Tips to Lift Your Spirits for Mental Health Day

Deviate or Die

Do you ever feel lost and start wandering over to your competition’s social media? Stop comparing yourself to them! It is exhausting to come up with new ways to promote yourself, but ultimately you’re not going to find the answers by imitating outside sources. Look within to find your strength, become the maverick you know you are. 

Deviate: Depart from an established course. See also – Diverge, Digress, Drift, Stray, Veer, Swerve.

Oxford

Read on for advice on how to focus on your business and learn how deviation can help improve both your mental health and your brand.

Tend to your own garden. 

Continually watching what others are doing can result in the death of your flowers. Focusing on how big and attractive everyone else’s flowers are a sure way to result in your flowers not growing to their fullest potential. Tend to your personal well-being with therapy and other self-care to prevent self-sabotage and harmful comparison. The life of an entrepreneur is grueling, and burnout is real. Start attracting curious bees to help pollinate your business by building awareness for your brand. Develop joy and community by being your brilliant self. It’s sapping to replant your garden over and over, plant seeds that grow and can be sowed year after year to flourish and blossom as a business.

Dangers of copycatting. 

By the time you’ve duplicated your competitions’ campaign, they’ve left you in the dust. Get ahead of the game using seasonal promotions, planning out your events in advance, and focusing on your backyard instead of your opponents. A risk of directly imitating others is that they could be running promotions that go against regulations or terms of service for that platform. Larger accounts are often shielded by a buffer of paid advertising or cult of personality. This double standard can be disastrous for smaller brands on networks like Instagram, which favors the big-spenders or celebrities. It may feel good at the moment, but long-term effects can be damaging to your reach and self-esteem.

Cardinal sin of stealing. 

Is it really stealing? Content that is posted to someone’s social media account is copyrighted as theirs, and it is against the terms of service on Facebook and Instagram to download and post to your account. Instagram even uses image recognition software to recognize and derank duplicate content. It’s important to note that taking an image off of someone’s social media and posting it to your profile or page can degrade the quality of both posts. For small brands especially, this can damage their reach for that post, making it harder for them to appear in the Explore section. Plus, it can be distressing to have your account reported or fined for copyright infringement or other content theft. Removal of posts and profiles can be a significant setback for your online presence, and these risks should be avoided.

Hustle from the heart. 

Sharing your struggles can, in turn, build community. What might feel negative can be positive. It is crucial to put yourself out there, remind folks there’s a human behind your small business, and connect with your audience on a personal level. Rising from surviving to thriving can be challenging for any brand. Every industry and niche has its own lifecycle, and every business has its own environmental factors that can affect your trajectory. 

Your struggles and how you deal with them are unique. Identifying your challenges and creating a business plan can help you figure out where to focus your energies and who you want to reach. By applying traditional marketing principles to your distinct style, you’ll find the success you’re seeking.

Find growth in unexpected places. 

So how do you seek out innovators and re-interpret their work to suit your industry? Explore the adjacent brands and see if you can apply their impact to your brand strategies. If you are in the home interiors industry, look at the beauty industry for inspiration. Take ideas from Youtubers for your IGTV, find inspiration in a restaurant for your booth at the art market, or look for ideas from the fashion industry for your podcast promotions. When you’re identifying your challenges and creating a plan, you can look outside the box and stand out by seeking mentors or innovators from other industries. Apply your personality to your new positioning and watch your brand glow up!

The world needs more deviants.

It can be dull seeing the same thing over and over. We tend to tune out monotonous messages. The importance of innovation can impact your brand in so many ways. By straying from societal expectations, you can become delightfully unexpected and build confidence in yourself and those around you. Deviants will stand out and attract healthy communities. Following your personal conviction can be scary, but applying general marketing practices to a unique outlook is an excellent way to feel good about yourself, your brand, and make an impact on those around you.

Deviant: departing from usual or accepted standards. See also – Divergent, Atypical, Nonconformist, Eccentric, Maverick, Individualist, Exception.

Oxford

Why am I talking about this? October 10th is Mental Health Day, and I wanted to take a moment to ask what it is you want out of your business. The best form of self-care is solving your problems and reframing your negative thoughts to harness your personal power. This can be a magical quality, and I hope you’ll take a minute to transform your brand with these tips on personalizing and focusing on you! Leave a comment below with a self-care tip to encourage others who also struggle to be themselves in an online world full of conformity.

If you or someone you love is struggling with mental health issues like suicide, please understand you are not alone and I urge you to seek help.