Has replying to other accounts actually grown your audience — or just eaten your time?

There's a piece of growth advice that won't die: "stop posting into the void, go reply to bigger accounts instead." I was skeptical, so I dug into whether the X algorithm actually rewards replies or whether it's just survivorship bias from people who'd have grown anyway.

The short version: there is a real mechanism. Replies aren't dead-end comments — a reply on a post with reach can get surfaced to that post's audience and the wider conversation, so you borrow some of the original's distribution. But it's conditional. Low-effort replies ("so true 🔥") go nowhere. The ones that travel add something concrete — a counterpoint, a specific example, a number. And the whole thing only compounds if you show up daily, which is where almost everyone falls off.

What I keep wrestling with is the time cost. Doing this well is 15–20 considered replies a day, every day — basically a part-time job layered on top of actually building. I wrote up the mechanism here if useful: https://xreplyai.com/blog/does-replying-boost-reach-on-x?utm_source=producthunt&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=blog-2026-06-02

For those of you who've grown an audience: did replies actually move the needle, or was it original posts? And how do you keep it sustainable without it taking over your day?