Posts about this topic are more than welcome because the issue needs to be discussed thoroughly. Namely, it is harder than one would think to get people onboard.
We all unconsciously dread change, so you need a very strong incentive to get people to jump ship. What better incentive than cold hard money? Yeah, it works! Do send your friends links to Steemit Whales who make hundreds or thousands daily by posting pretty photos.
I disagree that showing your friends the accounts of whales posting pretty pictures and making out like a bandit and aggressively appealing to their greed is necessarily a good thing. First of all, a lot of people are sick and tired of scammers and multi-level marketers. You do not want to appear to be using your friendship for financial gain. When you do that the first reaction of all intelligent people is whether there is some hidden agenda.
What you should do instead is to tailor your pitch according to whom you're talking to. In my opinion, you should read the Steem whitepaper to understand founders' vision to be able to better answer to your friends' questions about Steem. Then you can proceed to explain that there's a chance that over time as you gain a following, you can make a nice side income from blogging on Steem. Show your friends your account or show them steem.supply and search in your account name.