Proper use of Facebook? (And Twitter!)

I told my wife the other day that I was getting sick of Facebook.  All people want to do on it is bitch or brag.  I said the only thing I use it for lately is announcing when I have a new short story published. 

She asked, "Isn't that what you're doing then?"

My response: "Oh."

She had a really good point. 

The whole purpose of social media is to interact with people.  If you've got a product to sell (such as books in my case) you're not going to make any new friends or sell any new copies by annoying your friends spamming their Facebook walls with advertisements.  Not that I was really doing that; I'd only make one post every time a new story came out, but it's the principle of it.

I'll get back to Facebook, but I want to jump to Twitter for a bit.  I follow a lot of authors there, and I'd say half of them are just wasting their time.  Their time, and their followers' time.  So many authors on Twitter spam it with auto-tweets of advertisements, reviews, and quotes from their books.  I say this is a waste of time, because it doesn't sell a single book; it only annoys people and causes them to ignore those tweets, or even worse, unfollow the author.

The other half of authors I follow spend their time on Twitter actually "saying things."  They might not even be saying anything important, but they come off as real people.  They interact with their followers, respond, and retweet.  And they don't send automated DMs to people. These are the authors that I'm more likely to pay attention to.  I'm more likely to click on their websites, and most importantly, more likely to buy their books.

So, with this in mind, going back to Facebook, I want to ask a question.  What is the best way for an aspiring author to use Facebook?  I still feel like Facebook should be between friends and I don't really want to fill up my friend list with a bunch of writers I don't know.

I think the thing to do is set up an author page, but I'm hesitant.  When you're a writer at my level, which means no published novels and about a dozen small press short stories, does it come off as just trying too hard?  Or worse, does it look arrogant?  Or phony?  Or like you're a wannabe?

Or...is it a good thing to do.  You can interact with other authors without filling up your friends list and have a single place to plug your stuff without spamming friends who might not care to see it.  For these reasons, I'm thinking of setting one up.

I don't know; maybe I'm over-thinking things.  Any writer's out there reading this, let me know what you think.