I have been on Steemit since July last year, so not an old timer. Keep posting at least once per day and if you reply to someones post, make sure it is at least a sentence, not a 4 word post.

Once you get enough SBD's, you can use the bot service and get up votes. Continue to build your account slowly, it's going to take a while, like over a year. If you can buy Steem with your local currency, do so when the Steem price is low. Try to gather as much SP as you can, b/c that is power on this platform.

Good luck!