Phil "Esquire" StewartVerified account

It is different. The very nature of it is very different. With RT and follow skin giveaways (or anything that the demo you want to follow you loves), you are at least attracting the right audience. Bots do absolutely nothing for your engagement.

But what about these giveaways from a person with 150 followers who gets over 500 retweets, etc? Players were telling me they were getting over 200 Twitch subs from them. All Prime. The true audience represents what seems to be a crazy small % of actual engagement

Well, if a person with 150 followers doesnt increase their following based on 500 RT's then they are clearly doing it wrong. As for Twitch subs, thats hard cash, very different to gaining a twitter follower.

It’s a bit confusing to me as someone who has been trying to grow naturally. I’d love to chat about it if you ever find a free moment!

Sure, but I think the bottom line is you want to grow your following for a number of reasons, some of which are, sadly, aesthetic. If you choose to accept that, then almost anything goes in terms of building that following, though targeted following is better than bots of course.