Convergence and How It Affects Your Social Marketing

More often than not, I’m seeing a lot of social marketing tips from people that don’t know their eyeball from their elbow. These people are usually known for spouting off bitssocial marketing of information like “How not to lose your following” and “Ways to increase your social account” and what not.

There’s thousands of countless articles on these topics, but when it comes down to it, you have a social media account and you’re probably posting to that account faithfully, soaking up as mush information about how to “DO” certain things so as to better yourself in your social marketing adventures.

But convergence is at play.

Watch this.

Convergence in Social Marketing

Still confused? Ok, well convergence is identified by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as this:


It’s that point in time where your update and the reader meet.  Depending on their attention span, and search for knowledge, you don’t have much time to convince someone to go and check out your post or website.

Most people that are browsing social media platforms go into a gear in their head called Focused Attention.  This is a short-term response to a stimulus that attracts attention. The attention span for this level is very brief, with a maximum span, without any lapse at all, that may be as short as 8 seconds. This level of attention is attracted by a ringing telephone, or other unexpected occurrence. After a few seconds, it is likely that the person will look away, return to a previous task, or think about something else.

You’ve got 8 seconds or less to attract someone from what they’re doing on social media to come to your site, become a reader, make a sale, etc.

social marketingPretty powerful right? And really annoying when you think about it! You’ve spent all this time researching material and writing your post, only to have someone look at it for 8 seconds and even have the chance to pass it by?

Convergence is what’s happening. That’s why it’s so important to have your updates psychologically prepped to drive traffic!

Converging is not the problem

You can get your update in front of a lot more people than you could imagine.  Converging with the reader is the easy part.  Meeting the readers eyes at that critical moment where they actually give you a split second of their attention…this is where the important things happen.

8 seconds.

Probably less than that too.  8 seconds is only the general time that people give their attention to you, so I would imagine that most people give less and maybe some people would give you more.  However, you can keep them focused on what you’re saying by grabbing their attention and keeping it there by certain psychological nuances.

Think about what you like to see in updates.  Think about what grabs your attention.  Use these methods to keep the reader happy and wanting to click through to your blog!

Social marketing is a science.  It’s more than most people think it is, which is simply pasting their link on a social network.  It’s complicated, and you have to understand your reader to learn what they like, what interests them, and what grabs their attention.

My next post will be more towards the point of actually how to keep that person’s attention for longer than 8 seconds and react positively on your update.  If you want to see more in-depth examples of this, get a copy of my ebook, The “WOW” Factor: Psychological Success in Social Media which will show you all of these things and you can get right to work on building a better social marketing strategy today!




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  1. Wow, 8 seconds! That sure does sound like a science Wade. Do you think it’s the same amount of time on mobile as desktops? I tend to look at things quicker on my mobile and was curious.

    • That’s what I’m thinking, but I can’t say for sure. I’m still researching more for this series that I’m doing. Keep checking back and I’ll be sure to put that in there.

  2. Most of the people have only basic knowledge in social media and i am also one from them and i want to learn those kind of secret in Social Media which will work more better in future.


  1. Convergence and How It Affects Your Social Marketing…

    More often than not, I’m seeing a lot of social marketing tips from people that don’t know their eyeball from their elbow. These people are usually known for spouting off bits of information like “How not to lose your following”….