Hey @weaselhouse, I like the effort you are putting in your new steem account, hope you'll have a great start.
There is a statement in your post with wich I don't agree: "The root of the problem? There is no incentive to interact with content on Steem. There is only incentive to interact with the Steem platform itself."
In my opinion, commenting on posts is the best way to grow on steemit. when we start out, we don't have an audience yet. So posting is almost useless, because the only people who will see the post are those looking at the "new" tab in whatever tag we posted in. why would someone be interested in a random post?
When we comment on a popular post, we gain exposure to a lot of viewers. The post is popular, so lots of user will read the comments. That's your chance to shine. In fact, I have found your account through one of your comments! This is the only way that I could have found you.
I've been on steem for a few months, and I noticed that when I produced good quality comments on popular posts, I received a lot of new followers, and most comments made more upvotes and more money than my average posts.
This is why I suggest that while we grow our accounts and our followers' number, we should spend more energy on writing good quality comments than on writing posts. Once we have a decent following, we can start taking posting seriously.
Good luck on steemit!
Thanks for the advice (and the upvotes)! I did notice a surge in new subscribers after commenting on a popular post today.
I feel that there should be ways to develop a solid foundation of followers without having to "siphon" followers from the comments on more popular blogs. It feels like a weakness in the platform to me, although I can't see any immediate solution to the issue.
Gaining a following on social media has never been easy... Try to do it on youtube, it's muchh harder than on steemit.