Of a truth, what you have outlined above as things I have come to live by on Steemit. I understand how energy consuming it is to produce a post, so I am quite annoyed when I see someone put 'nice post' in an article that likely took the author a full day to produce.
Also, one more thing is to create a relationship with people in your area of interest. See everyone as a potential whale, so make comments on post that interest you whether the author has the ability to upvote you or not.
And just to add one more. Reply to your own post. Its quite funny when I see people who makes lots of comments on other people post but failed to even say thank you to others who have made comments on their own post. Please, appreciate those who comments on your post. That's one part I like about @taskmaster4450 and some other members of the community who reply to comments on their post.