By Keira Maloney – The Salon Photographer
There’s a very specific kind of pressure sitting on businesses right now, and it’s coming almost entirely from the internet. Post more. Be visible. Jump on trends. Film everything. Say something shocking enough to stop the scroll. Grow faster. Get bigger. Have you got a TikTok page yet? Be everywhere. The unspoken promise is that if you do all of this well enough, the business will gain attention and grow rapidly.
But what I’m seeing, again and again, is the opposite. Businesses are bending themselves into shapes that suit platforms, not people, and social media is no longer supporting the business, the business is feeding the social media beast instead.
Content becomes the job, rather than the thing that supports the job, and suddenly decisions are being made for the algorithm, not the client.
Somewhere along the way, virality became the goal, and recognisability got lost.
A lot of brands are optimising for internet fame instead of trust. They’re chasing reach over recall, influencer campaigns over real advocacy, hyper-polished, overly filtered perfection over credibility, and vague positioning that sounds nice but doesn’t actually say anything. It’s understandable. These things are easy to measure, easy to justify, and easy to defend in a meeting. Views, likes, followers, shares. Numbers feel productive, even when they’re disconnected from revenue, retention, or reputation.
I see how this plays out in real life all the time.
A clinic books me for a shoot, we’re planning the run sheet, talking through what they want to capture, and somewhere in the conversation they say they want to film a “viral” video. Same tone, same format, same joke that’s doing the rounds on everyone’s feed right now, just done properly, in high resolution.
And honestly, the idea itself isn’t bad. It’s clever, funny even. It would absolutely land if the goal was to impress other therapists, spark a few nods from industry peers, or get some inside-joke engagement from people who already understand the work. If this business was trying to build industry credibility, it would be a great piece of content.
But then I ask the question that usually shifts things.
Who is this actually for?
Because when you look at it through the lens of their ideal client – someone nervous, researching quietly, deciding whether they trust this clinic with their face or their body, that same video suddenly works against them. The humour is too insider, the message is unclear, and the reassurance they actually need isn’t there.
So I ask it more directly.
Is this content for your client, or is it for other therapists to laugh at?
That’s usually the moment it clicks. Not because the content is wrong, but because the intention is misaligned. The business hasn’t made a bad creative decision, they’ve made a strategic one. They’re optimising for industry approval, likes and comments, not client confidence, and those two things are rarely the same.
This is how businesses end up with high-performing content that doesn’t convert. The edit looks incredible, the views are solid, and yet bookings don’t move, because the content was built to perform online, not to be believed or experienced in real life.
The alternative isn’t disappearing, posting less, or pretending social media doesn’t matter. It’s doing it with intention. It’s choosing recognisability over virality, and deciding that being trusted, talked about, and referred to within your actual community is more valuable than being vaguely known by thousands of people who will never book, buy, or recommend you.
One thousand deeply loyal people who understand what you do, who trust your perspective, and who refer you without being asked will outperform ten thousand passive followers every time. Loyalty, trust, and recognition compound. None of it looks flashy in the moment, but all of it shows up in bookings, waitlists, enquiries, and the ability to raise prices without panicking.
The algorithm remembers what’s trending.
Clients remember what they know, like, and trust – make content for that.
