Beginning to publish oneself is an interesting adventure not the least because one does it because one feels the work is worth reading, and not so much for the money. If the world were moneyless it would be even more of a pleasure.
But I worry that people replace social networking for marketing of a more traditional kind and I look at myself; when I see people posting their new book I delete the post without even reading it. I can find my own books. But when my friends tell me of a book they have read, I listen. That is the secret of being a writer your marketing is the readers, a groups of people who are always talking about good books. All the money one spends on marketing is there to increase the speed of return on the investment in the book. But when you publish yourself that is not so important because the actual outlay is very small.
Having gone through five proofs and paid for the upgrade to my status at CreateSpace I still have to spend £50. Nothing compared to the £15,000+ advance costs of bringing a new author to an audience by traditional publishing methods. Main stream publishers will be using publish on demand technology in the next five years.
And I have ended up with my own press to run which will publish others in the years ahead.
Social networking does one thing for you, gets you found on search engines. The writing itself will do the rest, so write well and give out only your best work.