How not to do a giveaway on Twitter
At the end of 2019 Pieter Levels did a really successful Macbook Pro giveaway on Twitter. He got 9,000 followers simply by asking people to follow him and share a tweet with the contest details. I saw it unfold in real time and it was nuts how many people share it and watching the count go up!
I decided to do a giveaway for a Roost laptop stand to promote my No CS Degree newsletter. Not nearly as expensive as a laptop so obviously not so high risk! I wasn't expecting anything like 9,000 followers (clue: you really need to have a lot of followers in the first place for giveaways to work!)
Anyway, I announced my giveaway at the start of March. In total I got 18 retweets so it was disappointing to say the least, haha! I think part of the problem was as well I was asking people to retweet AND click on my mailing list link to qualify for the contest. So I was asking someone to leave twitter, fill out an email sign-up form, confirm it etc and that was probably asking too much of people for the purposes of a giveaway.
I livestreamed the announcement of the winner this morning and took a name out of a hat. Gabrial Chuan, an indie hacker from Singapore, won the contest and he was pleased about that! He's a student so it's nice to help him out with something that is a bit of a luxury for most young people. I emailed Roost to see if they would supply a stand for the contest but they never got back to me.
Some quick lessons for indiehackers considering a giveaway:
- Make it something very cheap or even free (like credits for your SAAS)
- Don't do it unless you have a very high profile already in the tens of thousands of followers
- Make the criteria super-simple (like sharing a tweet)
Anyway, don't think I'll be doing a giveaway for a while 😂
I wonder how engaged are those 9k followers... they followed him only to win the prize, not because they cared. Those aren't the kind of people you'd want to attract for your newsletter 🙂
You wouldn't get anything from those 9K followers directly. But the follower base will build your authority and you can use that as a Social Proof for a follow up campaign that's more targeted.
Thats the Point. Most of Them are simply useless and just gained for a temp ego boost, nothing else.
Right on the point!
Good point, I wonder if there's a way to follow the engagement/conversion those new followers bring to see if there's a ROI in the longterm.
Thanks for sharing!
no probs
Haha! I think this has a lot to do with the giveaway. I know enough people who would sell their souls for a MacBook Pro.
I think a great giveaway can be done with these thoughts in mind:
Keep It Close
Keep the giveaway as close to your normal content as possible. Breakout successes like Pieter Levels do happen but most of the successful giveaways are within already existing communities and the give-away-er shares something that they love.
Keep it Simple
As you said, just give people 1 thing to do. Comment OR Retweet OR Share. You may see many giveaways that ask you to follow 10 people.. a follow and comment chain. They suck. Don't do that.
Keep Trying
Iterate as much as you can. Each time changing one thing. Try holding a content, instead of a random selection. Actually select a top 10 and a winner or two based on a skill. Try giving away your time: Free consulting to the best idea. Try giving away points, every week... and declare an overall winner in a month.
Keep it Fun
Make sure you like the process. Enjoy being in the giveaway. If you do it for the followers. I think you'll always be underwhelmed. But if you enjoy the process, then you'll do it over and over again and your followers will actually have a good time.