I support the witnesses who I see doing good work. I have met a few of them including @gtg and @good-karma. Some of them do not post much, but with those who do you can see what they are up to. There is a witness feed on PeakD. There is not generally a financial benefit to voting on particular witnesses, but some may decide to send you a vote. It is more about having a say in the future of the platform. The witnesses decide on hard forks. You also get to determine which of them earn the most, but as a new user you do not have much influence yet.
You may notice that images are not showing up. There is some issue with the servers, but I hope it will be resolved soon. Unfortunately that aspect is somewhat centralised.
Thank you for the informative response.