Swapping correlation (fans) for causation (passion) the San Francisco Chronicle reports that 74% of the USAs House races won are a match with the number of people who became a Facebook Fan of the candidate in the weeks leading up to the election.
Having more fans than your opponent wasnt always a winning sign:
Not everyone was able to parlay Facebook popularity into a victory, though. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, lost to Republican challenger Daniel Webster, despite having about six times as many fans on Facebook.
Its pretty sure that this statistic " and ones like it " will resurface in a bunch of marketing speak for some time to come because obviously youll need more Facebook Fans.
How To Get Facebook Fans
Using a search engine you might try to find an answer to that question and I can virtually guarantee you that before long someone will want to sell you Facebook Fans.
Oh wait thats already happening.
The thing is
Its Not About The Number of Facebook Fans
The only winning numbers game is spam. The more spam you send out the more money you make: a 0.000008% to 0.00001% (PDF) conversion rate can still net you $100 a day (PDF) to $3.5 million a year.
Why?
Because somebody somewhere somehow will open that message one day " and some of those people will be tricked and swindled into parting with their hard earned money to make a scammer richer.
But youre not a scammer.
In any business relations game its not about the number but about the quality. The better your prospect list is, the less work you need to do to convert and " thus " the higher the ROI.
The same holds true for Twitter (followers) or Facebook (fans).
So what youd be really asking is
How To Get Passionate Facebook Fans
Because, look, I dont know about you but theres a limit to my involvement with politics and friending or fanning a politician on Facebook " thats right there what that involvement stops. Its like, why would I???
For these political candidates to have fans (even the losers have 30k+ " more than many SMBs have) says a lot about the amount of passion these people feel.
Now, true, the barrier to and the scope of involvement on Facebook is low. Still " these people went and clicked on LIKE in relation to a politician.
If they can do that, make people feel passionate about a politician, and fuel that passion for those fans to become word-of-mouth evangelists " can you do it for whatever you are selling?