Hi Samuel, I follow @xcountytravelers post, Have Ya Met, as they helped me so much when I joined.

It’s great to meet you and as you’ve mentioned direct messaging to be one of the faults here on steemit then know this is adequately taken care of by opening a discord account, as mentioned by Ren & Scott. There’s also steem.chat, but I prefer discord personally. Enjoy getting to know your way around.

You have some useful starting points set out by @tuanis and @partico.