These days the "Follow for Follow" practice is still employed by many, but the emphasis on positive follower to following ratios as an indicator of celebrity has faded. This helped to grow their follower base and maintain a positive ratio. This led many early users to boost their ratio by feigning genuine interest in others' content and following as many accounts as possible to solicit a follow back, and upon receiving the follow back immediately unfollowing. In the early days of Instagram, maintaining a positive follower to following ratio was an important, though a hardly measurable, metric of popularity. The "Follow for Follow" strategy for follower growth is nearly identical to the "Like for Like" strategy, involving only one extra step. If the imagery on your account is high quality and similar/directly related to the niche you identified, other users are likely to follow your account for access to content they're interested in. By liking photos, your account name will be listed in the "Likes" section of the posts you engaged, where other users (read: potential followers) will not only see it, but also take a peek at your profile. Once the process is complete (or temporarily restricted by Instagram), your engagement action, i.e liking photos in a similar niche to your own, will began to yield results.