Without an investment in Steem, there is virtually nothing you can do on Steemit.
You can easily identify users with high-rep and post thoughtful comments to get their attention.
I've actually been very impressed with high-rep users responsiveness.
I've received several non-boilerplate replies from ura-soul, crypto.piotr, themarkymark, and even gooddream.
Socky and me-tarzan even gave me MASSIVE upvotes!
Ok, maybe "easily" was a bit of an overstatement.
It's a roll-of-the-dice, but your odds are way better than any casino.