A business that posts only when it has something to sell reaches fewer people with each post than it did with the one before. This is not because the audience is tired of the business. It is because algorithms penalize accounts whose followers do not engage with them. When someone sees your post and does not like it, comment on it, or share it, the algorithm learns that this person is not interested in your content. The next time you post, that person is less likely to see it. If most of your posts get no engagement, the algorithm shows your content to fewer people overall. Eventually, only a fraction of your followers see anything you post, even when you do have something urgent to sell. The mechanism: engagement creates reach, not the reverse Social platforms measure success by how long people spend on them and how often they return. An account that only posts sales messages gets low engagement because a sales message is a transaction, not a conversation. Someone who sees "Co...
A dentist photographs a patient's smile before whitening and posts the before-and-after to Instagram. A lawyer includes a photo of a signed settlement agreement in a case study on LinkedIn. A salon owner films a client's hair transformation and uploads it to TikTok. Each believes they have permission because the patient or client agreed to the procedure itself. They do not. The regulators named below are US examples. The consent principle is the same everywhere, but the body that hears a complaint and what it can do about it differ by country and by state, so confirm the specifics with your own regulator. The dentist's mistake: consent to care is not consent to marketing When a patient signs consent to a root canal, they are agreeing to have the procedure done. They are not agreeing to appear in the dentist's marketing. A cropped clinical photo that shows only teeth is still identifiable when the patient recognizes their own mouth, their own work, their own case in t...