I think for many of us starting out, the problem is being seen. If people don't follow you, they may not see your posts. If they do not see your posts, they can't upvote them. If you don't get upvotes, you can't trend and get the attention of whales.
This kind of forces you to go around upvoting and commenting on other people's work so that they will visit your profile and consider following you. Ultimately, you have to become part of the community to make this work.
My understanding is that roughly about 15,000 people are active on Hive. Yo probably don't have to know all of them. But, you do need to be known by your work and interactions.
Yeah will probably be best to constantly refresh the new posts and go through them throughly, muting the spam bots, creating my own little filter.
Clean out the weeds, plant some seeds, water every day and keep it positive, informative, profitable and fun.