I have been on steemit for more than half a year now and I get your struggle. I have been struggling with this for a while and have not yet come to a full conclusion, but what I do know is, is that blockchain social media will replace original social media and we'll have Steemit to thank for. It might not be the last one standing, but it will be here for a while.

That said, these days any other social media platform is after your money, we have a Facebook page with more than 12k followers (something we have build through years of hard work) and now we get barely 12 likes on a relevant story. That is 0,1%! It used to be a lot more and our content and quality of our photos and stories has only increased... Instagram is a lot better, but this will change in the near future. I read an article saying that it is a good thing that we start using paid Instagram posts to promote our own life. I personally think that is way over the line, but I might be getting on a side track...

Anyway, you want to know the reason? It is quite simple; money. My personal Facebook feed is filled with ads by Facebook saying, you can reach 4000 people if you pay 22 euro, etc... There are 12.000 people that want to know what is happening with our brand, we didn't force anyone to click on like my page... Yet almost no-one sees our content anymore, because we don't want to pay. It is ridiculous.

On steemit (I really feel there is a huge potential here) we have to start all over again. And you are right, growing your brand could happen organically, through years and years of hard work, but if no-one notices you, how the hell are you ever going to get anywhere? So, everyone is turning to bidbots and there is no reason not to navigate all the possibilities the system has to offer. I want to create a brand on steemit and I am obviously not going to get there being unnoticed in the sea of crap that is being put out there every day, so I am using smartsteem at the moment (amongst other ways like commenting and entering competitions), not the bidbot (because I believe there are better ways to fix this), but their 'buy votes service'. I sell votes as well, but only to accounts that have been rated two stars or more and I know how hard it is to get those stars, because we only got two.

Anyway, in my eyes this system is the best there is at the moment and I will be supporting it till someone figures out a better way to fix this bidbot problem.

As a conclusion I would like to say that there is no right or wrong, but that bidbots need to be delt with.

All the best!