Fighting Creative Intuition

It might seem disheartening to read that title as a budding marketer/blogger, but give me a chance to explain.
For anyone who has studied elements of marketing or journalism we are taught to trust our gut and follow our instinct. We are encouraged to sniff out a story and report on the issues that matter. We are shown how to identify trends and map out when and where to share our stories, reels, tweets and posts.
Then, as soon as you get your first full-time gig, the barriers come up. It seems that the creative intuition you carefully cultivated in your education is at odds with whatever institution you have joined.

However, this is not as negative as it seems. While it may seem that your ideas are being rebuked or that you are being rejected at every turn, the knock-on effect of receiving these lessons early in your career is extremely valuable.

Let’s have a look at some of the positives of putting yourself out there and getting told, ‘No’, or, ‘We might come back to that at a later date.’ (There won’t be a later date):

• Resilience: While it might seem tough at the start and you may doubt yourself, you will build up a resilience to rejection. You should never expect it, but hardening yourself to bad news is a valuable trait in the professional, and personal, world.
• Instinct: Ironically, experiencing professional rejection early in a new job develops your instinct. You may think you have a fantastic idea for a blog or a series of posts but an element of it may go against the style of the job’s marketing department or the ethos of the company as a whole.
  Next time you won’t waste time making the same mistake.
• Time Management: A big part of a full-time, professional job is time management. You won’t always be able to operate on pulling last-minute ideas out of thin air and scraping by another team meeting with bare-bones ideas. Eventually, you’ll get caught and you’ll be forced to actually plan your work, as mad and efficient as that sounds.
• Professional know-how: Whether you are working for a start-up or an established company, you are just an employee. No matter how high you rise through the ranks, your social media ideas and stories must fit the narrative of your employer.
  If you want to write exactly what you want to write and produce exactly what you want, you’ll have to start your own blog I’m afraid!
• Creativity: In a roundabout way, you will be forced to think outside the box when it comes to your ideas and plans for the future of marketing in your job.
  If your idea has been rejected or tentatively put aside, don’t lose heart. Make sure that you come back to it in the future and that you try and show your employer the viability of using that platform or making that post.

Only eight months into my first proper marketing role, these are just some of the tips that I have picked up. I will try and keep blogging semi-regularly as a creative outlet that I may not be receiving at work. And there is nothing wrong with that.