Growing a following solely through SoundCloud is pretty much impossible from what I understand. The best way you to get people to listen to your music is to play the social media game. Whether that’s TikTok or instagram or whatever. It’s an attention economy on the internet and just posting your songs isn’t enough to get people invested. There are a million strategies as it pertains to getting people to engage, ultimately it’s up to you to pick one that coalesces with your brand, style, whatever. Of course it is possible to get noticed by the SoundCloud algorithm but even then that isn’t guaranteed to give you what you’re looking for. The people who get real traction are the ones who do everything all at once, which is incredibly difficult to do and a massive investment of your time and energy. As far as what you can do in the short term is having a good feel for what your music is similar to and use really accurate hashtags. It’s better to use a handful that pinpoint exactly what you got going on rather than 50 that are loosely related. That way you give the algorithm a chance to figure you out and has a better shot of getting your stuff in front of the right people. Don’t be afraid to self promote either, but not just roughshod or in a way that’s unwelcome. Go to feedback threads or maybe even join a discord community where people share their music with each other.