Stop upvoting posts filled with self promotion and low quality content (e.g. a couple of photos) and upvote deep thoughtful blog posts.
If people here would stop treating treating Steemit like Reddit and all of those other social networks, things could be a LOT better.
Steem is the biggest competitor to Medium
I actually quit Medium shortly after using Steemit on a regular basis.
Finally, we need to SHARE quality Steem content.
This post got 19 upvotes so far on Reddit and this is QUALITY indeed!