Welcome to the club! I think this is an awesome project and I'm sure you will thrive here. If you search around you will find plenty of beginner's guides or (as they call them here) "minnows." Whales are obviously your heavy hitter accounts throwing around a lot of STEEM, literally, lol. Jumping in and getting involved in the community I think is the best start to being effective here. Get rewards flowing into your account, reinvest in your own influence (or STEEM POWER), and post regularly but quality. These seem to be an effective way to get things started, and you will learn about more effective ways to use your influence as you grow in the community like allocating STEEM to other users to help build projects with in the community and so on. Again welcome, and thank you for joining! Cheers