As part of my efforts to help new people here I offer a few tips from my experience:
Do an introduction post. Ideally this should include an image that gives some proof of your identity, e.g. has you holding a sign about your Steemit account. You can also link to your account from other social sites or blogs to show you control those
Find some people to follow. Look around the various feeds and search for topics that interest you. This will ensure your feed has content that you will want to see
Comment on posts. Don't just write 'nice post' or similar. Ask a question or offer your opinion. Then others may check out your posts
Vote freely. Don't worry about using up your votes to start with. They don't have much real value until you build up some Steem Power, but it shows that you appreciate a post or a comment
Get involved in a challenge. There are various writing, photography and music challenges here. You may even win some Steem!
Use appropriate tags on your posts. Abusing tags may get you flagged
Ask if you are not sure. That can be in a post or in the Chat. There are lots of people willing to help. If you use Google for Steemit questions you are quite likely to find posts that help
Do not post content that is not yours without giving attribution. You can use images that allow re-use, but still show where they came from. If you plagiarise a web site or a post you are likely to be found out and you post may be flagged. There are bots that do this automatically
Do not post more than four times each day. The way things currently work doing this will result in your posts earning less. Go for quality, not quantity
Do not beg for follows and votes. You can earn them with good posts and comments
I think it's essential to make Steemit a fun experience for yourself. At least to start with you probably won't earn much, so enjoy the social experience.
If you have questions then please post in comments here and I will try to help.
