Starting out in the Steemit community can be very tough

I've recently started out contributing to the steemit community. I'm experimenting with multiple approaches and hoping to gain somewhat of a following. This, however, has been harder than I originally expected. I'm not new to blogging, nor am I really a veteran in it. I started blogging in the beginning of the year and gradually obtained a following in another platform. I expect it to be easier this time around having learned how to make titles that capture attention and other little things that a new comer doesn't understand.

I find that the biggest obstacle is the reputation. The hardest step was to get past reputation 25. It took me about four posts if I remember correctly. This despite them being quality posts, or at least I like to think so. Of course everyone won't like them. People prefer different things. The fact however is, that not a lot of people actually read posts that are written by new members of the community. I understand this, however, it seems that it is actually easier to gain reputation by writing non-quality posts as a beginner, the chances someone actually reads your post are probably similar. By non-quality posts I refer to people who write something similar to a facebook status or who post an interesting video, but don't even say it is not their video. Nevertheless, I think the reputation is a very important part of the system and otherwise we wouldn't have any indication of what is quality or what is not, without you or someone else possibly wasting their time reading non-quality posts.

I'm constantly trying to figure out how I could get people to actually take time to read my posts, not that I want people to waste their time, but I believe I have something to offer people. It is also rather hard to distinguish, which topics actually interest the majority of people who might like to follow me. Each posts seems to gather interest at random. First I though each post would gather more and more interest from the community, but this hasn't been the case, actually one of my recent posts only gathered one up vote. That might be due to the topic, that I can understand, but it all seems very random.

I'm wondering how I could turn this around and how new comers could be supported better. I would appreciate if people who read this post would take their time and see if there are any posts that might interest you and have a read. If you dislike the post, it would also be appreciated if you could express this to me in a constructive manner. If you like what I write about, maybe help me by up voting it. Honestly, I don't like begging for upvotes, I want people to upvote when they actually find something interesting.

Do you have tips for me? The obvious tips of course include: just keep on writing, comment on other peoples posts, etc. but is there anything, which might be special to the steemit community?