I think the best way to raise STEEM price is to reduce the supply of STEEM in drastic way. For example, 17M BTC has been mined and few millions are lost, 4 millions can be mined in next 120 years, therefore BTC is scarce. 99% of EOS are sold as crowdsale. On the other hand, more STEEM will be produced in next 10 years than current supply. At current inflation, STEEM needs exponential growth of users who have to be investors too.
The radical way is to reduce STEEM inflation only to PoS interest and wetness compensation with decaying rate as suggested by @transisto.
STINC can launch their own SMT and reward as similar fashion to STEEM. All top sites can launch their own SMT. All sites can experiment with their own SMT reward distribution policies: stake based voting, one account one vote (1A1V), cap on voting power. Any controversies within the site will be bottled within the SMT sites and will have less effect on STEEM's price.
STEEM demand will rise due to bandwidth purchase from the SMT launchers (e.g. businesses) and scarcity such as most of them are already mined.
Initial distribution is a big issue. All the top coins has initial skewed distribution. PoW has stigma of consuming too much power. STEEM has a decent start with PoW mining and later distribution through hybrid PoS and PoB. Therefore, STEEM is already distributed widely to think of next phase- SMTs, DApps, reward policy etc.
What I believe scarcity and demand can raise STEEM's price drastically. STEEM has demand, but its overall supply is supplanting it. On the other hand, if current inflation rate is to be continued then exponential growth of users is very much required. Among them, there should be large number of investors/creators who should want to buy STEEM for speculation or influence.
TL/DR: Reduce STEEM production to PoS interest and witness compensation with decaying rate. STINC has to launch own SMT to reward in Steemit. All major sites should launch SMTs too. STEEM will be very scarce similar to BTC. Or, exponential growth of users (10M) is required who also should want to invest at current inflation rate