Ha, I absolutely love this! I personally can't stand the Stock photos and would never use them on my own posts, just tacky as all get out if you ask me!
Also, can't deal with those who are constantly spamming with the follow me in the comment section. Either your content will lead others to follow and upvote your stuff or it won't. It does no good to beg for followers!
Yeah it's really dumb. Though I imagine many of those people just lack knowledge of basic Steemit etiquette and how sad it looks to beg for stuff. On top of the fact that I doubt it is successful anyway, so why even bother to begin with?
Yup! As I said your content will lead others to follow and upvote so there's basically no need to ask. Even with small reputation scores, if you post decent quality comments, which is something I emphasize to new Steemians to focus on for the first several months, you can gain rewards and increase your reputation score.
I've noticed most of posts in the trending and hot section are from users who have their reputation scores in the high 60s to low 70s, so increasing that score is something I tend to focus on more often than not. Keep in good graces with some of the higher accounts and things work out nicely.
Note : There's also a tendency for people to copy what they see working for others, I've seen a couple of times already - say for instance, when I said your content will lead others to follow you, and I see it repeated by others - good ol' echo chamber, here we come!
Even found one fella that I know follows my work and has posted on it making his own list of favorite Steemians to follow last week, right after I had posted a blog basically summarizing the same! Ha, talk about original content!