Social networking fails to generate media publicity

[Larry]

Just saw a piece this morning that has the results of a survey conducted by an international network of PR firms. The survey was of professional journalists as to the most successful way to obtain publicity results. Contrary to popular thinking on social networking sites, traditional methods ranked highest, with Twitter and social media press release distribution ranked lowest. Not surprising when one realizes reporters are far too busy to be constantly reading the social media sites in hopes of finding something. Here's the link: http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBa...

I was happy to see that my position was borne out that journalists don't obtain their stories from social networking nor from social blurbs like Twitter. In fact, those categories were at the bottom of list of sources journalists use.
The techniques outlined in my book, Self-Promotion for Authors are thus validated yet again.

[Eileen]

I absolutely believe this. I do use Twitter and Facebook, but I've noticed that most of my sales come from word of mouth or through newspaper features.

Considering that I've never once even clicked on a book that was on Twitter, never mind bought it, and I buy a lot of books, I think social media is not worth the effort.