Tuesday night, somewhere in your town, a business owner had a few glasses of wine, watched the results come in and decided the world needed to know how he felt.

On the company Facebook page.

By Wednesday morning he had 140 comments, three one star reviews from people who've never been customers, a former client unfollowing him in public and his office manager asking if she should "do something about the reviews."

He felt great for about nine hours.

I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. I don't care. Honestly, I'd be suspicious of any business newsletter that did. What I'm going to tell you is that your company's social media page is not your personal diary, and treating it like one is one of the most reliable ways I know to quietly lose money.

This is the week to have that conversation, because this is the week people are most tempted to blow it.

Let's start with data, not feelings.

In 2024, Gallup and Bentley University surveyed nearly 6,000 American adults about whether businesses should take public stances on current events. Only 38 percent said yes. That was down 10 points from two years earlier. People are tired.

It gets worse when you get specific. Only 17 percent of Americans said they want businesses taking public positions on political candidates. And 68 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of Republicans said they'd be less likely to buy from a company that endorsed a candidate from the other party.

Gallup senior researcher Zach Hrynowski put it about as plainly as it can be put in an interview with Axios. If you endorse a candidate from either party, you're likely to lose about twice as many customers as you gain.

So when you post your victory lap or your doom spiral on the company page, here's the math you just signed up for. Some people cheer. Roughly twice as many quietly decide to call the other plumber next time. And here's the kicker. The ones who leave don't comment. They just leave. You'll never see them in your analytics. You'll just have a slow spring and wonder why.

No, they don't. Not all of them.

Every owner thinks this. "I know my customers. We're on the same page."

Unless you're running a campaign office, your customers are a mix. They vote different ways. They go to different churches or no church at all. They watch different news. They have brothers-in-law who make them crazy. And they all have one thing in common. They hired you to fix their roof, clean their teeth or do their books. Not to tell them what to think about the Senate.

Here's a test I give clients. Pull your last 100 customers. Picture them in one room. Now picture reading your post out loud to that room.

If your stomach just tightened, don't post it.

I want to be fair here, because some of you are already writing the angry reply.

There are businesses that built their entire brand around a cause. Patagonia is the example everybody uses. It works for them because it's the core of what they sell, they've done it consistently for decades, and they've accepted that some people will never buy from them. That's a strategy. They chose it on purpose, and they live with the cost.

That's not what happens on small business pages. What happens is an owner who's been posting photos of finished bathrooms for three years suddenly drops a 600 word political rant at 11:42 on a Tuesday night. That's not strategy. That's three glasses of pinot.

If you genuinely want to build your business around a political identity, go for it. Do it on purpose. Do the math first. Accept that you're shrinking your market. And stick with it for a decade, not until you sober up.

Everybody else, here's the playbook.

You get to have opinions. You're a citizen. Post whatever you want on your personal account.

Just know that "personal" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. If your personal profile has your business name in the bio, your company logo as the cover photo and posts about your latest jobs, it's not personal. It's a business page with your face on it.

So here's the rule I give owners.

The business account is for the business. Jobs, customers, tips, team, community. No candidates, no parties, no hot takes on national news.

The personal account is yours, with eyes open. If you post politics there, lock it down. Make it friends only. Pull the company name out of the bio. Understand that screenshots exist and some of your customers are your friends.

Simple rule. The hard part is following it at 11pm with a glass of wine in your hand.

This is the part most owners never think about until something goes sideways.

Your employees have opinions, and phones. Somebody on your crew posts something heated, tags the company or does it from a profile where their work truck is the profile picture, and now it's your problem.

You can't control what people believe, and you shouldn't try. But you can set clear rules about what they do while representing the company. Write a short social media policy. One page. Something like this.

When you're representing the company, keep politics out of it. That means company accounts, company vehicles, company uniforms, customer homes and job sites.

Don't use the company name or logo on personal political posts. Your opinions are yours. The logo is ours.

Don't argue with customers about politics. Ever. Not on the job, not in the comments, not in the reviews.

When a customer brings it up, redirect. More on that in a second.

One important note. Employment law around employee speech varies by state, and some of it gets tricky fast. Before you roll out anything that touches what people post on their own time, have your employment attorney or HR provider look at it. Keeping it focused on on-the-clock behavior and use of the company brand is the safer lane.

It's going to happen this month. Your tech is in somebody's kitchen. The customer is fired up. "Can you believe what happened Tuesday?"

Your team needs a line ready, because "uh" turns into an argument real quick.

The one I teach goes like this.

"Man, it's been a wild week. I'll tell you what, I'm just here to make sure your water heater stops leaking. Let me show you what I found."

Nod, don't take sides, get back to the water heater. Practice it out loud with your team at the next meeting. It sounds silly until the first time someone actually needs it.

Same thing at the front desk. Same thing on the phone. Same thing in a sales meeting. They hired you to fix the leak. Fix the leak.

Sometimes it doesn't matter what you did. Someone decides your business is on the wrong team because of a yard sign, a bumper sticker or something your cousin posted. A one star review shows up from a person who's never been a customer.

Don't fight it in public.

Respond once, short and calm. "We don't have any record of working with you, but we'd be happy to talk. Please give us a call at our main number." That's it. Future customers are reading your response, not the attacker.

Flag it to Google. Reviews from people who've never been customers can violate the platform's rules. Report it through your Business Profile and let them sort it out.

Drown it in real reviews. The best defense against one bad review is twenty good ones. Ask every happy customer this month. Most will say yes. One angry review sitting on top of a pile of real five star reviews looks exactly like what it is.

The best way to not post something dumb is to have something better ready.

Here's what works this week, when everybody's feeds are a dumpster fire.

Show the work. Before and after photos. A finished project. A gnarly problem you solved. People are desperate for something normal in their feed. Give it to them.

Highlight your people. A team member's five year anniversary. The new hire. The tech who stayed late to finish a job before a family's holiday guests arrived.

Teach something useful. "Three things to check before you turn your heat on for the first time this year." Short, practical, not political.

Show up for the whole community. Sponsor the youth league. Run a coat drive. Help a local food pantry before Thanksgiving. These are the posts that make people from every side of the aisle like you more.

Stuck on ideas? Give ChatGPT your trade, your city and the time of year, and ask for 30 useful post ideas that have nothing to do with the news. Toss the ones that sound like a robot wrote them. Keep the rest.

If you want it to stay consistent without you thinking about it every day, batch a month of these posts in one afternoon and schedule them in Buffer. That's how you keep showing up while everybody else is yelling.

There's one situation where I think a business should speak up.

When a local issue directly hits your industry and your customers. A new city ordinance that changes permit fees. A zoning change that affects where you can operate. A state licensing rule that's about to raise prices for homeowners.

I don't count that as politics. It's information your customers need to run their lives.

When you post about it, do it like a professional. Facts, not feelings. What's changing, when, what it means for the customer and what they can do. No name calling, no party labels. "Starting January 1, the city's adding a $150 permit fee to every water heater replacement. Here's what that means for you." That post builds trust instead of burning it.

Here's what I actually believe after 25 years of doing this.

People are exhausted. They're fighting with their families, unfollowing their friends and dreading Thanksgiving dinner. The last thing they want is to get it from their dentist too.

The businesses that win the next few months are the ones that feel like a break from all of it. The shop where everybody's welcome. The contractor who shows up, does great work and leaves the TV on the cooking channel. The accountant who talks about your taxes and not the news.

Call it hospitality. Right now hardly anybody's offering it.

Don't let one bad Tuesday night cost you a good spring.

Talk Soon,

Dan

Dan Kaufman

Founder, Dead Simple Growth and Pinnacle Masters

P.S. Reply with NEUTRAL and I'll send you the one page social media policy I'd hand to a small team, plus the redirect lines for your techs, front desk and sales team. Run it past your attorney, then roll it out before Thanksgiving.