I always try and find RP opportunities throughout the life of a character but I definately understand how trying to RP and rank can be difficult. I typically try and RP during a group's downtime (resting between area resets) and throwing out little clues in normal conversation.

I've tried doing the starting my own society thing and had success(with this character (moligant) I actually got a couple other people to have his last name (Gapverdi) as a part of the Gapverdi Family (yeah it was based off the Sopranos so what ) but I imagine how many more may have shown interest if you could as you said hand out a couple minor perks