If time is money,
attention is payment.

What is the Social Media Contract?

If time is money, attention is a form of payment. Four questions tell you whether your content is worth the price.

Every engagement is a series of microtransactions: a reader’s time in exchange for something of value. You’re asking them to pay attention, after all.

The Social Media Contract is a way of planning content around one idea: social media is an exchange, and you need to offer something of value for the time you ask of your readers. That value can be information, understanding, a skill, a laugh, a push in the right direction or a relevant offer. It cannot be nothing. Deliver it, and readers are more likely to give you more of their time.

Most content advice starts with the sender: what do we want to say, how often should we post, how do we get more reach? The Social Media Contract starts with the recipient: why would this person want to receive this?

It draws on two bodies of thought: social contract theory, which explains why an exchange of obligations can be legitimate, and Marshall McLuhan’s media theory, which explains why the medium shapes what any message means.

Time is money. Don’t ask for a donation.

“Free” content is not free to the person reading it. Attention paid is time spent, and time is the one currency nobody can earn more of. The seconds spent on your post are seconds not spent on something else. Economists call this opportunity cost.

A post that asks for attention and offers nothing in return is asking for a donation. Your readers didn’t open the app to donate. They pay first, and they expect something for it.

Before you publish, ask four questions:

  1. What am I charging? A glance, a click, a read, a share, a follow, a purchase?
  2. What value do they get? Name it, specifically.
  3. Would they call it a fair deal? From their side, not yours.
  4. Has the next ask been earned? By what you have already delivered, not by what you hope to deliver later.
The exchange: attention for value Diagram: the reader gives time and attention; the creator gives back something worth it. Trust grows or shrinks depending on whether the trade is fair. Your reader You Time and attention Something worth it Trust: grows when the trade is fair, shrinks when it isn't
The exchange: attention for value Diagram: the reader gives time and attention; the creator gives back something worth it. Trust grows or shrinks depending on whether the trade is fair. Your reader You Time and attention Something worth it Trust: grows when the trade is fair, shrinks when it isn't
Every post is a trade. Trust is the running balance.

A post that grabs attention with a hook and then fails to deliver breaks the exchange. It may still produce strong numbers for a day. It spends trust to get them.

Attention is earned in stages

Every engagement is a series of microtransactions. Scrolling is window shopping: the reader stops because something caught their eye. The first few lines of your post are then a request for more of their time. If those lines offer immediate value and the reader is interested, they give you a little more on the next beat: they tap the image or “read more”. If they like what they see, you might get a reaction, a comment or – if you’re lucky – a click through to your website.

With each step, the reader gives you more time and more engagement, and so invests more in you. Each step is a bigger transaction than the last, and each has to be earned by the one before. That holds beyond a single post: a follow is a standing commitment, earned only by value delivered more than once. You would not ask a stranger for their phone number before saying hello. Content works the same way.

StageThe askWhat you owe first
1. GlanceStop scrollingA clear signal of relevance or benefit, right away
2. InteractionRead, watch, expand, clickThe payoff the hook promised
3. RelationshipFollow, subscribe, return, buyValue delivered repeatedly
Attention is earned in stages Three rising steps: glance, interaction, relationship. Each asks for more commitment and must be earned by value delivered at the step before. Each stage earns the next 1Glance Ask: stop scrolling Owed first: a clear signal of benefit 2Interaction Ask: read, watch, click Owed first: the payoff the hook promised 3Relationship Ask: follow, subscribe, buy Owed first: value, delivered more than once
Attention is earned in stages Three rising steps: glance, interaction, relationship. Each asks for more commitment and must be earned by value delivered at the step before. Each stage earns the next 1Glance Ask: stop scrolling Owed first: a clear signal of benefit 2Interaction Ask: read, watch, click Owed first: the payoff the hook promised 3Relationship Ask: follow, subscribe, buy Owed first: value, delivered more than once
Attention is earned in stages. A follow is the top step, not the first.

Long-form content is a later stage of the same exchange. A post can earn seconds; the article it links to must justify minutes. The post should still be worth something to the person who never clicks. Holding everything back to force the click is a broken promise.

We have deliberately left time thresholds out of this table. You will see claims that people decide in 1.5 seconds, or 3, or 8. We have not found evidence that supports a universal figure, so we do not use one.

What counts as value

Value depends on the audience. A post that is essential to a payroll manager is noise to a florist. Most valuable content does at least one of these:

  • Informs: the reader learns something new or timely.
  • Educates: the reader understands something better.
  • Equips: the reader can do something they could not before.
  • Entertains: the reader enjoys it, and would with the logo removed.
  • Inspires: a specific story or result changes how the reader sees something.
  • Offers: the reader learns of a relevant opportunity with concrete terms.

Promotion is allowed. A price drop your customers were waiting for is valuable. “We’re thrilled to announce our new website” is not, because nothing changes for the reader. The test is whether the reader benefits, not whether the post sells.

What breaks the contract

  • Promotion with nothing in it for the reader.
  • Repeating what the audience has already seen.
  • Posting to fill a schedule.
  • Engagement bait: “Agree?”, “Comment YES”, tag-a-friend.
  • A hook the post does not pay off.
  • Padding: generic or formulaic copy that costs time and adds nothing.

The SLOPP Test checks for most of these in a couple of minutes.

The medium shapes the message

Marshall McLuhan’s line “the medium is the message”, from Understanding Media (1964), applies directly. Five years later he described where electric media were taking us:

The electronically induced technological extensions of our central nervous systems, which I spoke of earlier, are immersing us in a world-pool of information movement and are thus enabling man to incorporate within himself the whole of mankind. Marshall McLuhan, “The Playboy Interview”, Playboy, March 1969

That was written about television and radio. It reads like a description of the feed. Platforms are not interchangeable pipes. The same idea needs a different form on LinkedIn, TikTok and a blog, and some ideas belong on only one of them. You do not need every platform. You need the ones where your audience is and your message fits. The essay on McLuhan and the feed goes further.

There is no single right voice

Wendy’s built a teasing, sharp-tongued voice on social media, and it suits the brand. The same voice from a bank, an insurer or a funeral home would damage trust. Humour is not banned anywhere, but voice has to suit the audience, the organization’s role, the subject and the risk. Decide it before you write, not after a misstep.

One method, many outcomes

The Social Media Contract is the same process for everyone:

  1. Identify what you actually offer.
  2. Identify who you want to reach and what they value.
  3. Identify what makes your audience, organization and situation different.
  4. Choose platforms, voice, content types and frequency from that analysis.
  5. Test every piece against the contract before publishing, with the SLOPP Test and the Value Score.
  6. Adapt based on how your audience responds.

The outputs differ completely. A daily price update can be the most valuable thing a hardware store posts. A weekly explainer can be the most valuable thing a law firm posts. Both keep the contract.

The short version

If you ask for someone’s attention, you owe them a reason that their time was well spent.

See the 12 principles

How this site follows its own rules

  1. Free, no email wall. If you never come back, you should still leave better equipped.
  2. Useful on arrival. The homepage opens with a test you can use, not an introduction.
  3. No padding. Every page is checked against the SLOPP Test and must score at least 4.0 on the SMC Value Score before it is published.
  4. Evidence labelled as evidence. Where we cite a figure, we name the source. Where we have not found good evidence, such as for universal attention-span thresholds, we say so instead of repeating the folklore.
  5. One call to action at most, after the value.