Good advice you give here @aggroed!
I think a lot of people come here having forgotten that this is actually a social media site, and they get 100% focused on "how to extract money" like Steemit is some kind of magic cash dispenser. If you simply interact, are your authentic self, post something interesting, or funny, or educational, or of value or whatever else floats your boat... things will otherwise fall into place.
And PATIENCE! We may have almost 10,000 twitter followers and an active Facebook page but we pretty much have nothing here. And we didn't get that following on other social media simply by showing up and and shouting "Follow me! I'm awesome!" It actually took years and years of gradual building of a targeted base of people who (mostly) authentically cared about our content to get there.
And really good and relevant idea about joining external interest groups.