Someone I follow put up an article the other day and in it they gave an apology and a reason why they were upvoting their own post. I've seen other posts where people have made cases for and against upvoting your own articles and decided to give you my 2 cents (well .001 steem as far as I can reckon it! ;). ).
I think you should have no qualms about upvoting your own post, especially at a lower rep and with not many followers. As far as I can tell the reason for voting at all is to show that you think a particular article/picture/opinion/whatever, has value. The more valuable the post the more votes it should garner. Hopefully that post will be shared far and wide and the creator will be rewarded for their effort.
If you've spent time and effort in creating a post that you believe has value then why wouldn't you use your vote on it? You'd do it for others posts, so why not your own? When you view a post that gives something to you, information, energy, joy, you have no hesitation in voting and even resteeming. Admittedly you have to make judgement calls on the power of your vote and where it can be most effective, but no matter if you're not using your 100% voting power you'll still vote on a post that you feel has value!
I think if you truly believe your post adds value to Steemit then you should by all means not only promote it, and let others judge it's value, but also show that it has value to you too! Until I have a lot of followers and/or have a much higher reputation score I will continue to upvote my own posts to show that I believe that the effort I put into them has value to me and I believe has value for others.