Honestly, don't waste your time following people. Post a ton of content. Tag appropriately. Grow organically.
Currently own around 10 blogs with around 40k~ followers, biggest one has 17k and gains 1.5k a month organically alone.
Once you get a few thousand followers direct all the traffic to the ones you want to grow more.
Plus people that follow you because they like your content are a lot more valuable than people who only check you out because you followed them.
Case being I get around 500k notes / month.
Edit: Wanted to add: Not trying to brag, and message me if you have any questions or you'd like to network together.