I'm a follower! Woohoo! Yes, I think quality content is appreciated, when people can find it. But you are right that it is easy to get lost in the rabbit hole. I'm not sure what the tricks are other than be consistent and persistent. Some people who add me now go back and read older posts and respond. Sometimes it may be the first time they were noticed.

Yes those who had followings from other platforms have a big leg up, but even then it doesn't always translate. I've noticed people who post videos do grow their followings a lot more quickly. I've only ever made one video in my life and that is an area I am looking to grow into.

You should also consider joining Minnow Support on Discord - pay them .001 SBD and then once a day you can submit a post to be upvoted. Submit it in the chat.

Contests are another big way to get noticed - you can search on "contests" and get a list of all currently running contests.
This one is slightly out of date: https://steemit.com/steem-help/@jznsamuel/list-of-all-contests-giveaways-participate-to-win-free-steem-sbd

The photography ones are the most numerous. There's a different photo contest every day for color alone - i.e., red Monday, blue Tuesday (making this up - the actual colors are probably different.) There are short story contests, meme contests, trivia, puzzle, photo, art contests. There are even contests to identify the Latin name for insects by their photographs!

Also I would invite you to join my Minnowpool group - we pool our votes and upvote each other (most of us also read and comment.) To join go here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@jetiknight/steemit-minnow-pool-community-instructions-come-join-us

You can sign on to Steemvoter - it lets you add people to auto-upvote. I think the free version has a limit of 5 user names. The paid is 3 SBD per month but allows 500. If we can get our group up to that it will definitely pay for itself.

Also check out the whaleshares program and also go chat with people on Steemitchat. It's a good way to get to know people.