Politics and (my) business — best kept apart?
I’ve got a big confession about what I do as me over social media. This is as opposed to what my agency Collective Content does for clients, or what we put out on our agency channels. I (just about) run the Collective Content social media accounts. I realise it’s not a massive part of what we do — it’s just Twitter, a bit of Facebook and LinkedIn. But it’s fascinating. And relatively safe compared to personal posts.
That’s because with personal posts I’m forever wondering whether they have an effect on the business.
I was confronted with this recently. I was speaking to a partner in Asia about using my Twitter account for some client events in APAC. We were on a call and I could hear comments as she scrolled down my tweets. I thought there might be too much about Brexit but it was a tweet that simply said ‘FUCKING HELL!’ that caught her eye.
Now the context was that I tweeted that about five seconds after the England cricket team won the World Cup in the most dramatic way you could imagine. Half the country was shouting the same thing, at that moment. But yeah, it looked bad a few weeks later, out of context. So — a first time for everything — I deleted that tweet.
So that was swear-y but, you could argue, pretty harmless. More controversial is the constant raging about Brexit, mainly on Twitter. Now that people can also see what people they follow Like, it must be even more apparent how anti-Brexit I am. And from experience talking to clients, they’re not all of the same mind as me.
I get that a lot of people still support Brexit. I find it hard to work out why. But sure, some do, and I try to be open-minded about it. What I worry about is that they don’t like me because of my position — and that will lead to less business, sometimes without me even knowing that’s the reason for someone going elsewhere.
I’m reminded of Aussie stand-up Jim Jeffries back in 2015 and his bit in Boston about gun control in the US. Take a look. It’s very funny. Warning: it’s also a little edgier than my cricket tweet.
The part I always remember (6:50 in) is where he imagines what the audience is thinking about him: the 50% who don’t agree with him contain 20% who realise it’s just comedy, 20% who are just phased out, and “the last 10%… and they’re fucking furious”.
Sure, he goes on to explain why they’re wrong (in his view) but the central point is that they’re seething. They really, really don’t like him.
Yes, I’m saying our agency might have clients — or ex-clients, or would-be clients — who are seething because they don’t agree with me on Brexit. Is that possible?
But I can’t change feeling the need to be vocal about the biggest political issue of the day. And I can’t change wanting to run a successful business. Maybe the most I can do is voice my worries about the friction between the two things. Like this.
On a good day, I’m happy that so many people I work with share my values, and are just great — as colleagues, clients, partners, suppliers — with all the differing views they’re bound to have.
And although this is still an issue in my mind, I can’t help but think I need to be true to who I really am. I should never have deleted that World Cup tweet.
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*Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
