Should your business take a stand on political issues?

This is the focus of Sprout Social’s most recent survey, in which they asked more than 1,000 U.S. consumers for their thoughts to get a better understanding of how people want brands to ‘communicate their position and engage in conversations on political and social issues’.

According to Sprout’s research, 66% of respondents indicated that it’s important for brands to take a public stance on leading social and political issues, including immigration, human rights and race relations.

What’s more, the majority of respondents also felt that social media is the best platform for such representation. That makes sense – social media is where brands can have a voice, can share their thoughts on everything, as opposed to it being a broadcast channel normally restricted to ad messages. But even with the majority of people looking for brands to state their position, it still seems like a professional risk.

This is the focus of the next element of Sprout’s research – while people want brands to have an opinion, relevance to their actual business is also important.According to Sprout’s data, the main reason a brand should consider commenting on such an issue is because the debate directly affects a businesses’ customers.

Still, despite this research, the risk of dividing your audience, in any way, is likely too great for most businesses to consider. But Sprout’s data actually shows the opposite – according to respondents, brands can benefit, more than lose out, when taking a stand on the right issues.

Read the full article about brands benefitting from taking a political stance by Andrew Hutchinson at SocialMediopolis.