How about a correlation of views and steem power? I mean , every post could be given a 'value' (after the 7 days, just before payment) based on the amount of views it got and them amoun of steem power the author has. The more views and the less steem power, the better. This way authors with interesting posts but without much power, go on top.
We could add reputation into the game, lower reputation the better, because a low rep author (most likely a newcomer) with high amount of views would mean that he writes interesting posts and would be a good 'push'.