Instagram growth outside of bots?

Hi, I'm new to the blackhat community. Although I signed up recently this is my first post.
TL DR - I am looking for general advice on how to grow my account(s). My main account is a pet account that has 27.5k followers.

I have recently plateaued after I stopped using bots. I got to that level by posting good content and using instagress. After it shut down I tried a few and have settled on gramista. But read that bots lead to shadow banning so I'm testing not using bots for a few weeks. I generally have a net loss or break even in terms of new followers per day.

What are the new techniques outside of bots to grow accounts? And even with bots it took me ~9months to get that high. There must be a faster way to grow? Any thoughts/recommendations?

You can buy shoutouts, find another bot to use, regain organic growth. That's just what I can think of off the top of my head.