Here's some suggestions for you:
Proofread your posts before publishing them
Spellcheck and grammar check them
Start a curation group for new users
Start a curation group around a certain niche
Reach out to brands and ask them to sponsor you if you write in their niche
Publish your Steemit posts off of Steemit to bring more people to the site and thus better content creators
Try and recruit content creators from other sites to start submitting here as well
Create a high quality piece of content and use bid bots to promote it
Hold a writing contest where the winner is rewarded with 200 SBD worth of upvotes to get their post to the Trending page
Reach out to high value SP accounts and ask them to join a Mega Curation Group
Start your own resteem/upvote bot that only upvotes users who don't buy upvote bots
Start a Discord chat that talks about how to make better content
Reach out to a major publisher and submit high quality Steemit posts to them for consideration
Reach out to local news publications and tell them to start building a presence on Steemit
Go on Medium and try to poach high quality writers from there and ask them to republish their content on Steemit
Email your favorite author and tell them to make/promote a post on Steemit about their next book
Connect top Steemit contributors with major brands and act as a middleman to offer Steemit promotional services for high quality content/commercials
Reach out to production studios and tell them to post their shows on dtube (if they own the rights to them)
Send emails to art galleries and offer to help build their presence on the platform
Start a music curation group that poaches artists from Spotify and offers to create a profile for them on Steemit so they can start advertising themselves here.
I literally just came up with these off the top of my head.
Upvote bots are not your problem. Creativity is your problem. Laziness is your problem. There is nothing stopping any of you from doing every single thing on that list.
You all have email accounts. You all have fingers for typing. You all have eyes for reading. You all have mouths for speaking.
You want to make Steemit better? Stop posting about muh upvote bots and how they're ruining your circle jerk. Get out there and actually do something to make the platform better.
Bring people here who can contribute something. Create a business that earns money from creating high quality content. Jesus fucking Christ people get your shit together.