What is worthy of attention and what deserves reward and what doesn't
I always try to look at the overall intend behind why someone is posting on Steemit and if a post or comment is genuine. So much of the content here seems to be just made with the idea "how can I make daily posts with the least amount of effort possible that can get some upvotes" without any other function for the one who made the post or the potential readers.
From my experience (peronal and based on what I see supporting others) it is far more effective to give / get consistent small support compared to having to hope for the occasional whale upvote. I started around 5 months ago with a monthly curation support post to support and grow the sports betting community (which was pretty much non-existant). Even though many of the upvotes went to waste, some of brought about real inspiration and dedication which now 5 months later created a real community (SBC) having it's own discord server and even an 1.5k+ SP upvote bot that can be used for free by everyone in our community.
It's not always easy though to spot steemians that have the potential to truly care about this platform and will stick to it in the longer run. I also must say that at times as a dolphin it's very tempting to say screw it and just use steemit in an far more selfish way which might even earn me more and is far less time consuming.
Over time, it is relatively easy if you are paying attention. perhaps one day, there will be an automated feature to present it.
If I had done that, I would be a lot more useful now...