I see what you mean about Steem-related posts getting the most engagement, but it's the one common interest here.
Tribes and tokens have stirred things up around here and kicked off another gold rush. I see people churning out posts to get lots of tokens that could be used to boost content or just to sell off.
I'm not using more than 2 of the tags on a post for now. Palnet on everything plus whichever seems applicable. The creative one seems a bit generic. A specific music one would be ideal for me. I'm staking just about everything so I should build those through my voting.
The tribe sites could form communities where trending is actually relevant. That could be attractive to new users instead of seeing the junk on Steemit trending. One issue is just keeping track of what each site is intended for as it's not always obvious. I don't have time to visit them all and I'm not going to set up multiple accounts to optimise my votes. Just not worth it to me.
Profit is not my only driver. I want to see more people just engaging around what they are into.