Comments get treated as admin. They are closer to a second content surface, and they do three jobs at once.
They move distribution
Reply threads — comments on comments — are weighted more heavily than single comments across most platforms, and early conversation feeds the prediction that decides how far a post travels. Answering the first ten comments properly in the first hour is measurably worth more than answering forty of them tomorrow.
They generate the next post
Every question in your comments is a post someone has explicitly asked for, phrased in their own words. That phrasing is also your best source of tag vocabulary, because it is how your actual audience describes what you make.
Keep a note file. Ten minutes of reading comments produces more usable ideas than an hour of staring at a content calendar.
They are the relationship
People follow accounts that reply. It is not a growth hack, it is just how attention works between humans. An account with ten thousand followers and no replies is a broadcast; one with a thousand and real conversation is a community.
A workable system
Set a timer for fifteen minutes after posting and reply properly to everything. Then one more pass the next morning. Beyond that, diminishing returns — but those two passes cover the window that matters.