Right, so I'm going to respond here in more detail... having reflected a bit and read a number of posts and articles about how people feel Steemit can be grown.
But let me start with a couple of cautionary tales.
Way back in "another life" I worked in marketing and industrial psychology. One of my lifelong takeaways is that "you get EXACTLY what you ask for." My corollary to which is "make sure you fully understand WHAT you're asking for, and WHO you're asking." A very quick example... a pretty swank camping goods store in my (then) local Austin, Texas wanted to have a big event to kick of spring sales and drive new business. So they had a big radio thing which included giving a free name brand sleeping bag to the first 100 visitors. Well, they got a crowd! On the surface, a HUGE (YUGE!) success... but there was a fundamental problem. Said crowd was not a crowd of shoppers for upscale camping gear, but a crowd of people looking for free stuff.
Cautionary tale, part deux: The web is littered with 20 years' worth of failed "user generated content revenue sharing" ventures. I have been part of-- or at least monitored practically every single one. There's a huge basket of different reasons for their failures... but one single common thread: A severe underestimation of the depth of human greed. I believe it is essential that the movers and shakers who drive Steemit sit with that, as a path forward is charted... because few things can destroy a viable project faster than a swarm of "money for nothing seekers."
So where does that leave us, vis-a-vis investors and Steemit?
From where I am sitting, sell the platform, sell the "social blogging," sell the sense of "alt community;" sell the "uncensored," sell the "no Big Brother watching;" and... oh, as an aside, you also get compensated here. Get people excited about investing in long-term community building; moving "towards the new economy."
One of the great beauties of Steemit is that it offers this "soft entry" into the world of cryptocurrencies. You don't have to spend six months "learning how to speak blockchain" in order to be a part of the system. If you can write, have a few interests, are artistic or own a camera... you've got instant access.
Patience is important, too. IF this is going to become solid, and a real "thing," it has to be built slowly, on a solid foundation. Going big, too soon greatly increases the chances of screwing the pooch. Look at a couple of recent mainstream disasters: Bubblews and Tsu. "Social media that rewards contributors." They had angel funding and even second round venture funding and Wall Street buzz... and then they tanked when a several-million-strong swarm of "get paid to post" locusts descended on the system and ate every cent before any kind of scaleable safeguards against gaming the system were in place.
Of course, Steemit isn't mainstream... but that doesn't mean we get to sit back and think the dynamics of the broader world don't apply here. Psychology is psychology.
I personally lean towards the Peter Lynch school of investing... a great story and a hot idea are lovely notions, but I am going to go out and actually LOOK at a venture and decide that I like it, and feel comfortable that those driving and promoting it (decentralized, or not) are stoked about what they are doing, are USERS THEMSELVES, and have a solid plan.
So where do we go? As far as I can see, this has to continue to be a "soft rollout" UNTIL people feel comfortable looking someone in the eye and saying "Steemit is an awesome alternative social network with a great set of features-- writing, social blogging, art publication, creativity, music, video, photo sharing, free speech, COMMUNITY, peer curated, support for alt/underground/anarchist perspective-- and oh, it's also centered around a widely traded cryptocurrency but don't worry, UNlike others, it's a very short learning curve-- and with your contributions, you are not only INVESTING in a great concept for the decades ahead (definite pitch to the "increase in value" angle, rather than the "cash out" angle), and you can also earn current income from your contributions."
Does that seem a bit ambitious? Or tame? Well, you mentioned the Bandwagon Effect... I feel it's important to downplay what I call the "Lottery Effect..." that would be using the handful of very high value users on the site as ANY kind of representation of what Steemit can do for you.
As comments go, this is already WAY too long, so I'll stop here. Besides, I am only a lowly minnow who's been poking at the edges of this place for ten days...