Yesterday I spent some 3 hours at the restaurant talking to two of my friends about Steem (one I saw for the first time).
I didn't expect them to be so curious but I ended up creating discounted accounts for them (
We spent all night chatting about the possibilities that Steem offers, strategies for beginners and mistakes that spammers do. I'm sure most of the things I talked about went over their heads but I feel that they might actually stick around.
One of the complains of them right away was that the navigation of the site (we used Partiko app) was so complex. They seemed to be bombarded with low quality content on their feed.
I told them that they should start following some people they find interesting and then their feed will clear up.
I recounted my own year-long Steemian journey. I told them about the importance of community building and the engagement through commenting and participation in contests.
I explained them that the more Steem Power a person has the more value their upvote has also. It seems that we should all look for some whales and start praising them in the comments. Obviously it doesn't work that way.
The best strategy that works for me, I said is to find some interesting authors whose view in some sense aligns with mine and start engaging in thoughtful conversations through commenting. Of course, as a beginner, your upvote is worth next to nothing but still it is good to upvote valuable content you find here because you are building a habit of generosity and might even get some curation rewards.
I told them that the optimum time to get curation rewards is around 15 minutes, especially if you are one of the first people upvoting it.
I, for example have a few such people, whose comments are especially dear to me. I seem to wait for them to comment. I try to do it myself on their posts too.
As a beginner you will not get noticed overnight, but imagine if you are doing it for 30 days in a row. Commenting on one or two specific authors posts that are interesting to you. Not because you have a scheme in mind how to get them to follow and upvote you but simply because it's the right thing to do.
You probably know the Pareto 80/20 rule which states that 80 percent of results come from 20 percent of actions. I believe it's valid for Steem too.
Out of 100 people who come across my posts probably maybe 20 of them read them. That's 20 percent, right?
Then out of these 20 people maybe another 20 percent upvote my posts. That's 4 people with 4 upvotes (automated upvotes doesn't count). And maybe another 20 percent out of these 4 choose to leave a comment. That's less than 1 comment per 100 views. So I actually need more that 100 people to get just 1 comment.
That's a game of big numbers, right?
Knowing that most people never leave a thoughtful comment (comment "nice post" doesn't count), what if I purposely write comments on posts that I like? Do you think this would elevate awareness about me and increase the engagement? Sure, it would.
So that's my strategy I took up when I was struggling to grow my account on Steem. For every post that I write, I tried to leave at least 10 different comments on other people's posts. It all comes down to giving to others and being nice to them, right?
To increase engagement of this platform, 
But now I don't count comments so much anymore. If I read a post that leaves me thinking about it, I express my ideas in the comment. That's almost all it takes.
If I want to be interesting, first of all I have to be interested.
I try to follow this rule: if the post is good enough to be read, it's good enough to get upvoted too. If the post is good enough to get upvoted, it's good enough to be commented upon. If the post is good enough to be commented upon, it's good enough to be resteemed.
Hope this helps!
If you have any questions about your journey as Steemian, please leave a comment.