you have to create something that appeals to the whales so to speak

There are something like 37 whales (I haven't checked the latest number, but it won't have varied much) and, even with Hive in its current rate of activity, something like 6,000 accounts posting each day (this is blog posts, I'm not including the hordes in Splinterlands). Whales do not have time to sift through that many posts each day, far less form relationships with everyone and assess their reputation (by reputation, I am talking about how people behave on Hive, not what their number is).

The advice I received when I started five-plus years ago was to form a network of 10-20 people with whom you grow strong relationships and with whom your accounts will grow in tandem with each other. The people that I formed relationships with are still in my network, and all of us are now Orcas - I think it took me about four years to reach Orca.

There's lots of information about networks around the internet - one theory is that about 150 connections is about as much as one individual can reasonably maintain relationships with. We have communities now as well, where people can engage with other people with shared interests, so that journey has become a lot easier.

The other general advice is not to compare yourself and your progress with other people - there will always be accounts that do better than you and others that do worse than you. Set your own path and build your own network.