Boost Programs: The Performance-Enhancing Substance Of The Digital World

Jul 23, 2025

Hello from the Canary Islands!

At The Lemon Tree Mindset, I love sharing interesting resources to help you build a community-first business. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Creator's Forest, a newsletter focused on human email marketing strategies for creators.

Each week, you'll receive strategies to humanize your email marketing. You'll build trust, sell more, and stay irreplaceable as a human creator.

When you subscribe, you get a storytelling guide to boost your sales for free.

Get your FREE storytelling guide ✨

The elephant in the room

Today, I’ll talk about the elephant in the room: boost programs.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here is the blunt synopsis: small creators pay big creators to get visibility in some type of scheme framed as “Let’s spread the love.”

How? By joining a group, aka “Boost program,” where other creators, who also want more visibility, exchange likes, follows, recommendations, and whatnot under the pinky promise to grow together.

PS: Big and small refer purely to audience size.

It doesn’t end there: the small creators learn the ropes of the game and subsequently launch their own boost programs for smaller creators who also want visibility and the party goes on.

The Ponzi scheme is well and alive and we are all a bit guilty here for playing, watching, or tolerating the game that only benefits one player: the big fish.

This is old news. Engagement pods have been happening for years across all social media.

I’m not here to debate the intention or morality behind these practices, but I’m interested in unwrapping this model to see what we find underneath these promising initiatives of collective growth.

Do they actually work?

Are participants getting more visibility?

Is it a good strategy for long-term growth?

The cricket problem

First, I’m no saint here: when I started writing on LinkedIn in July 2022, I made great friends - the crickets. Lots and lots of them.

One day, an intriguing post appeared on my feed. It was from a prolific woman called Victoria, who had thousands of followers. Every week, she invited everyone and their dog to make new “friends” at her Saturday Connection party.

She kicked things off with an introduction post inviting everyone to connect and support each other to grow together. It was followed by a blast of comments from people from all walks of life introducing themselves, and everybody commented and engaged like maniacs.

It felt like a great solution to my cricket problem, so I decided to give it a go. And the boost magic happened. After I introduced myself, I had a bunch of comments and woke up to 100 new followers. I felt great, my ego felt great and I wanted more so I became one of the maniacs.

The next Saturday, I knew the drill: as soon as Victoria opened the bottle of champagne online, I introduced myself again and added more friends to my network. We were all there like salivating Pavlov's dogs, ready for a feast, especially Victoria, who gained thousands of new connections every Saturday night.

It was a pretty awesome feeling: regardless of what I wrote, I was finally growing my “community” and building new “connections”. It was effortless and it worked. Noticed at last.

But after a few parties, something started to feel off, like the nasty hangover after a party with booze. I realized that all these new connections didn’t translate into anything: there was no real engagement and definitely no friendship. Many unfollowed me afterwards.

The boost party was boosting my metrics, but it wasn’t adding any value. And I didn’t make a single friend. Instead, DMs started to flood my inbox with random sales pitches and automated messages calling me Sir. Many approached me with the creepiest opening in the digital world, “Hi, how are you?” followed by silence.

Run. Away. Fast.

After a few weeks, I decided to leave and went back to my loyal crickets. Since then, my growth has been much slower, but it’s steady and organic and, more importantly, it’s not inflated with steroids.

That’s the story of how I lost my pod virginity on a crazy Saturday night.

No boost, unboost

Looking back, it felt like a performance enhancement substance to make you faster and stronger - for a short while. Yes, you develop the muscles and get results, but something feels not quite right. You missed the actual sweat and now you get a six-pack.

As a triathlete, the irony is not lost on me.

Sadly, more and more creators are defaulting to pods and boost programs across all platforms because they want their work to be seen and they are tired of talking to the wall. I get it.

After trying everything, in a maneuver between hope and desperation, they join these pods and boost programs, often paid, and suddenly the numbers go up: more views, more likes, more followers.

The ego feels good at first but there’s a fundamental problem here: things that are artificially boosted cannot be sustained over time, unless you keep increasing the dose.

Botox.

Steroids.

Paid ads.

Performance enhancement substances.

Engagement boost programs.

Substack is full of them and they are popping up like mushrooms.

None of these practices are sustainable and once you are in the system, it’s hard to leave and you end up trapped in a vicious circle.

However, not everything is doom and gloom. Some boost programs might lead to genuine connections, especially if the group is smaller and the participants are genuinely driven by more than their own gain.

You might also get the motivation to write more and be more consistent and, as a result, become a better writer.

However, once you become an outsider, you stop being boosted and the muscle suddenly disappears.

No boost, unboost.

I’m not making this up. One of my new members told me she only gets engagement on her Notes if she joins boost programs. The moment she’s out, she becomes invisible again, unboosted.

And we are back to the chicken, egg and cricket situation.

The power of organic growth

So, what’s the solution here?

It depends on which side you are on.

If you are seeking visibility, consider joining a community in your field for genuine engagement and explore opportunities for real collaboration.

When you partner with others in any capacity, the boost happens organically because people will recommend you and support your work without any T&C attached to it.

You can also create your own tribe and find a small group of like-minded peers with a common interest and start proactively engaging with them. Building relationships is a long-term investment, but the results pay off because it won’t be a one-off transactional like to reciprocate your support.

You won’t have a six pack overnight, but you’ll start flexing your muscles and the hard work will eventually pay off because genuine connections always yield dividends in human currency.

If you are a creator, especially with a sizeable audience, you have leverage and you should totally take advantage of it to serve people and help them grow organically. The keyword here is organic. You can go deeper and find ways to empower your members, help them develop skills and create a strategy, become better writers and marketers so that they can grow their own muscles without artificial support, by developing good habits and techniques.

You can use your expertise to share tactics and tips for growth and engagement.

You can provide constructive feedback on people’s content and Notes to help them see their blind spots and write better titles.

You can share best practices and examples to show them what great looks like.

You can teach copywriting and marketing techniques.

You can encourage collaboration beyond boosting.

All these things will actually help writers flourish by their own merit, without having to pay for empty numbers and participants will be more fulfilled because they will learn to use their own wings to fly high.

You can boost numbers or you can boost skills.