A question that I've always had in the back of my mind is why most authors are not rewarding their audience..and I still don't have the answer.
So you mak ask why am I not upvoting my comments? Because I am not interested in growing a following here, I'm just an investor but for Vloggers,bloggers,etc..rewarding your followers should be a no brainer.
Let me explain why upvoting your comments can help you grow and creates a positive snowball effect
First by upvoting comments you chose which comments gets on top. ( Most readers only read the first few comments) so if the comments on top are troll or spam then those users have effectively reduced the quality of your post. On the other hand if the top comments are valuable your post will be more valuable.
Then there is the obvious benefit which is to attract more users to your post. If you regularly rewards good comments on your post people will see it and will want to participate more and interact with it.
Many users will determine the value of a post by the discussion it brings, this is a very valid metric that I often look at. If a post has a lot of quality discussion attached to it but a low payout then its most likely undervalued, unless its very controversial.
By upvoting people who upvote you you are giving more power to yourself. this is a lot more effective than self voting but its a long term benefit. When you self vote there is and only will be one person upvoting your post and that's you, by going around upvoting many people you are creating a circle around you of people that will upvote you and the voting power of this circle is constantly growing and by upvoting people in this circle you increase the snowball effect.
Also one of the key things to increase your following is to answer comments on your thread, at least those that you liked and upvoted otherwise it shows that you only care about payout and don't give a f* about your audience.
Another obvious benefit of upvoting comments is the visibility that your username will get, if you upvote a post your name will most likely not even be listed unless you have a lot of SP, by upvoting comments you can give your username a lot more visibility. For example on dlive.io by tipping a very small amount of reward to a very popular streamyou can get your username seen by many people, this is much more effective than spamming people's wallet.
If I was a minnow and wanted to grow quick here, I wouldn't waste my time posting long quality original material, i would wait to have a large following before putting a lot of time into my writting . I would however invest a lot of my time to interact with other users's comment and I would also buy myself a little steem power to upvote comments.