster, which is a reason not to let the queues lapse and start over.
• The slideshows have reached 0 to 653 views a post, and 3 likes in total, across their first 20 posts.
• Experts who favour effort per piece read that as a reason to change what's posted, not how much (Rachel Karten; Adam Mosseri, as relayed by Kontentino: "Focus a little bit less on how much and a little bit more on what").
• Experts who favour volume read 20 posts as an early sample. Gary: "This is a game of not being discouraged when 93 posts in a row do nothing." Hormozi: "Successful creators write 100 posts to find 10 that work." A clip credited to Hormozi (speaker unconfirmed) describes a loop of about 100 pieces, then a look back at which did well, then "add two points to our checklist."
• Both formats and their cadences are Nick's projects and stay his call. The scorecard is what lets him decide on evidence.

Where winners go

• The rule's job. It picks the posts that beat each account's own norm. The daily winner job is built, and Nick switches it on once he has posted Instagram carousels, as already decided. Mike approves ads and versions as now, with no new step. Gary's full order: post organically, watch what hits "compared to your norm", add an offer without taking out the essence, and spend production money only after it's proven. Claude's first step includes telling the Meta ads manager session which existing videos already qualify.
• TikTok. The TikTok ads session decides how a winner becomes an ad. GMV Max is now the only Shop Ads type, and Spark Ads keep the likes and comments on the original post. GMV Max may already be using posts from the Shop's linked accounts, so part of each handoff is which videos to boost or leave out.
• Meta. A winning Reel runs as an ad from the existing post, and winning slideshows become Meta carousels, as the slideshow README already says. Each goes through the Meta ad committees and Mike's scaling rules, and each winner gets its own matching landing page.
• Creators. Partnership ads from creator posts (recommendation 4). The often-quoted "19% lower CPA" rests on 15 tests from 2021 and 2022, older and smaller than usually presented. Gifted product counts as a paid partnership for Instagram's label.
• Email. The winning idea feeds Mike's emails, in his words, through the writing process. Gary carries the winning idea into email too; Wine Library's open rates rose to 27 to 37% (his own figure).
• A starting point for more ads. Each winner's entry names its angle and the buyer it seems to reach (analysis, never wording), so the Meta ads manager session can carry the idea into other formats (Dara Denney). A winner can also get new versions, in ways Mike chooses and approves before they post: a different opening, a new order, a shorter cut (Savannah Sanchez). Gary makes 15 and 30 second versions in advance "just in case it organically crushes to make it more feasible to go up the funnel."

How a winner is judged

• Organic winners, by our existing rule. Instagram: at least 2 times the median of the last 30 organic posts (aged 7 to 90 days) and at least 500 views, or shares plus saves at least 3 times and at least 5, with the likes-only fallback. TikTok: 2 times and 1,000 views, or 3 times and 10 shares plus saves. Read at 72 hours and 7 days. Gary himself gives no multiple and no time window; the "3x" and "72 hours" figures going around come from a fan wiki and other writers. Our rule was set by the Gary Vee seat on our committee, and it's settled.
• Watched alongside it, for information only, changing nothing: how many viewers stay past the first 2 or 3 seconds, where the platform shows it (Savannah Sanchez); watch time, completion and sends per reach, which the platforms say they rank on (Mosseri, Appleby); and buyer signals on the post itself, such as Shop orders on a tagged post outside GMV Max, Story sticker clicks, and whether the comments come from likely buyers (Hormozi; a Marketing Operators host, low confidence).
• Paid winners, by Mike's rules. New-customer orders (leaving out past subscription shipments and anyone who bought in the past 45 days), weighted by order type, against each ad set's break-even, over 72 hours, with budgets moved every 48 hours. An organic winner that fails the paid test stays a good organic post and goes into the learning loop. It doesn't get more ad money.
• Labels kept. No ad is labelled as made with AI, and Nick's rule of 13 October (never turn on TikTok's AI-generated content label for slideshows) stays exactly as it is.

The other side, and the numbers

• MHI Media: "Organic posts that perform well organically almost always perform well as paid ads" (no data given). Taylor Holiday doesn't test organic first; he judges ads by how much they truly add. Agentio found 45% of eventual paid winners look like losers before $100 of spend, which cuts both ways. A Marcitors blog takes the middle view: organic "reduce[s] creative guesswork" without guaranteeing paid results. A Marketing Operators speaker now briefs creators "separately for organic and separately for paid."
• The arithmetic. The multi-product ad set runs at about 1.0 times break-even now. Mike's rules raise a budget 15% every 48 hours while it holds at 1.2; four steps in eight days take $104 a day to about $182. If the winner holds, that's about $150 a day more in sales, roughly $4,500 a month. The working: about $78 a day more spend, at 1.2 times a break-even of about $1.59 in sales per $1, gives about $150 a day more in sales. At 1.2 times break-even, about 20 cents of every added ad dollar is left after ads. These figures use the new-customer count Mike's rules already use, before subscriptions renew and before Mike's spillover cushion.
• How we'd know. Ads made from organic winners against the other ads in the same ad set, on Mike's break-even multiple, every 48 hours.

How it runs

• The first samples go out in week 3, once the week 1 baseline is in (including affiliate sales and the number of active affiliates) and Mike has said yes to the budget.
• Usage rights and Spark authorisation are set in each deal from the start, so a creator post that wins can run as a Spark ad on TikTok, or a partnership ad on Meta, without a second negotiation. Nick's team runs it, using the TikTok knowledge base's creator files; creator assets for Meta go through the Meta ad committees.
• A policy check first. An archived copy of TikTok's branded content policy listed supplements as banned branded content in the US and Canada. Today's copy differs, and it isn't clear which one applies. Nick's team checks before the first samples go out.
• Claude writes the test plan, a shortlist of creators chosen by the buyer types our comments and reviews show, and the tracking sheet, built from the TikTok knowledge base's creator, seeding, rights and commission files. For the shortlist Claude uses what it can reach; Nick's team confirms marketplace access. Nick reads the plan (about 15 minutes, once, an estimate). Most of the money at risk up front is the product itself.

Why week 3 rather than month 2

• The premium supplement brands in the knowledge base grew mostly through experts, celebrities or creators, boosted by paid ads. Jordan West: "GMV Max is not a magic button. It is an amplifier." Joel Contartese (Bloom Nutrition): "the real unlock ... was content volume because you want to give GMV Max more inputs." West also frames it as "Creators create demand. Ads amplify demand." (not checked against the source).
• Our GMV Max runs at $200 a day, and affiliates already bring 16.1% of TikTok Shop sales (27 August to 25 September) and 18.7% (19 to 25 September), per TikTok's weekly email. But no seeding program or creator plan is on record, so West's order (creators first, then GMV Max to amplify them) is only partly in place.
• Denney: "If you are not doing partnership ads, regardless of where you're at in your scale, then you are bringing a butter knife to a gunfight." Plofker is trying organic seeding, whitelisting and partnership ads at Winks, his new supplement brand. Taylor Holiday's model makes the channel that produces the videos pay for them, so "you're only paying for the winners," with the same videos selling on Meta.
• The brand Create sent product to 1,000 influencers and got about 350 pieces of content. Gary also calls affiliate content on TikTok and a live show that sells "mission-critical to a consumer brand in 2026." Sprout's survey: people trust everyday users (57%) over experts (26%) (a vendor survey).
• A NetInfluencer panel split three ways on getting the first views: paid partnerships with 15 to 25 mid-tier creators, commission-only micro affiliates, or posting five times a week until 30 product-tagged videos are live.

The other side, and the splits

• Founder-led video is our current strength, and a test that starts in week 3 runs while the first organic month is still settling, so the first month's read mixes the two. Autoadify warns that founder content "becomes the single point of failure," so creators also spread that risk. Nik Sharma advises exclusive, commission-based creators.
• On size, the experts split. Contartese: "you have to sample in the thousands, especially at first, because you have no credibility." West: "Below 500 videos, you're mostly guessing," with 20 to 50 creators over 30 to 60 days as his "very conservative" path. Both speak mostly from mass-market brands. About 30 creators sits inside West's range, as a first read.
• On products and briefs, they split too. Contartese tests across all listings, while West pushes one product at a time. Contartese and West brief lightly, while Sanchez sends new creators "a detailed shot list." The test plan names both splits, and Nick's team picks.

The numbers

• Seed Influencers: $15 to $25 per creator, and a 40 to 60% post rate. Flywheel saw 47% of samples become videos and 14% make sales (all categories, second-hand). About 20% commission is TikTok Seller University's launch figure. Commission, TikTok's fees and any commission on ad-driven orders come out of sales. TikTok pays affiliate commission once, on a subscription's first order, not on renewals.
• How we'd know. Affiliate sales in TikTok Shop against the week 1 baseline (only the rise counts, and since creator videos also enter GMV Max under auto-select, the rise is blended), and the new-customer count Mike's TikTok rules already use. Alongside: videos posted per creator and how steadily (Contartese), sales per thousand views per creator (West), and how many creator posts paid can run behind on TikTok and Meta (Plofker, Holiday). Read over months, not weeks.

The details

• What it covers: the bio links (5 free on Instagram), ordered to suit the newest video; a Story with a link sticker for each new video; TikTok Shop product tags on posts from every account with Shop access (which accounts have it gets checked first); and, once Mike has reviewed and approved the guidebook, email sign-up inside DMs through Klaviyo's social auto-replies, offering the guidebook.
• On organic Instagram, the only links everyone can click are now the bio, the Story link sticker and DMs. The Instagram bio can only be edited in the phone app. Claude builds the tagged links and a one-page link map; Nick's team adds Story stickers and Shop tags as they post.
• Why it's worth doing. Each new BROQ subscriber pays $64.60 a month, and the goal is 40 new subscribers a week across all channels.
• Already decided, and kept. The guidebook pop-up stays off until Mike reviews the guidebook. Ad landing pages offer the guidebook only; regular site pages offer 15% off plus the guidebook (Mike, 14 October). Any DM sign-up follows the same split, and starts only on Mike's go.
• Kane Kallaway judges his videos by "emails collected per video" first.
• Cost: nothing for tagged links; about $14 a month if ManyChat is chosen over Klaviyo's own tool; Meta One only if Mike chooses it (choice 2).

Links on each platform

• Meta One Advanced is $49.99 a month for 4 posts and 4 Reels with links. Some Facebook Pages are limited to 2 link posts a month. Links in YouTube Shorts haven't been clickable since 2023.
• Tagged links can't go in Reels captions, TikTok captions or Shorts descriptions. They work in the bio, Story stickers, DMs and the few paid links.
• Only vendors back email sign-up through comments and DMs. Klaviyo's social auto-replies capture email and SMS inside DMs, and we already use Klaviyo. ManyChat Essential is about $14 a month on an annual plan. A free guide ties closely to buying, and the guidebook fits (AI Advantage Agency).
• TikTok Shop. Supplements are invite-only in the US, and Shop health-content rules are enforced by removing posts or penalising accounts.

Where the click lands

• A Bitly survey found 79% gave up when sent to a generic homepage. Our ecommerce knowledge base reads organic social visitors as arriving warm, which suits a product page or the regular site. Nik Sharma puts "Ad-to-LP congruency" (the page matching the ad) first among what makes supplement ads win, though he said it about cold paid traffic. Which page the bio link opens is choice 4.

• Holiday's firm in full: "Organic and direct are not causal explanations. They're labels for sessions where the attribution model lost the trail." Measuring protects profit by telling us whether to put more time into organic, or less.
• Who. Claude runs all of it. Mike says one yes to adding the survey question; its wording goes through the writing process. Nick: nothing, beyond his yes if the survey touches his email flows. Claude lists anything that needs Mike or Nick to connect.
• The full list. A "how did you hear about us" question after purchase (and TikTok's own post-purchase survey for TikTok Shop); branded search in Google Search Console; Amazon sessions and units, against our organic posting; TikTok Shop orders on tagged posts outside GMV Max; Shopify direct orders, against the survey answers; and what organic costs us in time and money.
• The baseline. We have no record yet that Search Console is connected, or that any post-purchase survey exists. The past eight weeks: branded search, Amazon sessions and units, Shopify orders (new and returning, by source), TikTok Shop orders by source, affiliate sales and active affiliates, each social account's numbers, and which accounts' videos GMV Max uses.
• The survey. Fairing, a survey vendor, says TikTok is misattributed 90% of the time in last-click data (its own data). Fairing recommends asking for the main source (not a pick-all-that-apply list), reviewing the free-text answers monthly, and updating the options quarterly. Every result is reported with its response rate. How many answers come in depends on the response rate and the number of new customers, which we haven't measured yet. By month 2 we'll know whether the survey has enough answers to show what share of new customers name an organic platform.
• Branded search. Findclout recommends an eight-week baseline before a push. Search Console keeps the past, so it can be read as soon as Claude's access is confirmed.
• Amazon. EightX suggests plotting off-platform activity against Amazon organic sessions with a 2 to 3 week lag, or cutting off-platform spend 15 to 20% for three weeks. Its page couldn't be opened, so this is weak.
• Cost. Commerce Roundtable's notes on Holiday's September 2026 talk (the host's wording, not his) say to measure creative "after production costs."
• TikTok Shop needs care: GMV Max takes credit for organic and affiliate orders of the products it advertises while it runs (see How we'll know it's working).
• If the numbers stay unclear. MHI Media: if paid is profitable and organic's return is unclear, move money to paid. This plan spends no ad money on organic, so the only question is staff time.

• Gary also says to build "20,000 crazy people." Lia Haberman, relaying Dash Social: "The best social media teams are optimizing their resources and time to live in the comments."
• It fills a gap: we don't yet know our customers' own words. The list covers questions and objections, on every account. Not directly measurable; the case rests on the experts' agreement.
• The time figures are at our current comment volume. To start, Claude reads comments only. DMs follow once Nick confirms how they can be read: the 9 October winner job's Instagram tool returned likes and comments only.

• Long videos stay a later option. On 4 June 2026, Gary moved Shorts "from fifth or sixth most important platform at VaynerMedia to potentially number one." Claude prepares files and titles through the writing process, with the setup checklist from the knowledge base. Mike: nothing beyond choice 1. Cost: posting time only. We have no YouTube history of ours to compare with.
• Gary's move rests partly on his belief that Shorts feed AI answer engines, which no platform document confirms. YouTube says there's no minimum posting cadence, and breaks don't hurt.
• Measured by branded search and survey answers naming YouTube, read as a step up from the week the channel starts.
• Paddy Galloway, the knowledge base's YouTube specialist, warns brands against treating YouTube as "just a content dumping ground": "you either do it or you just don't do it at all," since a weak brand channel leads people to think "they're lame." That's one interview, and his example rests on Red Bull's access to athletes, so it's weak. On his view, reposting the ad cuts is the weakest way to start.
• Rand Fishkin says go where the audience pays attention. Links in Shorts aren't clickable, so sales come through search, YouTube Shopping tags if we're eligible, and spillover.
• Galloway and Hormozi both say Shorts viewers and long-video viewers differ.

• Gary recommends giving live 20 hours, 10 studying and 10 doing, with a co-host. Jordan West calls live "the most ignored goldmine" on TikTok Shop (found only as a podcast topic line).
• Luna in full: podcasts are "one of the channels that worked best and still works best." He says being a guest works "because people value the science, the scientists, and the story." Our buyer reads Attia and Rhonda Patrick, which fits long-form depth. Timeline's co-founder Chris Rinsch said customers first hear of the brand from figures like Huberman or Hyman, then search (October 2024).
• Contartese keeps live for campaign events, run through affiliates: "every single time I will choose my affiliate community" (weak).
• Long-form costs Mike far more time than anything above. Live doesn't have to: Gary's live advice includes a co-host, and for his own gummy brand he prefers not to be the face "if we can get away with it because it's more scalable." So a host from Nick's team is possible.
• Binet and Tiltman's "fewer, bigger, longer" sits against Gary's more, smaller, faster.