Positions in digital marketing can be taxing, and regrettably, there’s no quick fix to ease their demands. You may have been advised to increase your breaks, take more walks, or reduce your time on social media. It’s possible you’ve even contemplated whether a mental wellness app could assist.
Regardless of how it appears for you, your mental well-being is important. Here’s why.
The Importance of Your Mental Health as a Digital Marketer
Caring for your mental health as a digital marketer isn’t just a choice, it’s essential. However, it is not merely a trend or something outlined in industry protocols. The sector is rigorous: continuous adjustment, emotional strength, unceasing creative generation, balancing tasks, minimal recognition, and a lack of security.
Digital marketing is among the few professions where there is no clear separation between personal value and career achievement. Here are some marketing-related hurdles that add to that mental pressure:
- Oversaturation and volatility. Whether you’re freelancing or working internally, erratic earnings and insecure job positions are prevalent, particularly in the current financial climate.
- Excessive information. The need to keep up with every trend, tool, new platform, and algorithm change imposes a significant amount of stress.
- Emotional effort. Handling clients, campaigns, and target audiences demands a degree of empathy. Yet, digital marketers seldom receive similar compassion in return, just heightened tension from clients, audiences, or management.
- Insufficient acknowledgment. Creative jobs are easily overlooked as “non-essential,” leading some individuals to question the significance of their work.
- Imbalance between work and life. Notifications can be constant, and many of us face challenges establishing boundaries and disconnecting.
Moreover, there are less frequent stressors such as unreliable job prospects, workplace harassment, feelings of inadequacy, and elevated self-expectations. Together, these elements form a perfect storm for burnout, which, though temporary, can seriously affect mental health.
Conversely, maintaining good mental health enhances confidence, creativity, and flexibility. These qualities serve as protection in the unpredictable realm of digital marketing. Therefore, in an industry driven by ambition and continual change, prioritizing mental health is significantly more important than merely achieving high KPIs.
Strategies to Prevent Burnout as a Digital Marketer
1. Engage in mindfulness
Meditation often carries the stigma of being “too challenging” or “not suitable for novices.” This is a misconception. However, it might not resonate with you immediately, and that’s perfectly fine because the idea of transcending in meditation and mindfulness is a stereotype. To practice mindfulness, you simply need to fully concentrate on what you are currently doing.
The creative flow state that digital marketers cherish is a variation of meditation. However, this isn’t a state you can depend on regularly without incorporating some mindfulness into your daily routine.
The true advantage of mindfulness is its ability to disrupt habitual behaviors and thoughts that can build up over the day, leading to anxiety, overwhelm, and mental fog.
If the thought of sitting quietly to meditate seems uninviting, you can begin with something smaller and less daunting.
- Spend a few minutes just concentrating on your breath as it flows in and out.