I never follow someone because they followed me.. I agree that makes little sense.
Just actively participating, commenting, and posting 1 or 2 times a day, seems to grow followers quickly enough.
According to some, having a lot of followers commenting can dilute what you make from your posts; so that's interesting. You don't want a bunch of bots following you, and you want people that will upvote, but not comment too much as well.