Really nice thoughts @whatamidoing!
I joined steemit only two months ago and see like an exponential growth of users which also implicates that there will be a lot of users that might come for the quick and easy money by making some quick and easy posts. These are also inactive again quickly but until they are they will complain that steemit is not the land of milk and honey.
In my opinion, time is an important factor. If one is patient one will grow as long as providing interesting content.
Actually, I'm not that patient to be honest. So what I did is investing some money to buy steem and made contacts on several Discord channels. Thanks for the ones mentioned in your post btw.

Greetings from some plankton and keep on steeming so we have more of these thoughts to read about!