We recommend putting at least 20% of your marketing budget into organic social content, and growing businesses can justify more. That money pays for the people who plan, film, edit and manage your content and creators. Investing in organic first also makes your ad budget work harder, because you only put money behind content that has already proven itself.
In a recent talk, marketer Gary Vaynerchuk said every company should spend 20% of its entire marketing budget on organic social production, and that brands under $100 million in revenue could argue for a lot more.
We wholeheartedly agree.
Monarch has always been an organic first, paid second agency. We’ve always prioritized organic content over massive paid campaigns. For years, that was the harder strategy to sell. Many businesses were built on ads alone and saw organic content as a nice extra. It’s been good to see brands finally catching on, and to see well-known experts landing where we’ve been for a long time: organic social is one of the most important investments a business can make.
This is post four in our Monarch Social Media Mindset series. In post three, we showed how organic content tells you which ads will work. Here, we look at what it takes to fund it properly.
For a business making around $2 million a year, the starting point is simple: people trust people.
Your brand strategy matters, but it isn’t enough on its own. Your content needs two things:
That’s why our packages are built around both. Social media today isn’t just a content calendar. A content calendar is where you start, but a business that only posts on its own accounts is only telling half the story.
We grow organic social in three distinct phases, and a business moves to the next phase only when the results say it’s ready. This keeps spending tied to what’s actually working.
We start on your own accounts. The goal is to post regularly and build an established presence, so that when people find you, there’s a consistent, active brand waiting for them.
Move on when: your presence is established and you’re seeing the right signs, like growing reach and meaningful engagement.
Once your own accounts are working, we bring in creators to talk about your product or service with their audiences. This is where awareness spreads beyond your own followers.
Move on when: the program is validated and you start to see results, especially real monetary conversions such as sales or bookings.
When the creator program is producing results, our recommendation is to scale it up. At that point, it’s really a matter of turning on the taps: more creators, more content and more of what’s already working, to create even more results.
| Phase | Focus | Signal to move forward |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Build presence | Regular posting on your own accounts | An established presence and the right early signs |
| 2. Build the creator program | Creators talking about you to their audiences | Validated results and real conversions |
| 3. Scale | More creators and content behind what works | Ongoing results that justify more investment |
Social media is not just posting content. This industry has always been undervalued for the work that goes into it. Here’s who is behind the content when it’s done properly.
We have a team of videographers who shoot the content, and they understand social media first. They are not shooting for commercials, because commercial-style content doesn’t work on social media. We’ve tested it. We’ve worked with some of the best photographers and videographers on commercial-style shoots, and that content routinely falls flat because it’s shot like it’s meant for TV. Social media is different: faster, more raw and more authentic.
We don’t give the same person both the filming and the editing. Our videographers focus on capturing great footage. Our editors focus on staying current with editing trends, hooks, content variations and transitions. Any single video involves anywhere from 20 to 100 different decisions during editing to make it as effective as possible.
This is a big part of the strategy. We’re actually moving away from traditional influencer marketing. We’ll work with an influencer when it’s truly needed, but what’s more effective is the everyday content creator, also called a UGC creator (user-generated content), micro-influencer, brand ambassador, brand host or lifestyle creator.
We love working with smaller creators because they have very niche audiences, their content is driven by real interests, and they bring personal perspective. They’re not just doing it for a brand deal.
We believe creators should be paid, so there’s usually a fee. Creator fees can range from about $100 per post to a couple of thousand dollars for a full campaign. The exception is a gifted strategy, also called product seeding, where creators receive the product with no expectation to post.
A dedicated team plans all of this, based on what we’re seeing in your accounts and across social media as a whole.
An account or partnership manager finds, sources, vets and briefs creators and gets them up to speed. Behind every creator post there’s an approval process, contracts, brand briefs, opt-ins and meetings with each creator.
Our communications team is the voice of your brand. They don’t just post content. They reply to comments and direct messages, engage with your audience, and find new audiences through active engagement.
Because we’re organic first, paid second, someone on our ads team watches for content that performs well and escalates it into paid ads to get the best results.
| Role | What they do |
|---|---|
| Videographers | Capture raw, social-first footage |
| Editors | Shape each video with hooks, trends, variations and transitions |
| Creators | Share your brand with their own niche audiences |
| Strategy team | Plan content and creator programs based on the data |
| Partnership manager | Find, vet, brief, contract and support creators |
| Communications team | Be your brand’s voice in comments and messages |
| Ads team | Turn proven organic winners into paid ads |
When you invest in organic content first, more of your cost sits on the content side and less is wasted on the ad side. You only put ad money behind content that’s already proven it works, instead of paying to test ideas that may never land.
Here’s the difference:
That’s why we say the investment shifts to organic, and you save on the paid side. As we covered in post three, the posts that perform best organically consistently become the ads that perform best.
People disengage from your brand. Picture it from the customer’s side. They see your ad, they’re curious, and they tap through to your profile. The feed is empty, or the last post is months old. That moment erodes trust. The ad got their attention, but your brand gave them nothing to connect with.
People don’t want to just be sold to on social media, even though the platforms are built to make selling easy. They want to feel connected to the brands they buy from. When a business pours money into ads and ignores everything else, it’s ignoring the human part of social media.
The biggest mistake we see is a business saying, “We’re not seeing sales or leads coming directly from social media.” That’s not the game social media plays.
You can’t directly track how many times someone saw you on social media before they searched for you on Google and made a purchase or booked an appointment. The influence is real, but it’s very hard to measure. Businesses that judge organic content only by what they can track directly often cut the very thing that was driving their results.
We recommend at least 20% of your total marketing budget for organic social content, and more for growing businesses. That covers the people who plan, film, edit and manage your content and creator programs.
Organic social is the content you post and the conversations you have without paying the platform to promote them. Paid social is advertising: paying to put content in front of specific audiences. They work best together, with organic finding what works and paid amplifying it.
Creator fees vary widely. In our experience, they range from about $100 per post to a couple of thousand dollars for a full campaign. Gifted or product seeding programs, where creators receive the product with no obligation to post, work differently.
An influencer is typically known for a large following. A UGC (user-generated content) creator is an everyday person who makes authentic content about products and services, often for smaller, niche audiences. We find everyday creators more effective for most brands.
Because it looks like an ad. Social media rewards content that feels fast, raw and authentic, the way people naturally post. Polished, TV-style content tends to get scrolled past.
Because much of social media’s influence is hard to track directly. Someone might see you several times on social media, then search for you on Google and buy there. The sale happened because of social media, but it rarely shows up that way in reports.
Organic social deserves a real, dedicated share of your marketing budget: at least 20%, and more as you grow. That money pays for a team of specialists and creators, not just a content calendar. Build your presence, then your creator program, then scale what works. Your ads will perform better because they’re built on content your audience has already chosen, and your brand will have something real to show people when they come looking.
Next in the Monarch Social Media Mindset series: you’re probably on two platforms, and there are seven worth considering.
Want an organic-first plan built around your budget? Book a discovery call with Monarch Social Media.
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