Social Media: the Race to Keep up...

As an author, I'm expected to have a social media presence. I started blogging years ago, because writers were supposed to...long before they were published.

Somewhere in there, a friend built my first website. Thanks, Lisa! Then last year, I hired a designer.

Then came Twitter. And Facebook.

And now Google+.

It's enough to make my head spin and keep it going for a long time. All in the name of building a brand
that will make people race to buy my books. So what's a girl to do?

Throw up her hands? Wail and gnash her teeth? Or buckle down and maximize?

I blog. But I don't just blog. I let this little bit of blogging work hard for me. It feeds to Twitter. To Facebook. To my Amazon Author Connect page. One effort working in multiple places. I Twitter and that feeds to my blog, my Facebook page, etc.

I try to be efficient. I try to post on things that interest people. I monitor my Klout score to see if I'm being amplified -- I know! One more thing to monitor!

I maximize the reach of the effort. But I'm always tweaking. Always praying about what next? Should my blogging change so that it matters to more people?

So a question for you: If you're a reader, what brings you back to a blog? Makes you come follow someone on Facebook? If you're an author, how do you balance all the social media and publishers expectations.