So, you're new here and trying to figure out how to get rewards, how to get followers, how to get resteems, and hopefully how to write really good content that other people want to respond with. What you may not know is that a lot of stuff happens on AND OFF of the blockchain beyond steemit.com. So, I use a fair number of tools, but I wanted to give a glimpse inside my blogger's studio to let you see the 4 tools I can't live without. (that's a monkey with a stick tool by the way).
Discord
This is your social hub. That I know of there are three sizable groups right now. In all of them your goal is to go in humble and try to make friends. Starting with please spam my post or starting a flame war isn't going to help you the way you're hoping it will. All these people want the platform to succeed, but if they deem you to be obnoxious or bad for the platform things could go down hill for you; where as, if they see you as helpful and great you might catch some big upvotes and resteeems.
Steemspeak Discord channel- This is the baby of 
Whaleshares- This is the baby of 
PALnet- This is my baby. We're about to hit 500 people that have visted us. This morning we were at 98 just sitting in the channel. We're dedicated to helping new people on the platform find success. If you're new it's the best place on the web to get the help you need on steemit and start finding a community. The whole thing is public and free. Technically you need 0.001 steem or sbd to register for the public community bots, but someone will give that to you. We have 4 senior witnesses and a jr witness (Proph is still a legal minor) that all support that community with their upvotes, resteems, support, and guidance.
Steemit Chat-
If you're not on Steemit chat as a minnow you're doing it wrong. This place is filled with Steemit legends and people are on there around the clock. I know folks trade early follows, promote their articles, find groups with a similar mindset. There's even a Minnow Support Project channel #MSP. I currently get like 12-15 messages a day there and I've reached out to lots of people through there that I wouldn't have any other way to find. Flat out 100% if you're not on steemit chat you're doing it wrong.
Hop into general chat and be sure to tell 
Esteem
esteem- I didn't need something like this when I first started. But follower maintenance as you grow is a real thing. You need to be able to connect with people through the comments sections on your posts. Most people ignore the comments, but the follower-whales I know are obsessed with them. If you want to be able to do that while on the go you need a mobile app, and for that reason it's a total blessing.
The mobile platform is great for curating and commenting. I've done some transfers on it. It's also great for checking how posts are progressing. Occasionally it has some broadcast errors. I'm having a little trouble uploading images, but every update makes that thing better, and it's really easy already to recommend using it. Like I said. It's a daily tool for me.
Here's an early post about it.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@good-karma/what-is-steem-mobile-esteem
One thing to keep in mind is they have a small 5% post reward fee to use it when you're posting or curating. But to me that's a pretty sweet tradeoff for going mobile with Steemit. 
Steemdb
Last up is Steemdb.com. I don't know if I should be proud or scared of how addicted I've become to this site. It's not super newb friendly because it uses terms that are the actual backbone of the blockchain and some coding terms, but if you want a live update of what's going on the blockchain look no further. You can get updates to who is voting witnesses, your posts, who follows, who is replying. You get a live feed of all the clicks that are taking place.
As a witness I can check settings. I can check who is voting or unvoting me. I can check total votes. I can see inside individual blocks my server is witnessing, and I can check to see how many blocks it gets. If you're a minnow it's probably not that important as it'll go too slow. If you're a dolphin it's hard to resist.
Honorable Mentions
I can't really live without my steemvoter or streemian apps right now. I've used and advocated for steemvoter for a while. It autovotes authors I like at times I like. I think of it like a Steemit Patreon account. It let's me support their work even if I can't hit every post. Some folks game it to try to maximize rewards by hitting only the people on the trending page before their posts go to the moon. But I have a lot of folks that I htink are good posters that I just try to show some automatic love to and then I can curate additional ones mannually. If you're already on it consider adding 
Streemian is a cool app where you can find curators who are good and just follow them. If you dont' have the time to curate a lot, but still want the rewards and help good people you can find a curation trail you trust and follow them. Minnow Support has one on the front page so you can trust that to spam out a thousand votes a day to minnows who could use your votes. Just keep the power setting low or we'll drain your vote power in an hour.
