The topic of groups came up in the Skype Writeoff Chat! this evening when I mentioned adding my story to groups. Typically when I publish I will add a story to the groups which I think fit it. In the chat, there was a definitive negative correlation between "author is popular/good" and "author suggests adding your story to groups".

My most recent six stories are currently in this many groups:

20, 15, 23, 24, 23, 15

Most of those groups I added myself, but quite a few of them I don't remember (which makes me suspect it is possible to add somepony else's story to a group for them, raising other issues).

My strategy has simply been adding a story to the groups that seem like they fit the story. If I wrote a Twilestia fic, I would add it to any decently-sized Twilestia shipping groups, to Celestia groups and Twilight groups, and to shipping-themed groups. Maybe genre groups like one-shot or short story or sadfic, etc. Seemed pretty straightforward.

But nopony told me how to do this. I just had to figure it out on my own, and it seems like I've been doing this all wrong. In particular, Pascoite suggested he thought less of my stories because they are featured in more than 10 groups. This kind of leaves me in a conundrum.

Should I be avoiding using the groups feature altogether?
Do I need to police my stories regularly, to hide the groups that other ponies add them to without my knowledge or consent?
Should I be trying to get my stories removed from groups they are already in?

I'm starting to think I shouldn't be adding my stories to groups at all, even though I suspect if I added them to no groups they would be less likely to feature or reach likely interested readers.

Since this place is probably the best silver mine for use-Fimfiction-for-writies knowledge, I am asking here. What should I do?

Hopefully this thread is appropriate at least or I may have just begun a descent into a never-ending abyss of unacceptable behavior.

Should I be avoiding using the groups feature altogether?

That's absolutely ridiculous. More groups means more exposure which means more views. There would be no point in posting a story to the site if you didn't want readers to see it. I can't see any reason why you wouldn't add a story to as many groups as it fits into.

Now, adding a story to a group it doesn't fit into, just so it gets views? That's a different story. But the groups function is there for a reason: to be another level of categorizing and displaying stories. There's no point in not using it. The amount of groups a story is in has no correlation to the quality of the story.

You've been going about it completely right. Don't worry.

4692051
There's no reason not to add your group to literally every single relevant group. In fact, that's one of the primary purposes of groups. Just don't add it to groups it doesn't belong in and you're fine.

4692051
4692098 This.

I will say that when it comes to something like a ship or specific pony with one major group and a bunch of smaller ones, I usually just add it to the biggest, figuring that population probably includes the same people as the smaller groups. I also try to space my group adding to avoid spamming people who are in more than one group I'm adding to. But none of that is to seem like I'm in fewer groups, it's just to keep people from getting annoyed with me by having my story pop up a hundred times in a row on their feed.

Now, sometimes I will ask specific other people to add me to groups, to get a bump from their reputation. If I wrote a TwiDash, I would ask bats to add me, so people who like TwiDash and probably know his name would see he read my story and cared enough to file it.

And unless you're for some reason embarrassed to be in a group, or you want to hide a major plot point (like which ship the story turns out as,) I wouldn't bother hiding groups or trying to get removed, either. At least, I never have.

Edit: In fact, if I have a story pending approval, and I have to step away for a bit, I leave instructions with someone to toss my story in the right groups when it posts if I'm not back. Seriously, group adding is part of a story going up for me.

4692139
I sometimes hide groups from my stories to get the most relevant groups to display, but I think that's just because I'm weird.

4692159
I do that, but to display the groups that I consider most prestigious--like Equestria Daily, for instance.

I’ve little experience with groups. I’ve tried to add one of my stories to a relevant group, but it turned out this had no noticeable effect on views (but that’s probably because my fic was bad in the first place ); but then you tend to get a lot of notifications when other people post stories in the same group, and, especially if you have no real interest in the theme the group has been created for, this is a nuisance, so I gave up altogether.

4692193
If a lot of people post stories to a group and it's overwhelming, or you're not interested, you can go to settings up at the top and turn off story notifications. I do that on a lot of groups.

Some groups bring in more views than others. In general, I find the more specialized the group, the more views you get. Putting a TwiJack story in Shipping, or Twilight Sparkle, or Applejack won't get the story as many views as putting it in the TwiJack group. Even though the TwiJack group is smaller, they're more likely to be interested, and more likely to leave story notification on.

I also have good luck with the groups you can't add your own fic to: You Might Like This and Tag-a-long's Book Club both seem to bring in views. Of course, in those cases you have to get noticed by one of the contributors.

4692231
This. Groups which are excited about a certain kind of story are the best kind of groups to add your story to. "Badass Twilight = Total Domination" has a devoted crowd for a specific kind of story about Twilight Sparkle that the general Twilight Sparkle fans don't. I suspect a lot of people turn off notifications for larger groups; I know that I've turned off notifications for most non-specific interest groups (and the ones I haven't are an accident).

Incidentally, this is a great group to add your stories to as well.

4692231
Thanks for the hint. I did not know you could opt out of notifications.

I don’t really care much for views anyway—I write for fun—so groups are something I can easily dispense with.

This reminds me, we should probably open up a Writeoff folder for a contest the moment the cutoff hits, if we don't already do that. I'm definitely publishing my story in the morning if it didn't make the cut (I already spent a lot of time revising it).

4692231
4692245
This is kinda exactly my problem. The official Shipping group has over 6,600 fics and over 6,600 members. The Writer's Group has over 30,000 stories, plz. I can't for a moment believe that anyone joins a group like that and actually leaves notifications on. And if they do, I can't imagine that being one of 30,000 fics will actually garner more attention than appearing on the front page's New Stories box. I suppose the argument is that adding it won't hurt, but I find myself being pretty conservative with my group additions. When I see a fic in 40+ groups, it strikes me as a bit desperate.

I much prefer using groups that provide useful metadata. I don't personally understand the value of a group like Twilight Sparkle, when the character tags clearly indicate Twilight is in this fic, and site search supports searching for Twilight fics. Adding to a group like Twilestia is Bestia clearly points out that this is a Twilestia fic and directs Twilestia fans to my fic, whereas site search isn't built for this (e.g. specifying Twilight and Celestia being shipped together vs. all fics that happen to contain Twilight and Celestia and some form of the Romance tag). And of course, recommendation groups like You Might Like This or I'm Gonna Rec It! are positive endorsements, so that's useful info too.

4692051
I have run into that situation before, where someone else added my fic to a group and I disagreed that my story belonged. In that case, I sighed, grumbled something about Death of the Author, and accepted it. Especially since the group addition notification had done the bulk of the damage, I didn't see much point in removing it (and possibly being readded in the future), especially when I understood why someone might read my story in that interpretation, even if it wasn't my intent. I did at least hide the group on the story's page, so as not to mislead prospective readers.

4692051
Because it needs to be raised, is there something lacking in the site's official FAQ's section regarding groups in this regard?

4692310
In terms of large groups, I leave the Applejack group notifications on, and tend to look at anything put in there with an interesting title or author. (I also sometimes check the site tag for recently posted Applejack fics.) But then, I have a little obsession.

But I assume there are other obsessive people out there too, so... might as well give it a shot.

I do think there's a point where it seems desperate, mostly because it's hard for a story to be relevant to 40+ groups (in the same way that having more than 4 genre or character tags usually seems desperate to me-- very few stories actually need that many.) At that point, you're probably stretching things ("Rainbow Dash has a line in this... into the Rainbow Dash group it goes!"), or adding to redundant groups with 30 people in them, or groups called something like "Someone Look At My Fic Please For The Love Of Celestia!!!1!"

Yes, that can seem desperate. But I think if you're adding to relevant groups for the fic at hand, you're going to be pretty safe, and be seen by more people than if you didn't.

In the chat, there was a definitive negative correlation between "author is popular/good" and "author suggests adding your story to groups".

The notion that very popular authors don't think much about adding their stories to group seems to have a perfectly simple explanation to me: those people don't have to. Authors that already have a large following/authors that are highly motivated just by their own writing (and thus tend to be good authors) are likely to be less hungry for views, so less interested in doing everything possible to maximize said views. Therefore the notion of adding one's stories to groups isn't much on their radar.

That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with or bad about adding one's stories to groups, that's pretty much the entire purpose of said groups. I feel absolutely no shame in adding my stuff to every relevant group out there.

4692310
I actually have notifications on for the Shipping group, because it is relevant to my interests.

I really should turn off notifications for everything but the Writeoff Association and RariJack, though, seeing as I literally never click on anything else from my groups feed.

4692349
Mostly, if you're adding it to that many groups, you're adding it to a bunch of "dump groups" - stuff like ______, American Bronies, Cadance's Library, The Writer's Group, ect.

I actually have a whole list of them.

Because, you see, when Obs made that blog post complaining about The Abyss promoting his stories and ending up in the featured story box, I took notes.

4692367

I took notes

Why am I not surprised?

4692552
Shhh. I shouldn’t told you, but TD’s secret love is called TS.
There only a single letter between them.

4692568
TS?

4692552
FYI, the really sad thing is that the thing that Obs seemed most annoyed with (adding to a bunch of dump groups) was actually one of the least efficient methods used.

4692686
Twilight Sparkle, of course!

4692137
4692139
4692310
Currently, I use a few of the larger "pretty much anything goes here" groups, and those might be a mistake. Cadance's Library, The Writer's Library, and Love and Tolerate are good examples. There are also a slew of sadfic-related groups I use that are questionable. And a couple of groups that are hugely general, like "One-Shots" which pretty much 90% of what I write fits into.

I haven't heard complaints in particular about any stories I do this with. Now, I would guess there's a chance that some of the early downhoofs I get could be for this reason, but I'm skeptical it's a factor. A guy on one of my stories has repeatedly bragged about downhoofing me because he didn't like something in my bio, without even looking at the story, so I suspect some of the first few early thumbs are inevitable (though, there are stories out there than never seem to get any).

4692310

I much prefer using groups that provide useful metadata. I don't personally understand the value of a group like Twilight Sparkle, when the character tags clearly indicate Twilight is in this fic, and site search supports searching for Twilight fics.

Yes, but this leaves out readers who go specifically into group folders to find fics of a certain type, like me.

4692325
I don't think so. My question here has nothing to do with how to use groups, but on the etiquette of using them. I don't think that fits cleanly into a faq without being opinion-y.

4692949
*head scratch* So, the thought process being... I don't find value in it, but others would find it valueable and helpful, so I ought to do it for their sake instead of my own? I suppose it makes sense. I still feel a bit in-genuine doing it, but if others find it helpful, that makes it okay I suppose?

Granted, I won't claim that I'm currently that good at self-promoting as is.

4697154
I think you're missing my point, unfortunately.

You stated:

I don't personally understand the value of a group like Twilight Sparkle, when the character tags clearly indicate Twilight is in this fic, and site search supports searching for Twilight fics.

The point we're assuming here is that the main function of adding a story to a group is to allow more people to read it, and thus attract more viewers. You're arguing that a group like Twilight Sparkle is redundant, as anyone who wants to read a Twilight story will only look at the character tag. However, this ignores the sizable section of the FiM population that doesn't look at character tags, and instead will go to the group first to find a story. By not adding your story to the Twilight Sparkle group (in this example) you're missing out on marketing to that audience.

Does that make sense?