Hello @ogochukwu, this a well composed post and I will personally say that I learnt alot from it.
To start with the blank profile used by some steemians, I will say I am guilty of that but I had been asking other steemians on how to go about it but you need to see the way some will answer even some will not ... I would be happy if anyone who reads this post can help shed more light to how to upload an image to the profile pic and the cover pic too.
That aside, moving to the aspect of post related comments, I was guilty of this, just as you said, I went through @papa-pepper tutorial and he stressed how commenting help to be notice on the steemit planet but he never dig deep as you just did, in actual sense, I found out how to use post related comments myself but I am happy this will help newbies if and only everyone of us resteems this and use it as a reference to them.
I observed, participating in some contest also brings newbies to be noticed. I do not really take part but I am using this medium to ask if it is a greay thing to do and how do we get to know if there are any contests going?
I am really glad you shared this awesome information with us all...