We all know we should be on social media, but where are all the voices?

We have never had an easier, cheaper or more direct way to reach people. Billions of them: customers, prospects, peers, partners, future employees. People across the world who, twenty years ago, would have been almost impossible to reach without a significant marketing budget.

The audience is there. The channels are there. Publishing is largely free. And yet so many of the people with genuinely interesting things to say aren’t saying anything at all.

Why? I think we’re all a little bit to blame.

There’s the executive who doesn’t like the content the marketing team supplies him but opts out altogether, rather than finding the time to put his own point of view across.


The leader who, with sudden and inexplicable humbleness, says she’d love to contribute but “never knows what to say”, despite somehow possessing the communication skills required to lead a multinational team.


The digital marketer who spends his time patrolling LinkedIn for “crimes against authenticity”, leaving snarky comments on posts he’s spent hours identifying as AI slop. All while producing next to no original content of his own.



And then there’s the founder running out of marketing budget because it’s disappeared into Google Ads and affiliate fees. She knows full well that social media is one of the cheapest and most accessible ways to build recognition for herself and her new business. But two hours a week to write something? “I simply don’t have the time.”

And that’s the bit I struggle with. Because we have the greatest distribution network ever created sitting in our pockets.

The audience isn’t the problem

As of April 2026, there are around 5.8 billion social media user identities worldwide. That’s close to 7 in every 10 people on the planet.


LinkedIn alone has more than 1.3 billion members. Instagram has 3 billion monthly active users. YouTube has billions of logged-in users every month.

More than one in three social media users globally use social platforms for work-related activities.

For those of us in B2B, it gets more compelling. 73% of decision-makers say thought leadership is a more trustworthy way of assessing a company’s capabilities than its conventional marketing touchpoints.


The question isn’t whether your customers are on social media. It’s why you aren’t talking to them.


The barriers have disappeared

Twenty years ago, reaching an audience at any meaningful scale required something. A media budget. A PR agency. A publishing deal. Advertising. A journalist willing to listen. A database somebody had spent years building.

Today, you can open your phone and publish something to the world in five minutes. It costs nothing to publish a LinkedIn post. Nothing to upload a video to YouTube. Nothing to share an idea through Instagram or TikTok.

Of course, good quality content isn’t always entirely free. But its main cost is thought. And perhaps that’s the real barrier. Having something useful to say, taking the time to articulate it and being prepared to put your name against it.

But that’s also why good content stands out. When everybody has access to the same publishing tools, the advantage isn’t access anymore. It’s having something worth saying.

And then there’s AI

AI makes all this more interesting, rather than less. Yes, it has made producing mediocre content incredibly easy. But that’s hardly an argument for experienced, knowledgeable people to stop contributing. It should be the opposite, because when generic content becomes abundant, genuine experience, opinion and personality become more valuable.


And something else is happening too.

In March 2026, LinkedIn announced a major update to its Feed. Its new AI-powered ranking system is designed to better understand the meaning of posts and match them to people who are genuinely interested in those subjects. At the same time, LinkedIn says it is reducing the visibility of recycled, low-substance content, engagement bait, automated comments and artificial engagement, in favour of genuine insight, useful ideas and thoughtful perspectives.



Then, in May 2026, Google went a step further, announcing that its AI search responses would begin surfacing perspectives from public online discussions, social media and other first-hand sources.

All things considered, original thinking is becoming more valuable, not less.

Social platforms are getting better at finding and distributing relevant expertise, while AI-powered search is beginning to take that expertise beyond the social feed altogether. Which makes this a particularly strange time for anyone with genuine knowledge, experience and opinions to decide they have nothing worth posting.

So, where are all the voices?


I don’t think everybody needs to become a “content creator”. In fact, I’d happily never hear that phrase again. But if you’ve spent 10, 20 or 30 years learning your trade, building businesses, managing people, making mistakes, dealing with customers and figuring things out, you undoubtedly have something useful to contribute.


You don’t need a content strategy before you start. You don’t need to become an influencer. And you certainly don’t need to post five times a day. You just need to contribute.

Tell us something you learnt. Explain something other people misunderstand. Challenge something you disagree with. Tell us about the thing that went wrong. Share the idea that changed your mind. Put some of what you know into the spotlight.

Because social media is, ultimately, whatever all of us choose to put into it. If we want better outputs, we need better inputs. Complaining from the sidelines won’t change anything. Contributing might.


So perhaps it’s time we all stopped finding reasons not to post and gave people something worth engaging with.