Do you measure up online?

We used to measure our popularity and successful relationships by the number of friends we had; those who exchanged birthday cards, met for lunch, sat on the front porch on a summer night. now, though, our friends are measured by the activity in our social media sites.

We measure our business success perhaps by a fully booked calendar, making large bank deposits from speaking gigs and book sales, or signing contracts for lucrative freelance writing.

Who knew that today's mark of "Success" is defined instead by social media? How many followers are enough to make you popular? If you have more social media traffic, are you inclined to make more frequent posts?? Is it an effective way for you to keep in touch with close friends?

A recent Writer's Digest article posted counts for notable pageviews for writers trying to prove they have a decent following for their work.

Notable numbers are high, starting with:

Blog page views: 20,000/month 
Twitter followers: 5,000 followers or newsletter subscribers
Speaking appearances to 1,000 people per year
Book sales total:  4,000 for self-published nonfiction, 2,000 for fiction


By those standards, most of us are lurkers - reading just the blogs and Facebook/twitter feeds we can scan in a few minutes.

Don't take it too seriously though. It's summer, and we know where our real friends are - out on the porch, reading a good book.