I'd recommend spending a good amount of time on Steem communities - from Minnow Support Project to Open Mic (as you mentioned) to OCD, Curie, etc, and explain how they can help.
If a new user has a basic mental roadmap:
-First few posts will be slow / maybe ignored
-Within 2-3 weeks, with good content, you get some curation votes and people start following you
before that, join steem chat / discord groups and participate in the music competitions to meet people
The hard part is to help people to get through that first month or two, when the payouts are non-existent and you don't know each other. Anything that helps people get past that slump, is crucial. Its not an easy question to answer but imo communities are a great way to approach it
thanks Matt, that's really helpful.
I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens with this group, who already know each other somewhat and should form some sort of community themselves. At least they'll see that it's not just them even if they're all not earning much.
But yeah I will stress with them that although the payouts may seem most important that the relationships are the most important thing.