Hey! A lot of the folllowers are unfortunately bots but also given the high attrition rate here, many stop using the platform intermittently so you may see a drop in your engagement. Engagement is at its highest when price is high, it drops with the price.
Engagement is also often higher if one is above the fold in a trending tag that's frequent by large number of users.
Bots might follow you for a number of reasons. It's hard to say why. Can be from voting early on your content expecting whales to vote you or to send you spam msgs for resteems, for follow for follow etc etc.
It's impossible currently to determine how many of our followers are bots or real accounts. However, the fact is that someone owns these bots and you cannot buy a follower base on Steemit at the moment unlike facebook, insta or twitter where you can manipulate your stats.
Interesting. Thanks for your insight. I guess I'll have to see what happens. In the meantime, I'm just keeping my head down, doing my best to create good content and engaging with my followers who take the time to comment and upvote! :)