I'm not sure where you're going with this... In the real world, information, time and attention from people has a lot of value. For the moment, social media platforms are centralized and users don't benefit from the value that they are creating.This is the reason why people should join Steem.
Steem isn't just some magical coin that we speculate on. It is a functional cryptocurrency, which is already a lot compared to some other coins given how the blockchain technology is new.
Companies will want to pay for post promotion and advertisement, just like they do on other centralized central media platforms, but the difference is that it's the users that will be compensated. As I said, information has value; attention from people has value; that is why posts deserve upvotes, while simple begging doesn't...
"Throwing some meaningless content into post and hoping for votes is acceptable" If someone upvotes a comment/a post then that post does not have meaningless content to the upvoter! they could've upvoted anything else, including themselves, but they chose to upvote that post. There is nothing wrong with posting some content and hoping for someone to appreciate it imho.