I thought about this quite a bit this afternoon and what I came to was that there are 3 different core users. People who like to blog, people who like to read and think about what they read, and people who like cyptocurrencies. If the goal is to grow the number of people regularly using Steemit then, I think any marketing initiatives need to be qualified and directed towards these distinct user groups.
I agree that something that has a perceived value like an alternative news source, a searchable database or Wikipedia would be a good drawing card to attract new users and retain regular users.