I'm a woman in my forties (which makes me somewhat unique in crypto circles, right?). I've long worked online doing search engine optimization (SEO).
I first came across bitcoin in 2013, when I was following a Forbes series on Living on Bitcoin for a week by Kashmir Hill. The whole thing seemed like an exciting adventure. From her articles, I discovered there was a Reddit group of bitcoiners, who were eagerly helping her with ideas and suggestions for how to live on bitcoin, so of course I subscribed to the bitcoin subreddit and later joined Bitcointalk as well.
2013 was a magical period for bitcoin, it's hard to describe the optimism, the enjoyment of being part of something exciting and ground-breaking. It has kind of gone downhill from there, though I still have my bitcoins in cold-storage.
I found out about Steemit accidentally on Bitcointalk. I was on a thread about Ethereum, and someone linked to an article that had been posted here. I clicked the article, enjoyed reading it, noticed there was a "create an account" button on the top right, and then wondered, what is this platform? I clicked the homepage, had a read, and then registered.
The takeaway from my experience? If Steem is trying to get members from the existing crypto community, posting stuff on the bitcoin subreddit and bitcointalk are valid strategies. But if they want to rival Facebook/Reddit and get members of the public interested, they need to be featured on the mainstream press. If Forbes could do an article on "How I earned and lived on Steem for a week", I'm sure thousands would sign up (though a certain amount of infrastructure will need to be built first before that happens).