Functional vs. Expressive Social Media Content

TL;DR stop calling to action?

Most brand accounts operate under formulaic guidelines that typically begin with a quippy, attention grabbing opening and conclude with a call to action full of fleeting hopes for conversion. Incorporating expressive content (expressive: personality, memes, topical) will influence the way your audience interacts and engages with your functional content (functional: information, education, promotion).

Brand accounts that combine 40% functional content with 60% expressive content generate higher engagement and loyalty, leading to increased brand awareness and ultimately virality.

The inspiration behind my desire to research and write about this concept comes from the age-old question of “why don’t brand accounts perform as well as personal accounts?” Of course relatability and sales come to mind…but I needed to quantify it. Once and for all.

So… who’s standing on business?

In this case study I researched VanEck US (Financial Services), PicsArt (Software/Application), the Empire State Building (Landmark/Commercial Real Estate), and their X accounts. Each subject in this analysis was selected for their unique approach to engaging with audiences in a personable and expressive manner, while achieving and maintaining a loyal audience, plenty of functional content engagement, and generally positive public perception. I gathered publicly available analytics via the X platform for each subject.

Show us the numbers.

Interpreting the data

The expressive content received an average of 11,181 views, while functional content averaged 3,723 views. I mean… who doesn’t relate to yearning for lunch and the new Ari album? Exactly.

Now I’m no psychologist, but I’m tapping into my own user behavior. This lower level of engagement is likely due to the more direct, less emotionally engaging nature of functional content. Ultimately, functional content remains necessary for education and promotion, although not necessarily entertaining or relatable. Assuming the expressive content resonates with a wider audience, it then benefits from algorithms that prioritize content with higher engagement, increasing its visibility.

The natural conclusion I’m guiding y’all to: Don’t be afraid to give your brand a personality. A balanced content strategy that includes about 40% functional, serves the brand's direct needs, and 60% expressive, drives engagement and brand affinity, is advisable.

Secret sauce: identified. Enjoy, besties.