Keeping non-marketing colleagues informed while sticking to your strategy (Jelle Postma)

Jelle Postma


The fun thing about being a social media marketer is that nobody really understands what you’re doing.

This can result in awkward moments in the workplace and moments where you feel like you have to “defend” your marketing strategy. Especially when colleagues having their own thoughts on, iterations of, and additions to your set-in-stone plan.

So, how can you keep these colleagues satisfied while doing your work at the same time?

Well: “Communication is key!”

I love this cliché fortune cookie Tweet-ish statement. But it’s true.

Communication makes or breaks the workplace environment. If you can’t clearly tell your colleagues what you’re doing, they will not understand what you’re doing.

Tell them the “why” behind your actions

As social media marketers, we create posts, edit TikToks, respond to other content, and do a lot of other stuff. But some colleagues might not understand why we’re doing this. Why does it make sense for us to post thrice a week?

Tell them the “why” behind your actions. Show your colleagues what goals you’re trying to achieve and why you believe that your tactics will help in achieving these goals. It will make your strategy, goals, and actions more tangible.

Tell stories

We can tell our colleagues about an increase in page visits, a lower ROI, or a change in CTR, but chances are high that our colleagues won’t understand what we’re saying. We were taught marketing statistics and definitions; they likely weren’t.

It helps to make your statistics vivid. We all like stories, don’t we? So put your numbers in a context and do some storytelling to explain the increase or decrease in numbers.

Instead of, “Our page reach grew by 47% over the last month,” you could say, "This month, we saw 530 more visitors on our page compared to last month. We believe this is because we’ve tried out different content. In the last month, we have been posting more Reels. Instagram tends to favor these Reels.” And so forth.

Show your work

Your colleagues aren’t your customers, so they won’t be on your social media and landing pages that often. They have other things to do.

But you should show your colleagues your work, so that they understand how much effort you’re putting into your marketing strategy.

Be open to their suggestions…

Some colleagues will constantly tell you, “Hey, you should post this or do that!”

Sometimes, that might be frustrating, especially when you know you can’t post this or do that. But don’t just ignore their ideas and suggestions, because some of them are genuinely really good. You can’t come up with all the ideas yourself, right?

…but also thoroughly explain why you’re not doing something

Obviously, you’re not going to work on ideas that are not feasible. Sometimes, people might perceive a rejected idea as a personal attack. That’s why you should thoroughly explain why you’re not continuing with the idea.

Try saying, “I really like your idea, but [we don’t have the budget for it/right now, it doesn’t fit into our current campaign, but I’m considering it for later/Facebook will likely not accept this advertisement/we’ve seen that these kind of posts didn’t work in the past/etc.]."

What would you add?

These are some of the tactics that have helped me in informing my non-marketing colleagues (and clients) about my marketing strategy. By using clear words, stats, stories and visuals, you’re able to maintain healthy relationships with colleagues, as both of you know what to expect from each other.

What are you doing to explain your marketing strategy to your non-marketing colleagues? I’d love to hear from you!


Jelle Postma @jelle0908
I’m a 23 year old Marketer from the Netherlands. Obsessed with content creation, personal branding and learning new things!


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