The bulk of doing stuff on Steemit is actually going to other people's blog, read them, and start a discussion based on thoughts and opinions or even experience.

You are very correct to advise others to do this. You look at any successful steemians and you'll see that they are absolutely shredding the comment sections. at least 100:1 comment post ratio.

While we dont need to be that extreme (is that a challenge?), it is something that we can learn from. Steemit is in a Gift economy afterall. We dont "make" money.. we were given by others.