What a cool interview with Penny Sansevieri about promoting books!
She reminds us that social networking can be taken too far. (Can you imagine having a presence on 350 sites? I don’t think I could manage all those if I did it all day and never slept.)
So where do you choose to have a presence, and why? She might not answer all of those questions for us, but each writer has different needs. No matter how much you promote, remember that next book is also important to keep working on. She has a presence on only 3 of those social media sites. I like that she reminds us that an abandoned site is worse than not having it at all.
“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Perhaps the difference is they were never on social networking sites.
Ransom Noble 
I love your point about having the same number of hours in our days as historical icons had in theirs for their remarkable achievements. No, they didn’t have social media–nor did they TV, iPods, video games, and all the other digital distractions that keep us away from our goals.
Reordering our use of the hours is the key. In order to manage the critical social media elements of my plan (blog launch posting 11-4-09: http://cherilaser.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/), I’m trying to reorder my days so I get up earlier (no easy task since I’m one of those who likes to watch the 11:00 news and a late show). Blogging, commenting, and tag surfing first thing in the morning, before the day gets away from me with unscheduled stuff, seems to be the best way for me to get my arms around the social media situation. I also have Twitter on my phone now so I can check that site when I have a free minute.
The point is that there are ways for us to manage this new elephant in the room, but we have to make some changes to how we were doing things before. The old definition of insanity comes to mind here: doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.
If we’re saying that we don’t have enough time to write and do social media, we need to reevaluate everything we’re doing, reprioritize, and make some of those changes. A few things that we’re currently doing will probably have to go.
Successful writers (even newbies just breaking in) somehow figure out the formula. There’s no reason why the rest of us can’t do the same.
Great points, Cheri! I’m also re-ordering my days, first making sure I get enough sleep (because how can you write without enough sleep?) and moving on from their to make sure the top priorities get completed.