Scrolling TikTok recently, I came across this video from Jamaal Burkmar, who has quickly become one of my favourite creators. He poses thought-provoking questions and digs into topics most others shy away from.
The context: Rolling Stone had just released their “25 Most Influential Creators of 2025” list — a line-up of streamers, podcasters, OnlyFans models and TikTok megastars (apparently) shaping culture right now. Without getting into the details (you can go down that rabbit hole yourself), Mr Beast (ranked 7th) tweeted this about Caleb Hearon (ranked 6th), which sparked online discourse about who really deserves to be called “influential.”
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Yes, it’s cringe…
I’m not here to explore whether Mr Beast is influential or not. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about Mr Beast (sorry). What I want to discuss is the distinction between making noise and having a voice. To paraphrase Burkmar…
Noise is not a voice. Noise grabs attention, but a voice shapes that attention.
And that raises a bigger question: if follower count ≠ influence, podcast downloads ≠ influence, and the loudest voice ≠ influence… then what is influence, really?
Here’s where I land: influence is when your voice helps your audience find their own voice.
And crucially, that influence doesn’t just live online. The cultural category of “influencers” has conditioned us to think about it in terms of algorithms and platforms. But most of the influence that matters happens in person — in conversations, relationships, and everyday exchanges that shape how people see the world.
In other words, you have influence. You are an influencer.
Not in the glossy, #ad way the word usually implies. But in the real, human way that matters most — friends changing each other’s minds, families shifting how they talk about politics, colleagues sparking conversations over coffee. Influence isn’t just flowing down from platforms. It spreads sideways, peer-to-peer.
This is where noise and voice meet silence.
Social scientists have coined the term “spiral of silence”. It’s when people care deeply about issues but stay quiet, assuming others don’t feel the same. That silence reinforces itself. But when someone uses their voice — when they put words to what others are feeling — it breaks the spiral. It gives people permission to speak, and in doing so, multiplies influence.
Nowhere is this clearer than with climate change.
A recent study found nearly 9 in 10 people globally want their governments to be doing more to address climate change. That’s nearly all of us. But the paradox is that people rarely talk about it. Imagine where we’d be if climate care was as normal a conversation as weekend plans…
That silence is what we set out to break with Build a Ballot, a tool designed for Australia’s 2025 federal election. We built everything around a simple premise: the most influential voice in anyone’s life is that of their friends and family. So instead of chasing mass reach, we focused on a small but mighty audience — what we called Group A — and gave them content that helped them find their own voice. Then we equipped them with a tool designed for conversations: something you could send to a mate, complete over dinner with your family, or drop into the work Slack channel.
That’s where the influence was — not in how many people saw our content (which did end up being a lot of people), but in how many used it to spark conversations that mattered.
For marketers and communicators, this shifts the brief. Influence isn’t just about what you say. It’s about whether your message equips your audience to carry it forward. To repeat it in their own words. To start a conversation that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
So instead of asking “how do we influence our audience?”, maybe the better question is this:
How do you influence your audience to become influencers in their own lives?