How To Survive As a Content Marketer At a Time When Everybody Gets Outraged By One Thing Or The Other
My 4-point guide
I include several content marketing skills in my resume. But I just realised that one of the most important skills that I have is the ability to keep the content safe from outrage!
Yes, it’s unfair that today, unemployed and violent people have the loudest voice while the sane ones keep their heads down. But that’s how the world works and we, the working class have no time to stand up against these bullies. We have to earn, we have to feed our families.
What’s in our hands is the ability to keep our content immune from these bullies. You might say that it is in one way submitting to the bullies’ demands. You might say that your right to write content in a free way is getting crushed.
But you have a mission — the mission of making sure that your client or your company remains under the radar of these trolls.
So here’s my 5-point guide to creating engaging yet safe from trolls content.
Don’t Ever Preach How One Should Celebrate a Religious Festival
Every year during Diwali, some or the other company will come up with an ad where it will preach how bursting crackers lead to pollution. STOP this kind of preachy marketing! You are marketing for a company for fuck’s sake! Promote your products! Target the happiness associated with the festival. As a company, you don’t need to remind people of pollution.
And please stop promoting communal harmony while creating marketing content on festivals associated with Diwali or Eid. If you do so, you will be targeted by the trolls of both the religions!
In summary, when it comes to writing marketing content on religious festivals -
- Just focus on the happiness part.
- Don’t preach
- Keep the post concerned with the religion that the festival is concerned with. No need to introduce the aspect of communal harmony.
Be Careful When You Talk About The Challenges Faced By Potential Buyers
“Implement SAP Business One and make your business process smooth and organised.”
Can you find the problem with the sentence? The sentence implies that the company is suffering from bad business process. A middle-aged decision maker (who is also a snowflake) will take offense with this sentence.
Your marketing material should imply that everything is good in this world, but your product or service can make it better.
More importantly, be extra careful that the pain points you mention don’t show the failure of the government or the authorities. Otherwise, in addition to backlash, you will also be gifted with prison-time!
In summary-
- Pain points must not imply that the current decisions taken by the decision maker in your potential client’s company are useless.
- Pain points must not show the failure of the government.
- Use data while talking about pain points associated with the nation or society. Don’t give YOUR opinion.
Don’t Associate the LGBTQA Community With Any Religion or Religious Festivals
A sure shot way of getting attacked by outrage trolls is by associating the LGBTQA community with religious festivals. As insensitive as it may sound, keeping the community separate from religious festivals in your content marketing write-ups will keep you and your client safe from outrage trolls.
But what if your client company caters exclusively to the LGBTQA community and wants you to come up with marketing post on account of Diwali or Eid. In this case, show the general fun activities that people do during Diwali or Eid, but steer clear of associating specific religious activities (like the act of worshipping ) with the LGBTQA community.
If this sounds rather too unacceptable, you can choose to not heed my words, but I guarantee you that trolls will target your client company.
Most People Don’t Understand Sarcasm. Use Caution
Remember the spectacular controversy when Burger King came up with a shock-inducing Twitter post — “Women Belong In The Kitchen”? A normal reader could obviously guess that the company was trying to make a point. And it did make a point in the second Tweet that said, “Ofcourse, if they want to. But just 20% of chefs are women.”
The problem was, dumb trolls don’t understand sarcasm. They remain ready to be outraged. This is why, never mix sarcasm with the element of suspense. That’s bad cocktail. Instead, use sarcasm, but immediately make it clear by revealing your true thoughts. Don’t keep the reader hanging after you drop the sarcasm bomb. It will backfire.
In the end…
The world we live in has changed. Unemployment, stress and the two dark pandemic years have made most people mentally unstable to a certain degree. They don’t have patience. And, they are always on the look out for opportunities to vent their pent-up anger and frustration. Use these four tips to avoid being the target of these poor fellows.
