There are many ways to use Steem.
Me? I'm just, for the most part, sticking with board game reviews.
What I've noticed about # of followers and upvotes on posts is that the more followers someone has, for example you're being followed by person A and they are following 50 people.
Your posts are 1 in 50 that they would need time to read and upvote. It becomes your disadvantage that the people following you do not see your post in the mix of all their other follower's posts.
A better example: Apparently I'm following 38 accounts; 2 of which I go out of my way to read, review, and upvote. But I've been following them long before Steemit.
The other 36 fight for my free-time. I flat out don't read them all. I definitely don't reply to them all, and I don't upvote them all.
I still do not understand how re-steeming works,but I know I don't want to re-steem a lot of posts because it clogs up my game reviews making it harder to find them.
If I'm losing revenue from that, I don't care.
So when I'm scrolling through the newest posts from those I follow, I skip the re-steemed posts and focus on what should be more original content.

I guarantee to upvote if I reply; yes including yours here. Otherwise if the post is good, or if it was extra relevant to me, I'll upvote it even without reply.

So I think that's all for now.