How we choose which photo goes on a post

For a while the only thing deciding which picture rode on which post was the picture’s position in a queue. A paying customer wrote in three times in two weeks: lip filler on a Botox post, laser hair removal on a Botox post, and a photo of a treatment she does not offer at all.

Every one of those was a queue doing exactly what it was told. The fix was to know what each picture is of.

When a photo arrives, it is read once and the answer is stored: what the picture shows, which of your services it is a photo of, how sure we are, and whether it can sit at the top of a public post.

Once, not on every draft. What a picture shows does not change, and paying to re-derive a fixed fact forever is a recurring bill for a constant.

The test is whether the image could sit at the top of a public post from your business, in front of somebody who has never heard of you. These are held back:

• A needle, cannula or blade touching a person.
• Blood, bruising, swelling, or open or broken skin.
• Anything naming a price, a discount or a limited-time offer, even where the product is genuinely one you use.
• An unclothed body beyond what the treatment requires.
• A screenshot, a blurry frame, or something with another company branded across it.

A clothed person, a clean room and a healed before-and-after are all fine. The reason a photo is held is recorded, so it is a fact about that file rather than a silent omission.

A photo rides on a post only when all three of these are true: it has been looked at, one of your own services was found in it, and the post is about that same service.

The reading is done on what is visible, not on what you mostly do. Lips that have been made fuller are a filler photo, not a wrinkle-relaxer photo. A specific service is never widened to a near neighbour to force a match.

Because nothing in your library was a photo of the thing that post is about. One of these was true:

• No photo you have sent matches that service yet.
• A photo matched, but the reading was hedged. Where we are unsure, we go without.
• The best match is a photo we are holding back for one of the reasons above.
• Your library is still new and nothing has been read yet.

A post without a picture is neutral. A post with the wrong picture is an email from you correcting our published work, which is the thing this exists to prevent.

• Send in photos of the services you want posts about, not just the room and the frontage.
• Keep your services list accurate. A photo can only match a service we know you offer.
• One clear subject per frame reads better than a collage.
• Your upload link takes them from any phone, and anyone you share it with can send them in.