I very nearly marked this as tl;dr that's a lot of examples. :-D
You're absolutely right, the trick is to be a Good Steemian. What do we mean by that? By interacting with other members with meaningful comments, not those annoying ones of "I upvoted you, upvote me!" or "Please follow me!" tbh I hope people who do that remain plankton for a long time until they learn the errors of their ways.
Be selective who you follow, remember you can always unfollow if they become boring. There is no way you can read more than 200 followers work every day anyway unless your only income is Steemit. Just because someone has 5000 followers means nothing, a quarter of those could be bots.
Resteems are actually of more value to new users than anything else. If I resteem you that means your work will come to the attention of my followers and if they resteem you too you'll come to the attention of their followers and so it snowballs.
@dickturpin, these are great ideas and suggestion you have shared, many minnows like me started the journey not knowing the things we are sharing now so I was making mistakes here and there. This is why I try as much as I can to always read and search for information myself because nobody will tell you some of these things until you read and discover. Thanks for your awesome ideas