Wow, that is some great information! I didn't know you had to put the @name / prior to the post link, that is probably the reason I never received any additional support from steemit.inc on any of promoted posts from that tab.. Ultimately I stopped using it because it never seemed to help.. I might try it again now.
Thanks for being awesome and trying to help the promotion issue on steemit, I am sure you will figure something out and continue to be an extremely helpful service on this platform!