Your vote and follow is your choice, don't be pressured into doing what you don't really want to do.

You've got yourself a steemit account and you don't know what you need to do but there are people out there saying 'follow for follow' and Vote for vote'.

Ignore these people as you need to build up a decent account that reflects your interests,not a feed full of people who have nothing in common with you.
Do you really want a feed full of posts you'll never read?
You may be new now but in six months your feed will be a mess so use the tags to find people to follow, people who like the same things as you do, who post on the same subjects. Reach out to these people in comments but make them real comments about their posts. Don't ask for votes and follows but treat them as future friends and don't ask for anything.

Now this shouldn't need saying but in the days of internet keyboard warriors it has become a thing...

Always be polite and respectful on here, don't be rude as it will get you flagged and destroy your account.

Steemit is a great place but build your account as you would build your social circle, build it on friendship, so you see a post in your feed you recognise the name and want to upvote them as you know their post is good and of interest to you. You can't build your account to pay off in a couple of three months, this is long term work.

Now the last thing is don't listen to anyone who says you have to follow them or upvote them as they did you, you own that right to follow or upvote. Don't bow down to anyone here as you own all the power of your account and a thousand followers aren't worth twenty people who will respect your work and upvote it.

Then again I'm just a drunk writer who has invested nothing but cashed out over £6K this year so what do I know.