Nice post @playfulfoodie, you make a lot of very good points in your article and it looks like you have created a lot of very helpful articles recently.

You are definitely correct that we need to help nurture and welcome the newcomers to the platform to prevent them quitting before they have really understood all that wonderful things that the platform has to offer.
As for what I've done:

• I provided a retrospective of lessons learnt from a year on the platform with links to useful articles (5 days ago)
• Ran a contest / giveaway of STEEM that anyone could enter - that would help boost a newcomer's earninngs / Steem Power (3 days ago)
• Created a SteemGig with a view to paying / giving away more STEEM to a user that was willing to show off their creative side (2 days ago)