I think that you are going about it the right way anyway. For those of us who cant buy thousands of steem we will have to put in the hard graft to be successful.
You have clear goals set out, comment and interact with your followers and post regularly. On top of that you are involved at the start of two exciting projects on steem. At this rate i think you will be aiming for a thousand sp by the end of the summer at least. 500sp takes the most effort to reach after that it really speeds up.