Group, groups, and more groupsCan one author have too many groups? Yes. If you have groups you never visit, or you have no idea what they are for, yes you have too many groups.
Groups 101
The key to keeping up with your groups is knowing when to use them and how often others use them. You really need to have 3 to 5 groups you're in daily. You'll need some groups you check weekly, monthly, and those that you hit when you want to promote. You'll need to know what groups allow posting and running and which ones doesn't. Getting a bad name is easy to do and before you know it people won't know you as that friendly helpful author, but as that author that posts and runs.
Authors,when you join a group please read the about us. Not all groups welcome book ads, and it is a common mistake to think they do. Authors join a group and instead of saying hello how are you my name is . . etc etc. The first post you see is hey look I wrote a great book and you should buy it. Authors please slow down and take the time to read the ABOUT US in any group. Not all groups are about advertising, some are just for learning and discussions.
Images from Depositphoto Javier Brosch & Annette Shaff
You're home Groups
In these groups people need to know you by your first name, they need to know if you have kids or pets. They should be like a family, people that you can count on when you need help with a promotion a tweet or help with a thunderclap. I believe that we should also give of our time just like we tithe with our money. Our Author friends are trying to make a living, be a light, and in general share their works to a lost and dying world. If we can help them - then we are helping a hurting world, souls hopefully be saved and helping our friends succeed and that is a good thing in my book. 
Group Maintenance
Once you chose what groups you want to visit daily, weekly monthly just for promo's free days etc. The next step is figuring out a way to keep up with these groups and to remind yourself to visit them. When we are done you will want to host these groups on your website, but I'm getting ahead of myself so here is step one.
List lists and more lists
I'll warn you if you are not a lists kind of person just save yourself some time and stop now. But if you love organization I think you will find this helpful.
Step one
Make a master list of all your groups in an email or a word doc where you can transfer them to your website where you then break them down into daily weekly monthly groups etc. You say this is overkill. Maybe, but it is really helping me to take control of my online Facebook groups. To get the 'link' with the 'group name' attached, go to the groups page, highlight the name of the group, right click and copy. (see image)
Step Two
Take said link and copy and paste it into your word document. Now repeat this for every group you have. Yes I know it's a lot of work but in the end if you have a lot of groups it is well worth it. Once you have your list then you will go through them and put them in segments. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Advertise in etc.
I know some people that are in 1000's of groups I'm not in way that many but I did feel the need to organize and here is what mine looked like once I had them paired off in Daily Mon, Tue Wed, etc, Twitter groups, groups to delete later, promotional groups etc etc. You may not want to go this extreme but when we are done we will have an easy to access list of our groups. It took me about three days to do this working a couple of hours at a time.Yes it was worth it.
Now once we have our groups in groups :) we will transfer them to our website and yes once you have everything bookmarked you can hide the pages so no one else can see them. With this part, it just depends on how extreme you like things.
Do you want Monday groups to have it's own page ?
Do you want all of your groups on one page just in sections.
It's all up to you.
I prefer this way below. I book mark them and they are really handy to keep up with. The issue from this point it to keep adding any groups that you join, and to weed out those groups that are really not useful. This really is a useful tool, for just about anything that has a link and is something you want to keep up with.
If you're one of those people that love lists, I hope that you have found this useful, and for those of you that just think I'm crazy for doing all this work, think again. It's really been a great asset in helping me to keep up with my groups, the only thing I wish is that I would have thought of it sooner.
Samantha Fury is the author of the Street Justice Series
She's written many articles on book covers, for Indie Authors.
She operates several Indie Groups. Editing Services, Cover Artist,
Helpful Indie Facebook Groups, and a wonderful Forum
just for Indie Authors.
