The 'relationship building' part seems, to me (maybe I'm incorrect), very dependent on the discord side of things, and live chatting?
That being the case, then some us, who just want to use the platform, will never really 'build'?
( I do enough live chat for other work, and doing live chats here is not the aim - or the motivation - for joining steemit).
Is this a correct summation, do you think..?
Generally I don't have people I talk with in chat who I haven't first spent some time getting to know on chain. It can be different with community groups but the one to one relationship is almost always started under the post.
There are many ways to use the platform but in general, if people don't spend some time building relationships with their audience they are going to have trouble having an engaged audience. Some people just like to dump their thoughts here which is perfectly fine but if they also expect certain feedback, they are going to have to develop discussions.