Oh, that reads like marketing copy — sorry. Both Kirk and I have been having lots of conversations with people on this topic, and I’m still in explanation mode.

However, I can give you one quick and dirty answer — do what works for you. Deb, while Twitter is great (and I avoided it forever because I knew I’d be too into it), it requires cultivation like any other social media. I find it’s a great way to toss out short thoughts, silly comments, and links to new posts (last week, I had one post hitting an email list within five minutes of posting the link on Twitter — either someone is really monitoring my RSS feed or, more likely, was on Twitter at that moment).

As a writer, I tend toward social media that plays to my strengths. I can be dragged into a podcast (with promises of wine!), and if you ever see me in video, well, the promises of wine were made into reality and I’d indulged. Not photogenic in the least! I also acknowledge my limits — I only have so many hours in the day (they tell me it’s 24, but I think that’s wrong). This means the most effort goes into writing here (because it’s my primary place).

So, rather than playing guru, I’d ask you to ask yourselves what are your strengths. By way of example, my dear friends Jill Monroe and Gena Showalter have revealed amazing skill in the video arena (and of course, both are talented authors) — and since they started Author Talk, they’ve found a huge new audience (and revealed their real selves in the process!).

And experiment. A lot…now, to do the thing I say I do, and finish today’s post because it might offer a bit more information!

Tell us what’s important and why, please.

Perhaps your overworked, heart-seized readers might enjoy reading Clay Shirkey’s Here Comes Everybody, to get up to speed on this historic shift (after reading all your archives, of course).

I’ll look forward to your follow-up posts on these takeaways. I especially appreciate the second–that even though the cost is, as the ad-men say, “LOW! LOW! LOW!” it does still take resources (time! attention! social capital!) to do something good.

Reading this post, I felt my heart seize. There is so much I need to learn and learn quickly. I’ve been like so many other wooly-headed sheep, walking around in a daze, pretending this shift in publishing wasn’t gong to happen.

Help! You have to keep posting on this, beat us little lambs into submission . . . oh wait, you have been posting on this. We just haven’t been listening.

I’m listening now. Tell me what I need to know because I feel like an idiot.

Wish I was there!

Kelly