I think the most effective way to promote is to curate users whose attention you want to bring to your content. I don't know about you, but I never missed a decent upvote on my post. So if there are users with an interest in blockchain and crypto like Bitshares (should be a lot of people on Steem) then curating them is probably the best way to get their attention.
We'll at least be adding such functionality on SteemPress. Where you can more easily find those likely to have an interest in your blog post, curate them, and then bring their attention back to your post if they're curious to learn more.