from what i understood all these years on steemit, in order to have engagement in your posts you need to devote a lot, and i mean a lot of time. I am talking for the average person that is making a decent post.

When i was extremely active in here, in order to get 5-20 comments per posts i used to "invest" 1-3 hours making my own post and 2-4 hours reading and commenting other posts daily.

Also, a very big part is the curators that will see all of these posts as well as lady luck :P