Over the weekend, I went on a road trip with some of my younger family members and, instead of being offered fries on the side, it was politics. Confronted with a sign on a country bakery entry proclaiming ‘This business supports marriage equality,’ we discussed over coffee on how the religious members of our family would have felt if they’d been with us.
It’s not the first time I’ve been confronted with signs in country businesses; from Vote 1 for their preferred political candidate to anti pokies (and a new sports club) signage. And it doesn’t stop with signage. I follow a lot of business people on twitter and notice a lot of very raw and attacking comments responding to various issues.
As a small-business person, it poses two important questions in my mind.
By posting an opinion in our place of business or social media page, are we saying we only want to do business with people who agree with us? Great news if this is possible, but not always in a conservative country town where businesses are more general in nature and customers are sparse due to lower populations.
Do customers actually care? Friendly rivalry with football is one thing but having politics and personal opinions forced upon us in a place of business is not something everyone enjoys.
Personally, I have walked away from some businesses that have displayed strongly worded flyers designed to hit you in the face as you walk in the door instead of discretely in the side window with all the other community announcements. It’s called voting silently with your feet. Do those businesses notice? Perhaps not in the short term but, depending on the nature of your business, one lost sale could be detrimental.
With social media it is now even easier to offend people. On occasions, I’ve picked up my smart phone to make a comment on a news item, only to rethink after considering how it may be perceived out of context. I may wish to do business with them in the future.
Of course, if you are lucky enough that your business is also your personal passion then there is less potential for conflict. But for everyone else, a valuable piece of advice is to separate your personal social media from your business by having two accounts. Then, you can criticise the umpire, comment on politics, and post lots of boring cat photos without tarnishing your business profile.
It all comes back to what our business is about. Is it to serve all members of the community or just those who are likeminded? And, are we prepared to sacrifice profits for our personal beliefs?
I think that all of us would have some issue on which we feel strongly enough to say it is ‘a battle worth fighting.’ Just think it through first.
How can we respect all our customers? And, should we be offering politics on the side?
Kerry Anderson – www.kerryanderson.com.au – businesswoman, philanthropist and community advocate from Central Victoria who is passionate about rural and regional small business
