Founder & Chief Executive Officer
One of the biggest pieces of advice I have for business owners running their own social channels is that you are not going to please everyone.
You will get negative comments. You will get people disagreeing with you publicly. I get disagreed with constantly, particularly on anything to do with AI. All of that is fine, because not everybody is going to be your client, in the same way you are not going to like every person you meet or be friends with everyone. They have the same right to that.
The important part is not letting it get to you. I am not spending company time arguing with people or trying to change minds, because the people arguing are not my ideal client. My ideal client, and yours, aligns with what you have to say.
Somebody disagreeing with you publicly means you said something specific enough to disagree with, which is harder to achieve than it sounds.
Content nobody objects to is usually content that took no position. It is comfortable, it offends nobody, and it also fails to identify you as the right person for anybody in particular. The moment you state a view, you become identifiable, and part of being identifiable is that a portion of people identify you as not for them.
That portion leaving is the system working. The people who agree have now seen you say something they agree with, which is considerably more valuable than everybody feeling neutral about you.
Summary Content nobody objects to usually took no position, which also fails to identify you as right for anybody. Stating a view makes you identifiable, including to the people you are not for.
The reason I do not engage is arithmetic rather than discipline.
An argument in a comment thread takes twenty minutes to have properly, puts me in a bad mood for an hour afterward, and has essentially no chance of changing the mind of somebody who arrived wanting to disagree. Meanwhile the person I could have helped with that twenty minutes went unhelped.
Public minds are also rarely changed in public, since conceding a point in front of an audience costs somebody something. So the realistic outcome is two people entrenching while everybody else scrolls past.
I let the comment sit. Sometimes somebody else in the comments answers it, which is considerably more persuasive than me doing it.
Summary An argument costs twenty minutes, an hour of bad mood, and almost never changes a mind made up before arriving. Minds are rarely changed in public, since conceding costs the other person something.
Two things feel similar here and behave completely differently, so they are worth separating.
A comment disagreeing with your opinion is an exchange between you and one person, with an audience who mostly scrolls past. A review sits permanently on a profile that prospective clients deliberately visit while deciding whether to contact you, and the data on what they expect there is unambiguous.
BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers found 89% expect business owners to respond to reviews. 80% are likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews, while 42% are unlikely to use one that never replies. 81% expect a response within a week. The same research found generic or templated replies put off 50% of consumers, who read them as a sign of poor customer care.
So the not-letting-it-get-to-you part applies completely to reviews. The not-responding part does not, because silence on a review is read by the next person deciding whether to hire you.
Summary BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers found 89% expect businesses to respond to reviews, 80% favour businesses that respond to all of them, and 42% are unlikely to use one that never replies.
The two positions reconcile once you accept who the response is actually for.
Your audience is the next person who reads the review while deciding about you, rather than the reviewer themselves. That person is assessing how you handle things going wrong rather than working out who was right.
So keep it short, acknowledge the experience, state plainly what you did or would do, and offer to take it offline. Three or four sentences. No defending, no explaining at length, and no correcting their version of events even when their version is wrong, since a reader cannot adjudicate that and a business arguing with a customer reads badly regardless of the merits.
Write each one individually, since half of consumers are put off by replies that look templated. That takes a few minutes per review and it is the same few minutes that stops the review costing you work.
Summary Write for the next person deciding about you rather than the reviewer, since they are assessing how you handle problems. Keep it to three or four sentences, acknowledge, state what you did, and offer to take it offline.
The disagreement gets easier to shrug off when your positions are findable rather than only appearing in comment threads.
Your website is where you can set out plainly what you believe, how you work, and who you are for. Somebody reading that either recognises themselves or does not, and the ones who do not usually leave without needing to tell you about it. That is the filtering happening quietly and before any contact, which is considerably less tiring than it happening in your notifications.
This also has a practical side, since content stating a clear position tends to be the content that performs. Search engine optimization rewards material with a genuine point of view over material that hedges, and the same holds for AI tools, which surface content that actually resolves something. A good SEO company will push you toward saying what you think rather than covering every angle neutrally.
Reviews feed into this too, since review activity and responses contribute to how local search presents your business. Handling them properly serves two purposes at once.
Summary Your website lets you set out your positions so people self-select before contacting you. Content with a genuine point of view performs better in search than material that hedges, and review responses also feed local search.
The last part of this is the reason I keep bringing it up.
Carrying the pressure of needing everybody to approve of you shows on camera. You hedge, you soften things, you check yourself mid-sentence, and the result is a flatter and less convincing version of you. Letting go of that makes you noticeably more relaxed, and relaxed is what reads as confident.
So the practical benefit of accepting that some people will dislike you is that you become better at the thing you were worried about. The anxiety was costing you more than the critics ever could.
Summary Needing universal approval shows on camera as hedging and self-correcting, which reads as less convincing. Letting go of it makes you more relaxed, and relaxed reads as confident.
You will get negative comments, public disagreement, and people who think you are wrong. Not everybody is your client, and the ones objecting are telling you they are not.
Do not spend company time arguing, because almost nobody changes their mind in public and the time is worth more elsewhere. Do reply to reviews, briefly and individually, written for the next person who reads them rather than for the reviewer.
Then free yourself from the rest of it. You will perform better and it will show.
Sources:
BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, survey of 1,002 US adult consumers (89% expect business owners to respond to reviews; 80% are likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews, against 45% for positive-only and 47% for negative-only responses; 42% are unlikely to use a business that never replies; 81% expect a response within a week; generic or templated replies put off 50% of consumers).
https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
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