Nice overview.
I myself struggle with my posts not being noticed enough..
It's tough because sometimes I can write huge post, hours invested- and forget about the money... it feels like it is not noticed, and no one reads it.
I was desparate and tried to use SteemFollower...
Then after followers exchange - I become frustrated I follow thouthands of people that are not interesting...
So I had to unfollow all of them and start from scratch...
It is indeed very hard to build some steem-relationships...
But indeed quality of posts do matter...
If you ready to invest, than minnowbooster and buildawhale and other bots can help a lot of being noticed...
But it COSTS