I actually agree with you on the bots. When it comes to promotion, I have no problem mentioning links in designated promotion areas in various chat apps. I doubt it brings many eyeballs but I'm sure it helps a little. When it comes to bots, I actually don't like them at all. I use the voting app because I feel it can give brand new people like me a little "leg up" and kickstart on the platform but it's interesting because I wish they didn't exist. Bots will ruin SteemIt. This is a platform where the cream should rise to the top, based on the value of the content, not based on how many bots someone uses.
Rule #1 (in my book and my post above) is to post valuable content and to try to be consistent with it. In an ideal world, people will reward consistent quality with their votes. In the real world, it's hard to be seen when you're first starting out and most people will give up when they don't see traction after devoting a lot of time to the platform. Hence, the rise of the bots to help gain initial traction. The problem that follows is that, if the bots created that initial traction, most people won't turn them off once the traction is there. It becomes a perpetual cycle of using bots as a result of greed as opposed to out of necessity to create initial traction.
Anyway... Those are my thoughts on bots. Personally, with only 44 followers and actually having a little bit of initial traction, I'll probably be turning the voting bot off now.