There is at least some relief for creators who have an established presence outside of Steemit as a platform – make sure to regularly post links to your content where it lives on Steemit in those other communities.
(Always assuming that those communities are not themselves content posters. It would be impolite to post links to your art posted on Steemit over on deviantART, after all.)
Because discovery and surfacing is so terrible on Steemit as the system stands, we can make use of the fact that both discovery and surfacing are better elsewhere and draw people into the Steemit community by providing the invitation.
In many ways, this is a lot easier for me as a writer than for people who are engaged in graphic arts because it's normally accepted that I won't put the entire content of my creation in a post to – say – Facebook or Twitter. Links to where the content actually lives are considered normal activity there.
Building up and leveraging your already extant community and those who follow what you do can have a little follow-on fact for you on Steemit – but more importantly shows people that there is good content being created, good content being stored, and good content to be found on the platform.
TL; DR version: Talk about your work in places where people care about the sort of things that you do. That's the real community. Invite the community to come over to Steemit and possibly get involved with the platform for whatever reason you decide is the best.