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2010-02-10 19:05:22

Building 1 Million Facebook Fans in 10 Days

I recently ran across a Facebook site that decided to build as many “Fans” as they could as soon as they could. The challenge? To acquire 1 million “Fans” in just 10 days. While most would scoff at this, guess what? They did it. How? Now that is the fascinating thing. It was really quite simple. The key to this process was that they a) had a cause, and b) gave simple instructions to their audience.

Here is what they were:

1) Go to the Fan site (in our case Facebook.com/WebsTarget)

2) Click “Become a Fan”

3) Click “Suggest to Friends” to the left

4) Invite all your friends.

Here were the results:

Day 1: 987 members.

Exponential Fan Growth! Day 2: 2,191.

Day 3: 5,175

Day 4: 8,798

Day 5: 17,408

Day 6: 38,852

Day 7: 105,119

Day 8: 202,262

Day 9: 508,726 members!

Day 10: 1,096,284

Can anyone do this? Well, yes and no. This group was an organization that had a passionate cause that it was rallying behind. Others that were also passionate about this cause were motivated to become a “Fan” as well. You can do this same sort of thing by taking up a cause. It can be anything that people are passionate about. This could be fighting breast cancer, child predators, Internet sex or patriotic themes. To get closer to home, you could strike up neighborhood watch causes to keep your neighborhood safe. Think about it. By definition, you will be accumulating friends, fans and addresses.

If you’re in a real estate organization, which is a for profit enterprise, there are ways to get the same zeal behind your brand. Keep in mind that you are doing this from your Fans page and not from your personal page. It’s also nice to have a Facebook Fan Title. In order to even get a fan page title (as ours has the extension of “/webstarget” behind the Facebook.com) you will have to have a minimum of 25 “Fans”.

Here are a few ideas for you if you are a for profit company:

Work with various not for profit organizations. It’s possible that your CRS Chapter has a cause that it is raising funds for. This is an excellent start to accumulate names. Think of how you can grow with the cause. RE/MAX is doing some good work with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, just as an example.

Create something that people want to be a part of. It doesn’t have to be a cause. It could be a conversation group. Could be a place where bragging goes on. it could be a trend that people want to be a part of, just make sure your company is associated with whatever you create.

Make it a challenge. These folks said “I bet we can get 1 million fans in 10 days.” And people took this on as a challenge.

Final note: Look at those numbers above. They’re experiencing exponential growth. They started with 1,000 people and grew by 2x or 3x every day. Just remember, they started with 1,000. Now, I have a few hundred Facebook friends and so do most of the folks I know. If this sounds impossible to you, think again.

Randy Eagar is a national speaker and trainer as well as an SEO consultant to hundreds of well-known real estate professionals. He has received the reputation of being a technology humorist as he makes technology enjoyable and interesting.

WebsTarget SEO focuses on real estate website positioning and marketing. To learn how strong your website is against your competitors, go to http://www.webstarget.com/land-realtown-article.html.