My xth Follower Gets a Free Trinket!

Too many companies (and even individuals) promise prizes to their xth follower on Twitter or xth fan on Facebook. “Hey, everyone! Our 100th follower gets a free trinket!”

I understand the point—drum up interest in the company or cause or whatever it may be. Join us, you could win, then we have you forever, etc. These are, in general, good ideas. But saying your 100th follower gets a prize while your 9th, 17th and 45th get nothing is stupid.

The sort of contests for which I’m expressing my disdain have been successful on the radio. You know, when the 37th caller wins tickets to see some band the DJ has to pretend he likes. That works because nobody knows when the 36th caller got through. You could do something similar on Twitter with direct messages (e.g. the 44th direct-message response to your tweet wins something) or private messages on Facebook. But to reward someone for being able to count is asinine, unless you’re some kind of mathematical company (and if you are, talk to me, as I have some excellent ideas for you).

Before I go on, I want to make a distinction: I am not talking about contests that say something like, “Be one of our first 100 followers and be entered for a chance at a free trinket.” That is completely different and a good idea. So, if you’re running one of those contests, stay with me, as I am not chastising you.

Back to the chastising.

Say you’re at 98 followers and you’re running an idiotic contest saying your 100th follower gets a trinket. Why would anyone want to be your 99th follower? Or, maybe your prize is so great, some scumbag creates a fake account to be your 99th, then uses his real account to be #100 and get a prize. Great for him, but now you have a worthless follower on your list, have accomplished nothing, and have one less trinket in your possession.

Plus, if you’re at 98 followers and running such a contest, all the promotion and marketing of getting these new followers (none of whom want to be #99) is on you. It’s your responsibility to find people to follow you. Why? Because none of your current followers have any incentive to invite their friends to follow you.

Keep in mind: these are social media. These are where celebrities have millions of followers because mindless drones want to know what a famous person had for lunch. To grow your company on social media, you might want to try the social aspect. That is, get your current fans and followers to do the work for you. That’s the depressing beauty of social media: these drones are out there, ready to do your bidding. If you have 98 followers and announce your 100th gets a prize, your 98 followers have no incentive to do your bidding. However, if you say you’ll randomly select one of your first 100 followers to win a prize, guess what happens? Your 98 followers tell their friends, knowing once you hit 100 followers, they’re all eligible for your incredible trinket.

Suddenly, instead of having a slew of greedy jerks who won’t follow you because they don’t want to be #99 and you trying way too hard to get people to join your online cult, you have well over 100 people listening to whatever you have to say for the foreseeable future, with you having done absolutely none of the recruiting.

I would suggest the latter scenario is better for everyone involved.

And now I’m sure you’re asking yourself: when is the iamjef trinket giveaway? Stay tuned.