User base and ease of use, is the most important to focus on, word of mouth is the best marketing tool in existence, if each person brings about 5 or so  friends, steemit growth will be much much quicker.  
All the tech behind steemit is amazing, but in the end that's not what will interest the average user, and the average user is what will make steemit in the end. When I try to explain steemit to people who are involved in crypto it's like explaining how bitcoin works back in 2011. The problem is people who are involved in crypto somehow have been programmed to look for short term gains, it's hard to to explain this new tech to someone who is only interested in trading altcoins. So now I just tell people steemit is a social network startup that is giving them free shares when they signup and post, what have they got to lose?  after all how many of us would have refused a  free share in facebook/reddit/twitter if they were offered that opportunity early on..