Hi Paula, I agree with most of the points you brought up, except for what you wrote regarding Discord not being ideal for content promotion. I think the key issue using Discord is how you promote your content.

We both know eachother's content and we both value its quality as well. You don't read all my software articles because you probably don't have time for that, and the same is true for me. But when we read eachother's content, we (almost) always enjoy and value it.

Looking at the "promotion" of my own content, for example my Learn Python Series episodes, what I do, is that sometimes but not always I mention a newly published articles of mine to you. My 'strategy' is that I think about the importance and relevance of any article I publish with respect to the people that could be interested in it. For example, I know you're not a Pythonista, yet you are interested in data analysis and visualisation. When I've published a Python tutorial that might interest you somehow, I notify you about it.

Notifying you is never SMAP (cool typo? on purpose? never seen it before but like HODL, I like it!), because we are friends. We talk about lots of stuff, about our life, about our content. And we became friends months before, because we have genuinely invested in getting to know eachother.

So that might be one additional "tip" for Steem newcomers interested in marketing themselves: join Discord, read people's content, interact, be genuinely interested in the other person, become friends. And then "promote" your content. Don't connect just for being able to "promote" later! Do it because you care personally. Be you. Be intrinsically interested.

Paula, I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise to you, and if it does (nah, it doesn't :P) then please don't feel offended for this confession :P , but I talk to other people as well, on Discord, not just you. (Don't cry now, please don't! :P)

And for each and every person I was the one to first interact with, I was interested in them as well prior to contacting them. That could be about anything. Their content for example (that's how I met you, plus your a sweetie pants), or their initiatives (that's how I met @elear and @jedigeiss), the quality of comments (@lextenibris), the originality (@traf), the joint Discord connections (e.g. @espoem, @amosbastian, @omeratagun , @littleboy etc. etc. etc.), the "joint interests" (e.g.@emrebeyler and @wehmoen regarding Python coding, yes @wehmoen I mean you, you need more Python in your life! :P). Or @stellabelle for being so well-known and interesting and smart with her skills and character. And @ausbitbank for being a rockstar supporter. Or @someguy123 for being such a cool entrepreneur. @ghasemkiani for publishing his persian-english book translations for which he cares deeply (he's also a good self-taught programmer and medical doctor, really friendly as well!) And @cnts , who I haven't talked to for over 6 weeks, who is a real friend and a generous person and who I miss having around.

I could go on for hours about all the people I know from here, and sorry if I didn't mention you but I did think about you. Yes you too miss EPIC and miss Jules. And you too, yes you...!

All those people I know because I interacted with them. I simply cannot chat with them all daily, that would be impossible. But I did once, and will again. Not a single one of them I ever contacted to "article SMAP". But many of them I shared my articles URLs with.

Interact! :-)
@scipio