I'd like to help. First of all, it's a long term thing. I had almost zero rewards on good articles in the beginning. Eight months later I feel well developing.
I agree communication with people is key. And there are tools to help you with that. I'll try to explain and list some:
Since there is this RC problem (your battery for interacting on the Steem blockchain) which recharges 20-25% per day so it's kind of bad to have it fall below 75%. Posting, commenting and voting drain it, following people drains it, too. The solution is to power up Steem into Steem Power or SP. After some time there will be no problem with that. I can't get my RC below 98% now but at the beginning you're very vulnerable. Well, some optimizations have been made and costs reduced a bit but still... patience.
Voting others up to 10 times total votes from you is good. You have that Voting Power to use and it recharges slowly, too. 20% a day. But that is about 10 votes a day.
Discord app for communication - interesting communities on Steem have their servers there. You're into travel, so try #travelfeed tag, @travelfeed account, also @steemitworldmap and join Travelfeed on Discord. Just a suggestion. They have a photography related channel, too. If you're up to it, I can suggest other servers as well.
Track both your status and interactions in another tab with steemworld.org/@faithroswell
There you can see your voting power, RC, SP status, and most importantly - notifications about who interacts with you and how - mentions, shares, voting, commenting, etc. With a drop-down details tab from which you can go to the blog by clicking the links.
Curation communities like extensive posts. But be yourself, anyway.
If you use Instagram, connect it to your steemit account with @share2steem service. My ref link is https://share2steem.io/?ref=manoldonchev but you can take no ref link and go directly to the site. There are a few steps to verify. They have a Discord channel, too, where they can help if need be. After verifying, you just need to include the #share2steem and your Instagram post will go to the Steem blog as well. Upvoted once per day by the service and other users. No more than 1/day needed. Also it will still drain your RC as usual posts do. It can be done for Twitter, Youtube and other such social media, too.
If you're into fitness, there's the Actifit tracker (https://actifit.io/signup?referrer=manoldonchev)
But for now, let me not spam with more links like that. You can tell me more about your interests and I will suggest the related tags and communities or services to help you on your way. Also, people.
Good luck and have fun!
Manol