Steemit is a social/blogging platform, you've been doing the blogging part pretty well, maybe you could switch around one of the daily posts to something else like dmania, zapple, etc...
Regarding the part about communicating, i think it's very important! i do 1 daily post because the rest of the time i'm communicating with other steemians, if i didn't do this i would have never found steemschool, steemstem, etc...etc...
Some of my best followers and upvoters are people that i check their daily content...

So, all in all, i think you are right, you should focus more on communicating, especially now that you are a witness!
You've been trying to get witness upvotes from other people by asking them for it, but if you have commented for a long ass time and provided good content everytime you can sooner or later mention that you are a witness and they would upvote you! Not only that but getting yourself and your opinions on other people's posts should make you more visible and get more witness votes, especially if you do good long comments that whales and witnesses might see!!

Also, when you see other people's posts and comments you might get ideas for new posts!!! maybe you disagree with the poster's opinions, maybe you agree but want to add something, etc... etc... just be carefull when you disagree with someone's opinions, you know pretty well how "aggressive" you can be sometimes and how butthurt people can get when you go full Philip on them xD

I'll keep my comment short, mainly because most of the other comments you got already said enough