The Economist newspaper plans to triple its number of fans on Facebook, and gain an eight-fold increase in followers on Twitter.  All within 6 months!  All with a marketing budget of “tens of thousands of pounds”.

The “core” of this strategy is to make the Economist more “social”.  Facebook will help acquire new readers, and develop “a deeper level of engagement” with existing one.  The Economist already has 180,000 fans on Facebook, and a mere 90,000 followers on Twitter – on which they plan to be “a lot more active”.

Ben Edwards, publisher of Economist.com, in which the Financial Times owns a 50% stake, stated that “people aren’t accustomed to being charged for conversations”