Well, just a few hours after I wrote the comment, the price of Steem went up by some 40% :D Even these short term spikes can attract more people to Steem (both old and new users) and increase the engagement level. But don´t get too distracted by the comments anyway, even I with over 2 thousand followers sometimes happen to have very little or even no engagement under my posts :D

Yeah, contests are great for newbies. There are many of them. I can recommend, for example, daily travel contests by @czechglobalhosts (I don´t know how many places you have been to but today is South American Saturday and tomorrow is Asian Sunday) or the weekly People Photography challenge by @worldcapture. I also host random contests sometimes :) Good luck!