Well, the ones who are still enquiring about the votes, I would like to say to those that, it's not something you should focus more about.

The first thing you should concentrate on is on the quality of the content you are providing. Try to be consistent. (I see @firepower is quite consistent with the articles). That's the time you start getting loyal followers irrespective of the fact whether you follow them back or not. They follows you coz they love to. :)

The second thing one should care about is curation. Engaging with others. At least that had been very helpful for me in my last week to get a lot of new (and targetted) followers.

And btw, voting does not determine the Earnings always. My second post on this platform got 67 votes and earned $60 only (payout completed) , whereas my third post (latest one) got just 45 votes, earned $70+ and its increasing. So you shouldn't care about how many votes you can gather, rather you should care about WHOM you are getting the votes from.

Surely someone with high reputation will give you better earnings, if that's something you care about (yeah everybody does a bit I know) :)

And at last, it all come backs to the relationship you maintain with fellow steemians. If someone feels that you are regularly following their updates, he will definitely check your content back :)

Another nicely written post @firepower
I don't know if Steem has any algorithm like fb, but it always shows me your post first whenever I visit my feed. Haha 😅😅