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We don't talk about politics, Bruno

The other day I saw a post from someone on my feed complaining about all the political posts on LinkedIn in the run-up to tomorrow's election. The poster shared that they were dropping all connections who made explicitly political posts, since "work is not a place to talk politics."

Her post received oodles of likes and more than 150 comments, ranging from "Right on!" to "Not if I drop you first, sister!"

To state the obvious, her post was itself political. This started me wondering about how people respond to different kinds of political posts on LinkedIn. Specifically, I was wondering about the performance differences between posts that:

• Take an explicit POV on a candidate or political issue
• Make a nominally objective meta-observation about the political landscape (like this installment of nerd processor)
• Go all in on "don't talk about politics"

Just in time for Election Day 2024, here is my nominally objective political data story.

People like posts about politics, especially if they take a stand

For this piece, I selected 100 political posts made the week before Election Day. Here's what I did to build this scrappy data set:

• I searched for the hashtag #politics
• I threw out posts only from people with fewer than 50K followers, to make sure posts had the opportunity for meaningful engagement numbers
• I threw out posts from my 1st degree connections; I didn't want to bias the data set towards people in my immediate network who are more likely to share my views
• I threw out posts from obvious political professionals, such as candidates, campaign staffers, and lobbyists
• I kept grabbing posts until I got to 100

You can verify the insights in this piece yourself by following this same process. (If you want to know more about how to put data stories like this together, I've got you covered here with a discount for nerd processor subscribers.)​

First up, I compared likes, comments, and reposts on:

• Posts that talk openly and unapologetically about politics
• Posts that complain about people talking politics

In every metric, people engage more with the posts that talk politics directly. These posts average 2.3x more likes, 3.5x more comments, and 10.3x more reposts.

Within the set of unapologetically political posts, I also wanted to compare the performance of:

• Posts that take a direct POV on a candidate or issue
• Posts that provide more neutral commentary on the political landscape

Guess what? The posts that take a POV perform a lot better: 3.1x more likes, 4.6x more comments, and 11.1x more reposts.

The bottom line: Taking a POV, on politics or anything else, will scandalize and alienate some of your potential audience. They will probably drop you.

On the other hand, an audience that rejects your core POV isn't especially valuable for you. And there's no way to build an audience at all without taking a POV. If you never take a POV, your people won't find you.

This is particularly salient in posts about politics, but it isn't only about politics. This is true in any content lane. Strong POV alienates. It's also the only thing that builds audience.

Thank you for indulging my nervous electoral energy and reading this piece!

Kieran

Want to build your own audience with stories like this one? Viral Data Stories 101 is for people who want to learn to tell data stories that take a POV and go viral. Includes a 1-1 consult with me to help bring your own data story to life!

​My latest data stories | Tell your own Viral Data Stories | nerdprocessor.com​

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kieran@nerdprocessor.com
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