Facebook Groups – A Multi-Purpose Tool

Facebook Groups for Authors are exactly what they sound like–place where people can gather to have discussions about different things. For authors, they present three opportunities for marketing. Authors can join groups with other authors in their genre for networking, or they can join groups where readers are hunting for the best deals. Or authors can create their own groups for managing street teams. We’ll cover all three in this blog post.

Author Support Groups

If you’ve decided to self-publish, the road can seem pretty lonely at times. That’s why it’s important to find other authors in your genre to network and lean on for help and support. Using Facebook’s search function, you can seek out genre groups and ask to join them. Most of these groups will be closed to protect individual authors.

Besides emotional support, these groups offer opportunities to work with other authors in your genre, too. Here is where you mind find an opportunity to add yourself to a box set, or join in a promotion activity. But as for self-promo, these groups usually have pretty strict rules around it (usually not allowed).

Genre Groups

So where do you go to promote your book? Alongside author support groups, there are hundreds of Facebook groups dedicated to helping readers find the best deals on their favorite kinds of books. These are the groups, usually, where you can post (or request to post) your sale book info. Be careful though, as these can become what we call “author graveyards” where the only people reading the content are authors who stop in to post their own stuff.

Street Team Groups

In the first two examples, you are a participant and the groups are already being created. In this case, you are the owner and operator, which opens up a whole lot of fun opportunities.

We’ll have a blog about street teams at a later date, but suffice to say, we’re big believers in them. In the first place, a street team helps you soft sell your book to others and may also help boost your review numbers. In return for helping you spread the word, you can give them free stuff like swag and eBooks. (Want to join our alter-ego’s Street Team? Click here!)

While there are many options to managing your street team, there really is no better option than Facebook Groups (although Goodreads Groups may come in a close second). From a content display standpoint, topics are organized by original post. You can also pin posts to the top of the discussion that you want the team to see.

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