By We’ve written at length here about how scammers use fake contests and promises of cash to help build large audiences on social media. Those audiences are then used for all sorts of nefarious purposes including pushing users to pages of stolen content covered in ads, push users to websites that install malware, or even a foreign entity spreading political propaganda.
So I was incredibly skeptical when I saw an Instagram story shared by a friend that promised a large sum of money to various people. After I saw that same story shared a few more times, it was time to investigate. This was a big trend by blackhats on Facebook in 2015 and led me to predict a coming onslaught of fake information getting spread on the platform and my fear after seeing seeing this Instagram Story was that we were gearing up for a major repeat in 2020.
It turns out, I was wrong.
The Instagram story that I saw being shared was made by a man named Bill Pulte. Bill Pulte is the grandson of real estate legend William Pulte who founded the new home construction and Fortune 500 company PulteGroup, he also founded his own Private Equity firm Pulte Capital.
Bill calls his efforts “Twitter Philanthropy” and “Instagram Philanthropy” and he says he’s doing it to inspire others with means to help those in unfortunate situations – and it appear to be working. My investigation left me shocked, for the past few decades some wealthy businesses folks in the U.S. have committed to donating large portions of their wealth after they pass including Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but seeing a wealthy businessman from a wealthy family actively looking for people on social media to donate to is new, in fact Bill claims to have invented Twitter Philanthropy.
Now that we know this is legitimate, what can we learn from Bill’s efforts? Building a new social media audience in 2019 was really hard and in 2020 it’s gearing up to be even more difficult on established platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Bill Pulte, looks like he may have found a simple way though to drive an incredibly large social media following on Instagram and Twitter: Give away money and cars.
Unfortunately tracking his follower count and his philanthropic activity is a little difficult as neither Bill nor the press appear to have kept great records, but we’ll give it a try. It appears Bill started giving out money on Twitter around June 26th, though the original tweet has since been deleted. Up until this point Bill had used his Twitter account to discuss developments in the housing industry along with the problem and solutions of urban blight.
His Twitter Philanthropy gained attention when he promised to donate $30,000 to a veteran in need if the tweet was retweeted by President Trump. From there the social platform started buzzing about the wealthy user who was giving away money.
Using Archive.org I was able to pull Mr. Pulte’s Twitter Follower counts for a few dates, but unfortunately nothing exactly or really close to the date he started his Twitter Philanthropy.
- January 2nd, 2017 – 13,684 followers
- January 15th, 2017 – 14,642 followers
- March 11th, 2019 – 33,663 followers
- June 26th, 2019 – *STARTS TWITTER PHILANTHROPY*
- July 3rd, 2019 – 45,071 followers
- July 11th, 2019 – 51,169 followers
- July 12th, 2019 – 66,962 followers
- July 17th, 2019 – 74,064 followers
- July 18th, 2019 – 74,770 followers
- August 9th, 2019 – 314,983 followers
- August 16th, 2019 – 453,906 followers
- August 19th, 2019 – 512,541 followers
- August 28th, 2019 – 586,703 followers
- September 1st, 2019 – 637,219 followers
- September 3rd, 2019 – 686,969 followers
- September 20th, 2019 – 748,456 followers
- October 2nd, 2019 – 823,252 followers
- October 17th, 2019 – 871,929 followers
- October 20th, 2019 – 901,487 followers
- October 23rd, 2019 – 920,402 followers
- October 26th, 2019 – 923,668 followers
- November 1st, 2019 – 934,855 followers
- November 5th, 2019 – 961,097 followers
- November 7th, 2019 – 959,997 followers
- November 8th, 2019 – 962,568 followers
- November 9th, 2019 – 980,798 followers
- November 10th, 2019 – 1,508,371 followers
- November 11th, 2019 – 1,641,189 followers
- November 13th, 2019 – 1,681,112 followers
- November 18th, 2019 – 1,771,335 followers
- November 19th, 2019 – 1,775,101 followers
- November 27th, 2019 – 1,753,335 followers
- December 1st, 2019 – 1,760,802 followers
- December 29th, 2019 – 1,742,260 followers
- December 31st, 2019 – 1,738,296 followers
- January 10th, 2020 – 1,800,998 followers
- March 19th, 2020 – 2,137,008 followers
As you can see from this data, prior to giving away money on Twitter Mr. Pulte’s account was growing and his followers were growing at about a rate of 64.95% per year. Which is very respectable, but in order to get ideas to spread and maximize your social media reach you need to be able to grow your following faster than that.
Between the first date with data after he began Twitter Philanthropy and the most recent measurement his account following grew 6,248.23%. The growth was far from stable showing large increases and slow downs and even one negative period where nearly 1% of followers stop following the account.
March -> July 2019 = 122.11% follower growth
July -> August 2019 = 684.67% follower growth
August -> September 2019 = 27.56% follower growth
September -> October 2019 = 23.40% follower growth
October -> November 2019 = 89.82% follower growth
November -> December 2019 = -0.85% follower growth
December -> January 2019-2020 = 3.60% follower growth
January -> March 2020 = 18.65% follower growth
A tweet showing his Twitter hit 740,000 followers in September:
But how much money did Bill give away during this time to power such explosive audience growth?
Again, here we don’t have perfect records but we can estimate. According to an article in the Detroit Free Press published on August 29th, 2019 Mr. Pulte had not given away $1 million yet over Twitter.
When Bill decided to take his philanthropy to Instagram he took a different route than he had taken on Twitter. His Instagram Philanthropy started a little after his Twitter Philanthropy on July 27th, 2019. When giving away money (and cars) on Instagram Bill often makes an Instagram post in meme format stating that sharing the post or tagging friends will make someone eligible to win whatever the giveaway might be.
Instagram is more difficult for us to see how Mr. Pulte’s philanthropic work has impacted his follower. His first Instagram post was on June 3rd, 2019. It was a photo of some electric generating windmills with the caption “Flying across our great country! USA!”
The only Archive.org data is from December 12th, 2019 and shows 2,407,550 followers. On January 11th, 2019 his followers had grown to 3,474,390. This growth between these dates might be attributed by Mr. Pulte working with YouTuber “Mr Beast” known for giving away money too.
It’s safe to say his approach on Instagram was working even before the Mr Beast collab, his giving post before that gained 22,324 likes.
This approach on Instagram closely mimics the fake contests and false promises blackhats were making on Facebook in 2015, and it appears to be working very well to build an Instagram audience.
He’s even cross-pollenated the two, though no idea how successfully, but asking his Twitter followers to follow his Instagram to be eligible for a giveaway on that platform.
Obviously being a philanthropist and giving away large sums of money isn’t possible for most of us. However, if your brand or your personal account is struggling to build a social media audience you might consider taking a philanthropic approach and publicly start giving away money, products, or other things people might need over social media. Mr. Pulte also has resources you may not have, including access to drive PR coverage which clearly helped spread the word of his efforts and in turn grow his following.
If you’re curious, I believe Mr. Pulte is doing this for the reason he claims, to put some good into the world, help people, and inspire others to help – and not to build an audience he can sell to or push marketing messages too later. You may also consider joining Mr. Pulte’s team of people helping others over Twitter and Instagram.
Here are some Tweets where he talks about and credits his team of givers, helpers, and volunteers