1. Are you hopeful regarding the future of Steem?

I go back and forth on this. I HOPE steem will succeed long term and invest in things like qurator, leasing delegated sp, and sbi for that reason. I see so many good people trying hard and posting interesting things and that gives me a lot of optimism.

But looking at the top end here is very discouraging. So I do not often look. But when you do look at the top 1% or so, you see people who are very happy to keep voting for each other and fighting, fighting, fighting.

Why?
I am hopeful because I have most of my eggs in this one basket and really need it to succeed. I am not hopeful because I am not sure that the big guys care if it does or not.

1. What strategy/service do you follow for success on Steemit?
   As you say in your shout out for me (thank you very much!) I try my best to engage here. I autovote 20 accounts on steemdunk, comment all day long, follow everyone who looks good, encourage comments on my posts and upvote them as best I can.

I recently got into discord and have been joining all channels I see. This has turned out to be a wealth of opportunities, contests and upvotes. I have found a lot of new ideas there in the last couple of months.

I also post 2-4 times a day - every day - and that seems to help in many ways. I post with esteem, busy, ulogs and there are a couple others I need to look into. I get votes from just using those apps to post with.