Thanks gregmartin, well I've seen that autosteem can help gain a few followers just by setting it up to autovote new users.  If you vote new users with a max votes set low (under 10 for example) then it will only vote users who don't yet have a bunch of followers.  These users often check their votes and follow people back, which can help you as they continue to use steemit.  other ways to filter can do something similar, this is just an example.