Im a social media marketer and I agree that follow-follow will do what we experienced on istagram.
The only (and huge) difference is that on steemit amount of followers with low SP means nothing. If I can build relationship with 100 people having at least some decent SP then I would choose it instead of trying to have 1000 newbie followers.
But still many people here dont seem to realize it and they are all after "big follower" number.