As someone who's been thinking of trimming their following list at some point in the future when I find the time, there are a few things that have come to mind of what to look out for that I wanted to share some thoughts on. Often it may be small things like this one but it could incite some nice discussions regarding it.
The reason I am following so many is due to my curation and wanting to curate as broadly as possible and incentivize a lot of different "cultures" on Steem. Once 
Resteems.
I've tried using resteems depending on important posts of that day in my opinion but at the same time letting people know about new things that are popping up on the Steem blockchain. I realize that many due occasionally unfollow someone based on something they didn't like having seen resteemed and that's okay, everything can be judged in any way by anyone on this blockchain and everyone is free to do however they like and most of the time without getting flagged over it.
Something I've noticed happening quite often lately is that the user you are following also comments on that post. This is something we should encourage being done more often not just based off the comment, but leaving any percentage vote on the user that made you stumble upon this post which you may or may not reward with a vote as well. There are so many reasons why this option would be awesome to get more people to do them, no matter how small the vote or percentage is.
It rewards the resteemer as a referral sort of way where it's a win-win for both resteemer+commenter and possibly the author. (and of course also the voter in curation)
Not counting bots, it also shows who the active Steemians are and reliably often resteem good stuff and how many supporters that resteemer has behind them.
Could open up a possible advertisement market that rewards good resteemers with genuine votes behind them for resteems. If the resteemers sell out and resteem garbage stuff they lose followers and amount of votes on their comments thus its in the interest of both advertisers to provide quality and in the resteemers interest to not lose followers thus continuing a long and healthy advertisement "career".
The issue is that it could alter the rank of comments quite a lot. I realize some authors don't like when other curators reward the users on their comment page with votes cause it messes up the order they'd want to present to readers. I've also heard that some authors take it personally if a curator rewards a comment to the top that could somehow be translated as offensive in hiding and thought of too much into what the meaning was.
I've personally thought of it as if bigger users were to reward comments on my page with a lot of votes and value it just means that will make that commenter come back cause they felt they were doing something right. Although I'm not saying that that's the only reason people comment on posts, but it can make you more active to comment. I know for instance there's been many times on Reddit where I've been reading a discussion and both parties were wrong cause they didn't know about something that had happened which changed everything, but explaining the whole story took more time than I had or thought were worth to spend time writing to two random strangers on the internet arguing about nothing they could've helped.
Anyway, if you appreciate good resteems and like reading the comment section and notice the person resteeming it has commented something, let him know with a small vote. Would be cool if we could maybe fund resteems their own reward pool and have a front-end like Steeve that just creates a comment and uses your vote on it to send you a "resteem reward" in 7 days.
What are your thoughts on this?
Could this bring integrity and effective marketing for Steem users resteems? Survival of the fittest /who knows their followers and what they want best? :shrug:
Unfortunately I have no advertisement experience as I find all of them quite dumb unless it's about PC stuff where I can feel the difference from graphic card x and y. :D