Well, that depends – could be $3.23 cents or it could be $136.38 cents according to a study by Digital consulting firm Syncapse and research company Hotspex and reported on by eMarketer today.

Digital consulting firm Syncapse and research companyHotspex have come up with an empirical formula that puts an average value of $136.38 on the Facebook fans of the site’s 20 biggest corporate brands. Most of that value comes from how much the fans will spend on the brand’s products, with additional dollars coming from customer loyalty, recommendations and earned media.

Not sure how they figured out the loyalty part – and the devil is in the details – but still…

Other studies have shown social followers are more likely to buy a brand’s products, but have focused on whether such consumers are brand-loyal rather than how much they actually spend.

I posted this article to Facebook and made a note – here’s what I said:

I found an old post at Conversation Agent that addresses this  question partly but Valeria doesn’t talk about taking someone who isn’t a fan, and probably has no inclination to be one (but isn’t dead set on becoming a Brand Fan either).

Then again, last year The Economist said they wanted 500,000 Facebook Fans and were willing to pay anything it took to get them …hmmm – see The Economist: ‘We Want 500,000 Fans On Facebook And Will (spend) Do Anything To Get Them’

Today the Financial Times announced that the Economist is pushing its efforts to have its presence felt across Facebook. All this is a new strategy to begin early next year and the aim is big. The Economist is planning to have 500,000 fans on its Facebook fan page and eyes over 750,000 followers on Twitter.

This is isn’t impossible, or even even close to difficult given that it already has more than 180,000 fans there. So why exactly this sense of urgency? Quite obviously the reason is to work on a platform that helps user engagement much faster and prompt enough to help create discussions around topics as well as having each fan coming over to the Home Page too.

Then again, it’s now said that Facebook can drive more traffic to a site than Google – in some circumstances – according to WebProNews.

So … how successful has the Economist been with getting all these Facebook fans (wonder what the spent, too).

I see the spike alright – but was it from Facebook?

According to Compete, Facebook is the #3 source of traffic to The Economist – so maybe they are onto something (esp if a Fan does buy more, as the eMarketer article suggests they do).  As of today The Economist doubled their Faccebook Fan base from what it was last December – to 305,387 Fans.   You got to wonder what they paid to get the fans and if it’s worth it (are they buying more magazines – or otherwise engaging with the brand)?