Hi all! Continuing the series of articles about VKontakte, today I will answer two questions at once: “What are discussions?” and “How to create a discussion in a group on VK?”
Today, social networks are a huge audience with which you can not only communicate, get acquainted and have fun, but also earn money by promoting your product or service. For this, of course, we definitely need feedback, reviews, and studying the interest and involvement of the public. How to achieve this? One of the options is just those very discussions.
Pros and cons of discussions in VK
VKontakte is a well-known social network, the number of users in which has exceeded 13 million people. It was registered in October 2006.
Users of the social network can exchange photos, videos and text messages. In addition, the site is equipped with a convenient search system with which you can find any person.
VKontakte opens up wide opportunities for earning money and career growth. The social network is equipped with many tools that facilitate the process of communication with other users. These include thematic groups, which are essentially platforms whose participants have similar interests.
Useful links: Senler sending messages to VK, how to set it up, Bot for sending messages to VK, Content plan for a VK group.
Anyone registered on VKontakte has the ability to create thematic communities. They can perform a wide variety of tasks, including work activities. Under favorable circumstances, the VK community can become a source of income from advertising in the future.
Group discussions are one of the most effective communication tools. They work on the principle of forums, where absolutely everyone can express their opinion.
The benefits of group discussions include the following:
- It is possible to create a manual that describes all the rules of communication in the group.
- You can create discussions on a narrow topic to find out the opinion of each user.
- Discussions provide the opportunity to collect statistical data on the basis of which certain updates are introduced.
- Community owners can contact all members at the same time, eliminating the need to write private messages to everyone.
A group with a large number of subscribers may not always generate good income. Community activity is essential. The higher it is, the greater the likelihood of receiving good money for advertising.
If a user joins a community but remains inactive for two weeks, they will no longer see group updates in their news feed. Therefore, the main task of administrators is to retain the attention of participants. Discussions are the main tool for this.
Despite the convenient functionality of VKontakte communities, there will always be participants who express their dissatisfaction. In addition, a difference of opinion can provoke swearing and arguments in the chat.
This often ends up blocking certain users. This disadvantage can be easily eliminated by competent work of administrators.
How you can use discussions to do business with TaoBao:
- One of the most useful and obvious use cases for discussions in our opinion is collecting reviews about your work and products . Typically, such a discussion is created by the group administrator and invites everyone who has already made purchases to share their opinions and impressions there.
What is the benefit for business : you get feedback from clients and find out what your strengths are and what you still need to work on. Your customers, reading reviews, see that real people have already bought something from you, received the product and are happy with it. This relieves their fears and fears that you will turn out to be an dishonest seller, will not send the goods, or will disappear with the money.
- Another way to use discussions is to collect customer questions . Typically, clients leave questions in different places: on the group “wall” (we’ll tell you what a wall is later), in the comments to photos, or send them by personal message to the administrator. Creating a dedicated thread dedicated to answering questions can help streamline the flow of questions and keep them all in one place.
Why it benefits your business : The more detailed and understandable information you provide to potential customers, the more likely they are to place an order. Collecting customer questions helps to find out which points are difficult for them, where you need to improve the description of the order process that you published in the group.
- You can also use discussions to collect customer wishes (“wants”) . For example, you invite customers to leave wishes for adding certain products to your catalog in such a discussion.
What is the benefit for business: by gaining knowledge of what is interesting to customers, you can adjust your assortment and make more profit. It’s not for nothing that they say that demand creates supply.
- If you are running a competition or prize draw , you can use discussions to inform group members about its terms and results.
What is the benefit for business : everyone loves competitions! By holding competitions, you attract people to your group and motivate them to check more often what new and interesting things are happening with you.
We have listed the main use cases for discussions in your group. You can choose only one or all at once - it depends on the specifics of your work, product, number of clients, their activity, and so on.
We highly recommend that you do not do a lot of discussion. Create them only for those tasks for which you need feedback from customers. After all, the more discussions you create, the more time you will need to keep them “alive”: answer customer questions, thank you for reviews, delete spam.
You can add and delete discussions at any stage of the group's existence. Now we will show you how to do this.
How to create a discussion in a VK group
The system for creating discussions in the VKontakte group is not automated. The public administrator must create them manually. Discussions are located directly below the main community information. The principle of their creation is as follows:
- You need to go to the “Community Management” section.
- In the “Sections” subcategory, you need to find the “Discussions” tab.
- At the next stage, you will be able to choose whether everyone will have access to the discussions or only a limited number of people. You can make sure that absolutely all users of the social network can leave comments. You can also set up a group so that all discussions will be only on behalf of the community.
- In the block called “Create a topic” you can attach videos, photos, audio or polls.
To check your community settings, you need to go to “Manage” and then click on the “Sections” tab. There you can specify who will edit the posts - only the public administrator or all its participants.
The second option is especially relevant when it comes to advertisements. Anyone can publish an appeal to users in order to find a buyer, a loss, etc.
The administrator can choose the location of the discussion block. It is best placed directly above the wall with posts or to the right under the albums.
To motivate users to take part in discussions, any topic can be played up with a meme, picture or photograph. Each image should reflect the thematic focus of the question asked.
Settings
When you go to each specific discussion, an “edit topic” button appears at the top right. It gives the following features:
- Change title;
- Delete content altogether;
- Pin it to the top of the entire discussion list;
- Close the topic, after which the messages already there will remain in place, and new ones will not be able to be added unless it is opened again. This option is convenient, for example, for group rules or other information from the community administration, completed competitions, etc.;
- Create and configure surveys.
How to create a discussion via phone
On the phone, the principle of creating a discussion is similar. The mobile version has a special “Discussions” tab. If you click on it, a plus sign will appear next to it. After this, a pop-up window will appear on the screen where you need to enter the name of the topic. Then you should click on “Ok”.
Once the topic is ready, you can start publishing your first message. Admins can write them on behalf of the group or on their own behalf.
It is believed that for some reason people are afraid to leave comments first. Therefore, it is necessary to spark a discussion that other users can then join.
The main thing is not to overdo it and make sure that there are no insults in the discussions. Otherwise, there will be complaints against the community, which may subsequently lead to blocking.
Correct work with comments is a breakthrough in the development of the VK group
Only after entering the ladder of the group’s career advancement does a person monitor every “rustle” on his community wall. But as the group develops and the audience increases, it is extremely difficult to manually maintain a report, and it is physically impossible to view each post several times a day. Without paying attention to this issue, the project gradually loses its speed of promotion and acquires negative features.
Commenting on a post is an easy way to ask the administrator a question. The faster the user solves his problem, the more satisfied he will be and will begin to suggest your content to his friends.
How to delete discussions on VK
Irrelevant discussions can be edited, hidden and deleted. In the last two cases, they will no longer be available to users. To get rid of irrelevant discussion:
- You should click the “Edit” button. After this, a window will appear with the “Theme Settings” column.
- Next to it there are two options – “Close” and “Pin” topic. To hide it from participants, you need to check the “Close” topic option, and then save the changed settings.
There is another way, it is to delete the discussion. The required function is located at the very bottom of the editing window. It says “Delete topic”. If you simply hide the chat, it will continue to exist, but no one else except the administration will see it.
How to pin or delete
If you want to completely delete a section, then you need to turn it off in the “Community Management” settings.
If you want to delete or pin a separate topic, then follow the following instructions:
- Go to discussions and select the topic you want to delete/pin.
- In the upper right corner, click the "Edit Theme" button.
- In the window that appears, you can pin, close, or completely delete the topic. There is also the opportunity to change the title and add a survey.
- Once you have configured everything, click “Save”.
Ready. The saved settings will take effect immediately. If the changes are not displayed, then simply refresh the browser page.
How to reply to someone else's post in a discussion
If there is a discussion in the group in which the user wants to participate, then he needs to click directly on its name.
To leave a comment, just place the cursor on the free field located at the bottom of the page. On the left under the message window there are icons for attaching photo, audio and video files.
In order to respond to a comment by a specific person, you need to click on the corresponding button under his name. After replying, the user will receive a notification about a new message. You can respond to messages from other participants both from your computer and from your phone.
Useful life hacks: How to design a page on VK, How to hide a friend on VKontakte, How to make a smiley face on VK next to a last name.
How to move
The issue of moving the “Discussions” section is relevant only for groups. Unfortunately, there is no such opportunity in public.
Below are instructions for changing the block location in groups:
- Click the "edit" button. "
- In the window that opens, uncheck the “Discussion block above group news” option.
- Click "Save".
After these steps, the block will be placed on the right side of the site. If you want to return it to its original location, then go to the settings again and check the box.
Ways to increase activity in the community
In order for the number of community subscribers to increase, it is necessary to create active live communication. To this end, a number of measures are being taken. These include the following:
- a direct request to subscribers to like or leave a comment on the discussion;
- holding competitions, the condition of which is to create activity in the discussion;
- creating surveys to generate feedback from subscribers;
- organization of games (for example, associations to pictures);
- creation of thematic sections (musical, roll calls, calls to share photos, etc.).
It is equally important to regularly publish material that will resonate with subscribers. These could be hot topics, current news, life stories, etc. You need to provoke subscribers to visit again. Particularly active users can be rewarded with gifts and privileges.
It is advisable to create posts with information that community members will want to save - useful tips, movie selections, life hacks, a list of interesting places to visit, etc.
During competitions, you should motivate people with pleasant gifts. Even such a small thing as 100 rubles thrown at a phone number can win a person’s heart.
Before publishing content in a group, you need to analyze the geography of your audience. First you need to determine which cities have the largest number of group members. Then you need to find out their time zone.
If you post discussions at the best times, more participants will see them. This encourages active and productive communication.
An equally effective way to create activity in a group is to send out a newsletter announcing a future discussion. It must be sent to community members directly in private messages. This reduces the likelihood that users will miss the group's news for some reason.
People are loyal when they are honest with them. An effective tool for attracting can be a survey calling for some kind of activity.
Another option involves collecting feedback on what is missing in the group. This will allow you to take measures to correct the situation and at the same time establish trusting communication with group members.
To make your community subscribers catch your eye, you can use dynamic covers. The image on them is constantly changing. You can use photos of the most active users in the community as the cover. This involves them even more in the life of the group and satisfies everyone's self-esteem.
To maintain a friendly atmosphere in the community, you should celebrate round dates and create traditions. It is also advisable to motivate community members to turn on notifications.
To get a large reach, the content in the group must be unique and interesting. To do this, you need to approach publishing discussions from a creative side.
It is not at all necessary to stop at thematic discussions. You can create a number of topics where users can share how their day is going, get to know each other and discuss pressing issues.
What to discuss
Most often, discussions may contain:
- Organizational information: group rules, various instructions (if the community represents a company or service), order conditions, etc.;
- Collections of text or media material on a community topic, whatever it may be.
This section can also be used for questions that are in no way related to the topic of the group.
A place for communication and interaction between people on VKontakte is a group or community. This is a separate page with a list of participants and all kinds of materials that they publish.
Now I will show you how to create a VKontakte group
. We will analyze the main stages, and also learn how to add materials, create photo albums, polls, etc.
Go to the "Groups" section.
Here we click the button “Create a community”. A window will open in which you need to write the name of the group. Also check the switch next to “Group”.
After that, click the “Create Community” button. We will be moved to the general settings menu. Here we need to fill in the following fields:
Fill in all these fields in accordance with your task. When finished, click the "Save" button. You will be taken to your new group.
Conclusion
How to create a discussion in a VK group is very important to know for those who plan to earn income with its help. Regardless of the number of subscribers, communication in the group should be lively. Low activity is the most popular public problem.
Understanding the process of creating discussions is not at all difficult. To do this, it is enough to have basic PC skills. To maintain activity in the group, you will need to make an effort and allocate additional time for this.
Sincerely, Veronika Vladimirova specially for the proudalenku.ru project
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Manipulations with comments in VKontakte groups
Basic operations:
- Spam content tracking. When running a commercial page, you may encounter spam mailings from pseudo-users. Filtering out such “parasites” and their records increases the reputation of the group.
- Setting up a convenient line for receiving comments or disabling them generally. Daily or weekly monitoring is a personal decision of the administrator.
- Tracking records of specific individuals. Messages that stand out from the masses and help solve a problem for the project audience are used as promotional material. It becomes possible to give priority to active community members who support the resource.
