Social Burning for your app, set up and run with the person who built it.

Start with the free version

i built the Social Burning framework and published all of it on socialburning.com: what it is, how the monthly loop works, and the playbook with the account plan, the daily content calendar and the scoring sheet. none of it is gated.

so the honest first answer to “should i hire someone to run this” is usually no. read the playbook, pick three angles your app genuinely serves, and run one month. if you can keep the daily posting going and fill in the scoring sheet at the end of the month, you do not need me.

When having it run with you is worth paying for

three situations, and they are the only ones where i would take this on.

nobody can own the daily part. the loop only works if every account posts original content every day for a month, through the stretch where views look flat. most teams can start that. very few can sustain it while also shipping product. if your founder is the only person who could do it, that is the signal.

you are about to spend real money on paid creative. the expensive way to learn which hooks work is to buy the answer in the ad auction. if you are planning a paid push in the next quarter, a month of organic testing first is cheaper than the creative you would otherwise burn finding out.

you tried it and stalled. the common failure is not the idea. it is stopping in week three because the numbers look pointless, or posting the same video on every account, or scoring on likes instead of installs. those are fixable, and they are easier to fix with someone who has watched the same stall happen before.

What the engagement covers

one operator, me, working inside your accounts with your team. not an agency, and not a slide deck.

angles and accounts. we pick the distinct angles your app genuinely serves, a specific person in a specific moment for each one, and set up one account per angle per platform, each clearly linked to the app.

the daily content system. formats, hooks to test, a posting calendar, and a review step so quality holds when volume is high. your team or your creators make the content. i direct what gets made and review it.

the monthly scoring sheet. every video ranked against its own account’s average on views, watch time, profile taps and installs per thousand views, so winners are picked on the number that pays, not on likes.

winners into paid. the top posts run as TikTok Spark Ads or Instagram partnership ads from the original post, with their likes and comments attached, under a cost per install ceiling agreed before the first dollar moves. for a B2B product, the same step runs as LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads.

the handover. the goal is a loop your team runs without me. by the end you own the accounts, the calendar, the sheet and the rules for promoting winners.

Month by month

month one is testing. accounts warm up, then post daily. nothing is spent on media. most videos flop, and that is the point: the sheet at the end of the month finds the few that did not.

month two is the first paid month. the winners run as Spark Ads or partnership ads. spend scales on the ones where cost per install holds and is cut on the ones where it does not. the accounts keep posting, leaning into the hooks that won.

month three onwards is the loop. the paid account stops paying to discover creative, because next month’s winners are already being tested in organic. this is where the creative testing discipline that took ZuAI from 10K to 2M users at a $0.02 CAC comes from: budget only ever follows what already proved itself.

What it costs to run, beyond my fee

the organic half costs content time, not media spend: people who can make original video for each angle every day, whether that is your team, hired creators or a mix. the paid half starts small, because you only promote posts that already worked, and grows while cost per install holds. my fee is a monthly retainer scoped to your stage, and i take three founders at a time. the exact numbers depend on your category and country, which is what the free call is for.

The rules, which are the method

every major platform allows several accounts and bans using them to deceive. so every account is a distinct angle with original content, engagement is real people only, each account is clearly part of the app where the platform requires it, and paid or brand connected posts carry the platform’s disclosure. winners are promoted only through official tools. none of that is a constraint on the method; it is why the accounts last long enough to compound. the full reasoning, with the platform and advertising rules, is in the examples write-up on socialburning.com, and the difference from throwaway accounts is in burner accounts vs Social Burning.

Brands that grew the same way

none of these companies used the framework, but each shows the mechanism: organic proof first, many voices, then paid behind what already won. Cal AI proved its message with creators before scaling with paid ads. Little Moons sold out after one unsponsored TikTok and only then paid for TikTok and TV. on the B2B side, Gong had employees across the company posting on LinkedIn, then put money behind it. the full set of examples has the sourced numbers, including the parts that did not work.

Who this is not for

enterprise products with long sales cycles, because a monthly loop cannot measure what is working. apps that cannot yet retain the users they have, because cheaper installs only make that leak faster. and anyone looking for fake engagement or a way around platform rules: that is the opposite of the method, and i will say no on the first call.

if you are weighing this against paying a UGC agency or going paid only, socialburning.com compares it with UGC agencies and paid only. for the wider picture of how i work with consumer apps, see the AI app growth marketer page.