Thanks for the welcome!
I did a lot of browsing before I joined, so fortunately I already had some sense of what it would take. My first genuine post was pretty lame (though personally, I did find soap trees and spiral broccoli and pink bananas interesting), but mainly I was just trying to figure out how to do images and what not. But hopefully future posts will be more interesting/better quality. (Probably it will depend on how bad my latest headache is. ^_^; )
But for now, I'm still trying to get a sense of the community, so I have a better idea of what to share.
As for following people...
Not to be mean, but... I only want to follow people whose content I am genuinely interested in. So I want to read things they've posted, before deciding. If Steemit is to become a great place, then we have to be genuine about what we really like, right? If we just follow everyone to be nice, then we'll end up with a really big community of spam, because everything will get equal attention, whether or not it was really interesting, right? Which I don't think we want. So I think people should just follow those who write content they're really interested in. And so on the other hand, we should not expect people to follow us if they don't really find us interesting. It will be better for those who are following, and better for Steemit, too!
So I'm not expecting free follows, either! I believe people should only follow or up vote when it's sincere! And sometimes the content is good, but the readers just aren't interested in that, and that's okay, too.
So I'll check out your stuff, but try not to take it personally if I don't follow. It may just be I'm not into the subject matter. ^_^'