You have two different kinds of chat, you have that chat inside steemit when you click just right of your picture in a circle and choose steemit chat. And the other is discort that you mentioned.
When it comes to boosting it's not that hard, all you need to do is send 1 SBD to let's say minnowbooster bot with your url of the article included and he'll give you around 1,5$ upvote. You can also delegate your steem (lysing) to minnowsupport and get upvotes every time you post. But for that you need at least 100 SP, altought there is msp-shanehug which accept lower delegates (10 or 20 SP).

I hope this wasn't too confusing.

I'll check out your post. ;)