Inside Out: Why Anger Is The Key to Zen Content Marketing

The fact you are reading this article reveals, at least, two things about you:

• you are a content marketer
• you become an angry content marketer once in a while

If I ask you the question “What does frustrate you about content marketing?” I bet you find several reasons to feel anger towards your work despite your love and excitement to it.

Jenise Fryatt had a chance to realize it by asking content marketers the above question in Twitter. She had received many answers and published the best ones at Storify. To name a few, content marketers feel frustrated about:

• some clients who still believe content marketing can operate in a vacuum
• moments when ideas don’t work as planned
• content marketing changing so rapidly
• people expecting content marketers to be creative all the time
• content quantity still being valued over quality
• having awesome ideas that go unseen while balderdash goes live and even gets tons of traffic
• not knowing immediately if their work is effective or successful

Most of us were taught to hide negative emotions such as anger and frustration, for example. We believe that professionals can’t be so weak to express anger at work, right?

Wrong.

Yes, no one likes being angry, and no one likes being surrounded by angry people.

But here’s the kicker:

Anger can be nice. It protects us by signing that something goes wrong, and we should change it.

Unless you turn into a giant green monster as a result of your anger (sorry, Hulk), you can turn your anger into a positive emotion that will help you do your work of a content marketer better.

Inside Out taught us to view all emotions as a singular entity with sadness enhancing fear. It relates to anger as well.

How anger helps you

Anger is your police. Once an injustice arises, it rides in your town, signing it’s high time to make a decision and change something.

1. Anger helps to focus: When you are mad or frustrated, you focus on the source of your anger, trying to get rid of it. It can be extremely powerful as you don’t get distracted, concentrating on one particular task.
2. Anger is your personal call to action: It makes you work on high-quality content, you learn how to write perfect blog posts, and you create and distribute content that educates and entertains readers.
3. Anger makes you confident: Small doses of anger cause adrenaline rush, which reduces inhibitions and heightens senses, getting you started.
4. Anger enhances decision-making: It makes you more analytical and careful about your decisions. Plus, it makes you weigh the arguments appropriately.
5. Anger leads to success: It motivates to take actions and make decisions, which turn into creating and distributing compelling content.

As a content creator, you can use anger for self-development, professional growth, and finding alternative ways of sharing your content with people.

But:

Anger reveals its positive aspects if you control it and can answer two questions every time this feeling covers you:

• Why have I got angry?
• How do I act when angry?

Remember: You have the power to select how to express your anger, making it the key to zen content marketing.

How to stay in control while you’re angry

“The man who is angry at the right things and with the right people, and further, as he ought, when he ought, and as long as he ought, is praised.”
~ Aristotle

Anger is a powerful feeling that can both praise and destroy us. To benefit from it, we should know how to use this feeling wisely.

Two simple rules work here:

1. Use your anger to overcome fear.

– What if people don’t like my content?
– Is it interesting enough?
– Is it compelling?
– What if it’s not worth publishing?

These are among fears that gnaw most content marketers, especially newbies. Don’t let your fears win! Let them transform into anger (but not irrational or unreasonable one, of course), which makes you excited and motivated to work harder for better results.

2. Get mad about actions, not people.

– Why the hell do they publish their garbage when I pitch awesome content?
– How could they link to that rubbish?
– Why have they removed my links?
– How could that balderdash get so many liked and shares?

As far as you understand, your competitors don’t have responsibility for your fails. So, get mad about your actions that lead to poor results, not people who were luckier or more professional than you to get better results from content marketing strategy. It will motivate you to act, struggle for new knowledge and skills, think on better strategy, write better texts, learning from experts such as professional essayists, for example, and master effective content distribution and promotion.

How to manage your frustration

Depending on your anger style, your keys to zen content marketing will be different.

So, if your anger is…

… Irritation

“I am sick and tired of that guy stealing my content ideas all the time! I planned to publish it next week, but this bold face had left me behind!!!”

Dig deep to realize what you are mad about. Try visualizing peace to stop anger rising.

… Passive Aggression

“Did I delete all drafts with research and data accidentally? Oops…”

Don’t forbid yourself to get angry. Remember that passive aggression is not okay for your body and mind. Take control over your anger and decide how to use it for the good of the cause.

… Sarcasm

“It’s OK that he plagiarized my content. Now I have a chance to rewrite it and make it better and more original!”

Sarcasm is a passive-aggressive communication, too, so you should give it straight, first of all. Be clear and speak it up to make the right decision.

… Avoidance

“I’m fine. Everything is fine. I’ll try something else. Nothing awful happened.”

Be honest, recognize, and accept that something is wrong. The sooner you accept it, the sooner you’ll find a solution to change it. Very often, avoidance does more damage than anger expression.

… Explosion

“That’s it! I am fed up with that spammers! I’ll destroy them right now!”

According to research, anger lasts about two seconds only, so wait it out. Don’t make any snap decisions. Control your emotions for introducing the best tactics to solve all problems.

Gee! Take it easy.

Anger can be the best friend of a content marketer. Don’t let aggression and irritation ruin this friendship.

All you need it self-control.

P.S. That’s my final post in Inside Out series. I hope you’ve liked it and got out something interesting of it. If you smiled at least once while reading my writings, it means a lot for me already. Cheers, and may the force of content marketing be with you!