It's a wise question indeed :-) I have started using one lately, because I noticed that after a certain period of inactivity I just lost visibility with a lot of my followers. And considering that on +3000 followers, I have barely between 20 and 50 upvotes, I thought that giving it a try would be good on the short term :) However, I agree, there is nothing like manual upvotes and genuine community work to grow your account and feel better about it. Each month I browse the newbies and upvote as much as possible (the interesting ones I mean) and make an article about them at the end of the month to help them :)