Here are a list of pointers that I always give to newbies:

• Focus on delivering quality content and comments.
• Be patient. Do not be upset or disappointed when the post your spent hours on only get a 5 cents upvote. It takes time to build your profile and reputation on this platform. There are over 1,000,000 accounts and it is impossible for your content to stand out instantly.
• Be active and social! Try to engage your readers. I always make it a point to reply to every comment I receive and selectively upvote good comments. In addition, join your local community like #teamsingapore!
• Use bots wisely. As you might have noticed, most upvotes on Steemit is done through bots. I am not entirely against it but I advise to use them wisely and do not abuse it.
• Power up if you can afford it. If you are not in need of the cash immediately, try to convert your rewards into STEEM Power. It helps make your votes more valuable and since people tend to follow others with high reputation or STEEM power, it will help you gain some followers.
• Be kind to others, especially new joiners. We want to grow Steemit collectively and in order to do so, we have to make it as welcoming as possible. So we should all do our part to help each other out.
• Have a niche and build on it. Focus on blogging on what you are good at or passionate about. Do not blog about topics that you think is popular even though you may not know much about it. Why? Blogging takes time and effort, if you keep writing on things that you are not interested in, it will just bore you and eventually you will stop writing. This is especially so if you do not get the upvotes you expected.
• Upvote the content you like and downvote spammy and poor contents. This will help everyone build a more sustainable Steemit platform.