Yep. That's the problem. The amount of content (including spam content) makes it pretty much impossible to get noticed without using any service.

That's why I've developed @smartsteem (we just launched yesterday) - a votingbot-ecosystem which has a strict upvoting whitelist. Means: user apply and are then reviewed by moderators with our own rating metrics - called SmartScore.

You can find more info here https://steemit.com/steem/@smartsteem/smartsteem and at https://smartsteem.com