It has taken me 2 years of posting at least 3 times per week to reach level 71, yet my total amount of comments is over 11k and that is no exaggeration, it takes time, a lot of time, like all good things does.
Connecting with others is something that is slowly build and mostly out of good will, opening up to internet strangers is hard, but being ignored is even harder for me, I just try not to think about it, but having a 0 comments post feels weird, in fact, once a long time ago my most highly valued post voted by ranchorelaxo and a bunch of trails was quite literally pay out with a SINGLE comment, my most valued post, was the most impersonal and indifferent one I ever made, in fact it became a joke for me and my fiancée, we had months making out of that post rewards, because I made it like in 3 hours and most of my post take me an entire day of work to do so... I literally placed almost no effort on it, and it felt so undeserving to the point of taking it like a joke.
Anyway, Just saying that out loud, so I can finally get it out of my chest, it happened on movies n tv shows, one of my most beloved posting places, and Its something I fear each time I post in there, that it ends up being totally ignored for people, and voted by bots...
I think it depends on the type of audience you are trying to court. I do a little prospecting when I was a little more active on Hive back then. If I see a user with low engagement levels, I move away. I may try to make contact here but then forget about it and move on. You don't have to waste time on people without any remote interest in reacting beyond post and go, they waste your time.
I look for active authors that have a busy comment section and figure out their interests. The more like minded and active, the more likely they'll respond. Note, my only objective is to raise my chances that they respond back. Once they do, I test the waters if there's some connection to be made and if it's a positive experience, I'd follow up some other time. Always checking my feed, trying to catch up and prospecting more people. I also check out their feeds on who they follow because everything is peer reviewed, people with like minded interests will gravitate towards one another so if you see someone commenting a lot, expect they also found other people who also comment a lot in their social circle and you access their network too.
Majority don't know how to tactically use their time engaging, most of it is spent on useless conversations that don't mean anything and you end up losing time without changing anything.
Heck the best tactic/piece of advice I have ever read in hive and In social navigation, I have never actually reviewed who I try to engage with, and now you say it, it makes so much sense, Because that is how social rings work in group theory, yet most of the time people tent to gravitate not in the charge of the subjects but on their perspective on it, that means that you are likely to get into your own perspective and confirmation bias circles, something that in a small place like hive is not so easy to find but in widespread social media it should be super easy to find...
This could be dangerous to repeat on a loop endlessly because it might end up causing harm to your own goals of meeting people, yet at least is ACTIVE people on hive, and that is something alright, we have like 1500 active poster daily, and it should limit stuff a bit, yet applying this could save me time, ironically for me reading and commenting 80 posts is an easy thing, maybe I should try your method so I atleast get a more positive and natural engagement, besides I already engage people I know a lot, so why not engage with them even more :)