Social media buzz can lead to huge successes when people spread the word about something they love. But authors creating their own buzz? It’s hard to make a lot of noise on our own. Except, sadly, negative noise.

But oh, the pressure!

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking our careers will come to a standstill, or worse, crash and burn if we aren’t social media butterflies.

For every E.L. James who climbed her way to stardom, there are dozens of authors who exhaust social media outlets (and themselves) and get almost nothing out of it.

Then there are other authors who make fools of themselves with posts that accomplish the opposite of their goal. Phoniness is spotted a mile away. It’s better to have no followers than a thousand, not because you’re beloved, but because people love watching a train wreck.

They used to say even bad press is better than no press. But if you read between the posts online, you find a lot of readers turning away from authors because of their relentless self promotion, opinions, or their ego.

Twitter is worth it if you like tweeting. Same is true of Facebook. Nothing wrong with having a social presence. But it’s not a salve, solution, or magic bullet.

So why do so many of us think it is? Because we don’t know what else to do? Because we feel peer pressure? Mostly it’s because even though social media is a flawed solution to real marketing and word of mouth, it’s what everyone is doing. It’s free, and there’s no barrier to entry.

And because publishers and agents are encouraging us to do it.

All this without there being real evidence it’s the best use of our time. All this because of one writer here and one there have used it with amazing results. But it’s always a mistake to use anecdotal evidence and exceptions as proof of a theory.

Another problem with social media is even if we’re good at it, we don’t ever feel we’re good enough at it. It’s hard to be noisy enough. Or bold enough. Or exciting and clever all the time. There are always more followers to attract.

In a recent article at Salon, Laura Miller said that 1.1 million new authors had been added to the Kindle store in the last 24 months. It’s harder than ever to find a new title in the giant sea of books unless you know what you’re looking for.

So take a deep breath before you berate yourself. Give yourself permission to stop before you push yourself past your comfort zone.

While a presence on social media outlets can be valuable, it can’t — except in unusual cases — take the place of strong publisher support. And even more important, it can seriously interfere with nourishing our creative souls.

I’m not suggesting we desert social media. But it’s important to stop every once in awhile and take stock of the time we have and judge how to spend it. Our writing time, the time we spend reading, going to movies, eating, seeing family and friends — all our recharging time is precious. We need to nourish ourselves and our craft. Because if we don’t, we won’t have anything to post @Twitter.