Many of the practices around the sharing of social research are stuck in ‘information-telling’ mode and fail to draw on approaches from other fields that are concerned with influencing deeper beliefs, values, assumptions or mental models. This paper seeks to scope out some of these other areas of ‘influencing’ to consider their relevance for the communication of social research. We conclude that, despite some attendant risks, there is scope for using a wider repertoire of approaches to communicating social research findings.