A Facebook group is a bare necessity in today’s day and age for a self-published book author. Let us see why Facebook groups are really important in the grand scheme of things and how a Facebook group can help a self-published author market and circulate their books as well as garner a following.
The reason why we suggest a Facebook group is because it is probably one of the simplest ways to create a following and this following comes with a potential reach numbering in the millions and billions. This potential billion can visit the group as well as look at content that you have shared.
But this is not as simple as you might think and you need to invest time and patience into creating the perfect Facebook group.
Before you talk about creating a Facebook group let us see why so many self-published authors are creating Facebook groups.
Relationship Building
The key reason why authors are creating Facebook groups is to build a relationship with their audience. Relationship building can be a complex process but let us simply say that this Facebook group will allow your audience to look at you and understand you as well as help you understand what the readers want. This will create a healthy two-way communication so that you can interact with your fans and make them feel that they are being listened to.
The Best Promotion
In the world of SEO, we always say that organic publicity is the best form of publicity and a Facebook group is one of the most organic ways to increase your audience. You simply need to invite people over to the group and then if they like the content they are going to invite a few people more and more, in this way, you can hope to create a large list of people who are willing to see the content that you are sharing. In the old business days, there is to be a saying that “word of mouth promotion is the best promotion and publicity” and considering a Facebook group, it is quite close to this saying.
Why Facebook?
If you are looking for outreach then there is no better place to promote your work than Facebook. Facebook is unlike Twitter which has a certain demographic and is not like Instagram which is more focused on pictures. On top of that Facebook nearly has a 2 billion active monthly users number which means that the possibility and the potential of a Facebook group are endless.
Facebook is here to stay because of its deep roots in the social media sector. Along with that Facebook has deep roots running through the internet and the more your website and your name and your book’s name are mentioned the better it will act as a backlink so that all the other places you have social media accounts in, get promoted.
In a Facebook group, you have total control over the content of the group and you can also assign moderators to moderate the content of the group and keep it focused on your book.
So how do we actually create a Facebook group?
Step 1 – Creating a Facebook group is quite simple and the first step is to look for the ‘Groups’ button on the top taskbar of the new Facebook layout. Then you simply click that and enter the next menu.
Step 2 – After the first step you will find a sliding menu on the left side of your screen where you will find ‘Search groups’ followed by ‘Your feed’, ‘Discover’ and ‘Your notifications’ and after that, you can find the menu ‘ + Create New Group’. You simply need to click on this and move to the next step.
Step 3 – In the third step, a new page will load wherein you can find all the important menus for creating this group on the left side of your screen. The menu is quite simple and you simply have to give a Group name and then choose the privacy of the group. The privacy of the group, for now, will stay between public and private. If you decide to keep the group private then you must choose between the visibility options, hidden and visible. And then you must, as it is a very important step, invite your friends to the group. After doing this, click on the Create group button. You now have a Facebook group.
Step 4 – The only step left now is to upload a group picture and grow your Facebook group.
Let’s see how you can grow your Facebook group
- The best thing to do is to provide a link on your website to the Facebook group and encourage people to join it.
- You can also add the link of the group to the automatic mail list you have.
- You can start including your Facebook group hyperlink in the various blogs you write.
- And start tagging your Facebook group in your comments of other relevant Facebook groups.
- Always promote your Facebook group on all the other social media that you use such as Instagram and Twitter.
- You can also start giveaways where you give out copies of your book to Lucky winners provided that they join the group.
- You can also start doing live sessions on all your social media platforms and bring in reputed guests and then use this to add plugins to your website as well as your Facebook group.
- You must make sure that this approach is universal and that your Facebook group must have links to all your other social media handles and all the other handles must have links to your Facebook group.
- You can start collaborating with other creators and other writers and take part in their live sessions and plugin your Facebook group.
- Create a fan page and plugin your Facebook group in that.
This was the Orange Publishers guide to why and how you can create a Facebook group. If you are a budding author who is also interested in the world of self-publishing then you can check out Orange Publishers because we are leading book publishers in india with numerous titles to our name. We take care of everything from the pre-publishing to the publishing as well as the post-publishing process which includes the promotion and marketing. Along with that we also take care of the legal side of things such as copyright. We aim to make self-publishing seamless and viable. Do check us out.