Some examples would be: BuzzFeed: People want to read their articles (on some channels) The uk email leads New York Times: People want to be kept up to date on the news Etsy: People want to discover unique products Bloomingdale’s: People want to see cool outfits There’s also a whole class of accounts that have successfully made themselves authorities on certain topics and provide value that way: Distilled: Moz: HootSuite: The value prop What’s your “social media value proposition?" In other words, what are the reasons someone would follow you on Twitter or Instagram or wherever.

.. OTHER than simply liking your brand? What content are you providing that they would care about? If your “social media value proposition” isn’t strong when focusing on your product, you need to find another one. To put all of this another way... ask: "How do we use social media to promote our product?" The question most people should be asking: "How do we create engaging social content? (for our target demographic)" Trying to answer both with the same content usually results in awkward content that is tangentially related to your product and almost certainly not engaging: Seen through this lens, you’d change 90% of branded social media accounts overnight.