IMO, it's not about guilds or bots. It's about content. A healthy content platform probably averages, what?, maybe 1,000 readers per author? 10,000? We've got writers but we don't seem to have many readers. Why? Maybe a big part of it is that people outside of steemit aren't really interested in reading article after article about how to improve steemit? (which seems to be one of our most active genres)
If I were a whale, maybe I'd commission one or two seasoned professional writers to write exclusive content about some topic that's of mass appeal. (Sports, finance, entertainment, celebrities, etc...)
Without that sort of content, we have an unhealthy feedback loop where the people who are here are all interested in steemit, so well-written posts about the steemit drama of the month get rewarded to the moon, which encourages more of the same. That content is not going to attract readers from outside, though - and it may even drive them away.
Edited to add - Also, I think increasing the four posts per day rule in hardfork 17 may help. I liked the idea at the time, but in retrospect, I think it's stifling (not that I'm ever going to hit 4 posts personally, but more productive writers should not have an artificial limit imposed like that.)