How to lead a VKontakte group in 2021: secrets and tips

Maintaining a VKontakte group is a rather complicated process, and if done incorrectly, you can ruin the whole job.

In this article I will tell you about important tips and some secrets of running a community in 2021.

Previous years have brought many changes to the social network: community messages, products in the group, widgets, a unique opportunity to promote group entries have appeared, the rules for conducting competitions have become more stringent, and the number of community blockings has increased for various reasons.

All this significantly affects the running of the community. And today a huge effort should be made so that the group reaches the TOP and begins to generate profit/sales.

How to lead a VKontakte group in 2021: secrets and tips

You can always find current promotion methods in the article: how to promote a VKontakte group .

And now I will tell you about some aspects of competent group management:

1. If you plan to run a commercial community (company representative office, store selling something), then it is recommended to create a VKontakte group rather than a public page (public).

This is due to the fact that public pages are suitable for entertainment content, and groups are suitable for promoting goods/services, etc. A bonus is the opportunity to invite friends to the VKontakte group, and this is one of the effective methods of promotion. This function is not available in public pages.

2. The name of the VKontakte group should clearly reflect the content that is published in it.

In the title and description, provide brief and at the same time succinct information about the activities of the community (you can pin the post in the group). Don't forget to add a couple of keywords so that users will find the group in search.

3. Create a unique group design that will attract the attention of visitors and potential subscribers.

Start by creating an avatar for the VKontakte group and then make a beautiful, convenient menu. I also recommend creating a dynamic cover in the VK group or a live cover.

4. If the community is a representative of a company or store, then you must add the address and hours of work in the VK group.

5. Don't forget to add the main community button in VK, which will lead to the website or menu.

The button is very eye-catching in a mobile application.

6. Create a menu in a group on VK in a few minutes.

You can add up to 7 internal links to articles, sections, and applications. It is also possible to customize menu items.

To lead a community correctly, you need to know why you are running it.

To figure out how to properly run a VKontakte group, imagine the following picture: while scrolling through your news feed, you see a product that you have been looking for for a long time. Curiosity, of course, lures you to click on the group’s link, and you find yourself in its vastness. Next you see a tastefully designed visual, interesting pictures, motivating and inviting slogans, and constantly updated news. This alone will make you stay on the page and dig a little further.

At the second stage of the funnel, you pay attention to the product that the group offers, and here you also look at feedback from other people. You scroll further and see a promotion that of course you didn’t know about. All this will encourage you to click that “Subscribe” button. You watch for another week, realize that this is what you need and buy the product. This process explains why you need a VKontakte community.

With its help, you guide the client towards your offer, stirring up more and more interest each time. You create the stages through which he will go through and make the right choice for himself. It is also worth noting that the growth dynamics of the audience of social networks over the past 5 years is very impressive. 61% of the population throughout Russia uses the social network VKontakte.

Therefore, before creating a community, correctly determine what your positioning will be. To do this, follow several steps:

Segment by age

The focal point of your community, of course, will be your target audience. This is the point on which the content of the page and its design will depend.

This is perhaps the most important point at the start. But even this is not all, because the target audience can be segmented. Thus, the number of images of potential clients will increase and for each there is a “magic word”, “bright button”, “cool description”. It will be important for everyone, despite the fact that they are all your target audience. Determine exactly what audience you are working for.

Identify the chip

Chip

is another tool that differentiates you or your product from the rest.

This can be a small detail that will significantly complement the company’s image, arouse customer loyalty, increase interest and remain in memory.

It is not at all necessary to invent something supernatural; what is invented is quite enough. The main thing is that the feature is appropriate and makes sense.

Analyze your competitors

Before you penetrate any social platform, you need to get to know the strongest competitors by sight. To do this, you need to carefully study their offer and the content with which they offer services.

Competitors' content can be analyzed through convenient online services such as Popsters or JagaJam.

Be sure to take note of what in their content causes audience activity and what does the opposite. Mark convenient buttons, sections and visuals in general.

Analyze your own content

If you are already leading a group, then you definitely need to pay attention to your audience and how they react to the content. Conduct research and understand which things are convenient and which need to be improved. Also analyze posts using Popsters or JagaJam that received almost no response from subscribers, think about why.

Analyze audience interests in web analytics

To understand the interests of your audience, you can check and analyze their behavior in Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics. This will allow you to quickly and timely receive useful information: traffic and characteristics of your audience segments.

Write a content plan

When developing page content, the publication schedule with dates and times is taken into account. This is a content plan, which may also include photos, pictures and videos.

It’s best to rely on the following chain: we break down useful information into topics and create sections that potential clients will remember over time. Next, we logically choose the frequency and timing of their publications. This will allow you to plan a clear schedule and make it consistent.

All of the above actions are necessary in order to start running a VKontakte group effectively and with an eye to results. This is the base that will form a selling platform and begin to bring profit to your business.

Maintaining a VKontakte group is a labor-intensive process that is best entrusted to proven SMM specialists. Our agency has extensive experience in promoting on social networks. We invite you to view our portfolio and develop a strategy for your brand.

How to lead a group on VK

7. Entries should not be cumbersome and must include images.

Naturally, entries must be unique; it is not recommended to borrow posts from other thematic communities - the group may be blocked. If you wish, you can add hashtags to posts - this may affect the popularity of posts.

Bonus: for unique and interesting posts you can get a Prometheus tag in VK, which is issued for a week (the coverage of posts with the tag increases 5 times).

8. Don’t forget to write “longread” articles that appeared at the beginning of 2021.

The VK article editor is a very useful tool that can significantly increase the coverage of such posts. High-quality, voluminous articles are in great demand - verified.

How to create a conversation

You can create your own chat on VKontakte. To do this you need:

1. Go to “messages” and click on the plus sign.

2. Tag friends with whom you want to communicate.

3. Enter the name of the chat and click “create conversation”. If desired, you can set a chat picture. Ready!

Maintaining a community on VK

9. Be sure to use delayed posting in a group on VK - this will save a lot of time.

Stretch the publication of posts throughout the day with a timer for 15-20 minutes after the hour. This is due to the fact that 90% of communities publish posts every hour (14:00, 15:00, 16:00) and the news feed of subscribers is completely cluttered during these hours.

Therefore, set the timer for 15-20 minutes (14:15, 15:20) after an hour and then subscribers will definitely notice your posts and your reach will increase.

In addition, we calculated the best time for posting on VK.

10. Set up a connection between yourself and group visitors.

The best way is to connect messages from the VKontakte community. This way, visitors will be able to ask you any question and receive an answer on behalf of the community.

11. Install a Spycat widget for a VK group that will attract the attention of visitors.

The widget is displayed under the main group information and contains calls to action.

12. Connect products in the VKontakte group, if any.

A very useful feature for commercial communities that are created to sell goods/services on social media. networks.

13. Sending messages in a VKontakte group is a great way to establish communication with subscribers.

Send important news to those who have signed up for your newsletter.

Community Statistics

When running a public page, there is no single “magic pill” that suits everyone. You always have to try different tools and analyze which gives the best result. Let's look at how to react to changes in statistics:

1. Coverage . Shows which messages “get in” and which ones turn out to be uninteresting to your audience. At the same time, it is not only the quality of the content that influences, but also the time of publication.
2. Gender and age . A powerful tool for determining the true target audience. You see who to target when writing posts and setting up advertising.
3. Geography . Seeing an advantage in the direction of a certain region, you cover news that is relevant to city residents and always find yourself in the trend.
4. Traffic sources . Helps identify effective promotion methods. If the growth from VK search increased after changing the key in the community name, then the action is correct. And vice versa, if there is no surge in direct transitions during the targeting broadcast, you need to reconfigure your target audience or change the banner design.

Competent processing of statistics is no less important than maintaining the public itself. By eliminating ineffective activities and focusing on those that generate leads, you save both time and money. Moreover, you can do all this yourself or hire professionals.

And after studying the instructions, you yourself understand the amount of work ahead and, based on this, you can figure out how much it costs to run a group on VK. The article helps to avoid common mistakes and account blocking.

What do users pay attention to when they visit a Business Page?

People are greeted by their clothes, and the community page is greeted by its design. To interest the user and keep his attention, you need to properly design your Business Page.

Let's look at the main blocks of the page:

• Name
• Page cover
• Status
• Action button
• Page description, site address and contacts, map
• Community Posts
• Menu
• Pinned post
• Widgets
• Product cards
• Features of the mobile version and the VKontakte application

Community analytics

You can analyze the effectiveness of the VKontakte promotion methods used in Community Statistics.

It is necessary to focus on the following indicators:

• number of participants (number and growth of the audience, dropped out participants, their geography and demographic characteristics);
• attendance per day;
• coverage;
• views;
• activity (likes, comments, reposts).

When using paid community promotion, you track the following indicators:

• advertising budget;
• cost of circulation;
• cost of a new subscriber;
• cost per click on advertising;
• cost of a new subscriber from advertising.

Three clicks to create a new project

In order to open a new community in VKontakte you will need a personal page. I think that there will be no problems with this; most readers already have accounts. Well, if not, then it’s not so difficult to start one. Go through a simple registration, fill out a form with personal data on the vk.com website and you're done!

There is a menu on the left side of your page. We find the “Groups” section in it. You will see a list of all the pages to which you are subscribed.

At the very beginning of this list there is a button - “Create a community”. Let's click!

A pop-up window will appear in which you have to select the topic of the future community.

There are several options to choose from:

1. Business - online store, beauty salon, workshop, cafe, cinema, etc.
2. Thematic community - media, blogs, posters, news, entertainment.
3. Brand or organization - products, companies, firms, educational institutions, public organizations and foundations.
4. Interest group - student communities, closed clubs and communities, educational associations.
5. A public page is a musical group, creative association, social or sports movement.
6. Event - meeting, concert, exhibition, party.

I will explain the principle of action using the example of the business community. You should already be aware that I have my own project - “Avon Coordinator School”. I will take this as a sample.

The first thing you need to do is come up with a name for the group. It should be short, succinct, as original as possible, and reflect the essence of your project.

Select a topic, insert a link to the site if you have one, and click “Create a community.”

Don't forget to read the community rules, which you agree to and confirm that you are familiar with. For violating the rules, your public may be blocked.

We go to the page containing basic information. Add a short description of the public and upload a cover that will be displayed on the main page.

The recommended image format is JPEG, GIF or PNG with a resolution of 1590*400. But not less than 795*200 points.

I took the first beautiful picture I came across that matched the meaning and size. But in general, the cover, or as it is also called, the header, is the face of your community. It should be unique and memorable. Some even hire designers to create a header for a VKontakte group. And for good reason. After all, people are always greeted by their clothes.

Here you can change the page address, for example, instead of “public167788844” you can come up with a short address. I’ll write “schoolkoo”, and you can choose a name based on your topic. The main thing is that it is free.

After that, don’t forget to save the changes you made, and now the base of your page is ready.

Group filling

Now you can return to the main page of the community and start designing it.

Set a bright and memorable avatar to make your community stand out in the general feed.

To do this, click on the circle located under the cover to the left of the title and attach a logo image.

See how beautiful and profitable your project looks in the general list. This is the first step to promote the group, which we will definitely do a little later.

And now, you can safely create thematic albums with photographs of your products, add videos that capture the process of your work or results, and reviews from satisfied customers.

Read more about the modern algorithm for ranking content on Facebook and VK

In 2006, Facebook introduced a new algorithm that prioritizes posts that are unique and interesting to users.

Since 2021, a similar “smart” tape has been used by the VK network.

In order for posts in business communities to be noticeable, you need to adapt to the requirements of the new algorithmic system.

Therefore, let’s dwell on this in more detail.

1. Each user who has a “smart” feed configured sees an individual list of publications. This list is formed based on what interests the user indicates in his account, what groups he subscribes to, and what information he adds to bookmarks. You should also take these same parameters into account for your target audience, so that your publications are seen primarily by relevant and interested users.
2. In the VK feed, the priority is friends and favorite groups (communities that a person visits more often than others).
3. First of all, unique posts appear in the TOP search results. A special VK algorithm tracks primary sources that publish unique posts and raises their positions. Facebook also primarily promotes communities with exclusive content.
4. In addition, Facebook and VK approve the video format. But video materials uploaded directly to the social network receive greater coverage than links to YouTube.
5. In general, the algorithms of both platforms give preference to posts published directly on social networks. It is more difficult to promote a post that takes people to a third-party resource, especially with a link to a page that loads slowly.
6. Facebook is strictly combating the spread of false facts. The social network system identifies fake news and removes it from display.
7. In addition to the previous point: FB does not approve and greatly reduces the ranking of posts with clickbait titles, especially if they lead to web pages with advertising. Video clickbaits also fall under the filter. As you can see, the content should not only be fresh and sensational, but also believable.
8. Plus, the social network ranks interactive and entertaining content well, live broadcasts, and any posts that are actively commented on and arouse keen interest.

How to tailor your content plan to your target Facebook user

About interaction with the audience

1. When creating a group, first of all, present a portrait of the Russian-speaking Facebook audience. Mainly:

• users are aged from 25 to 35-40 years old (about 37%), and the trend indicates that the audience is maturing;
• specialists in various business sectors;
• employees of large and medium-sized companies;
• freelancers;
• many of these people are interested in profitable investments and partnerships;
• a lot of women.

There is a high percentage of people here who might be interested in these types of content:

• news;
• company cases;
• information about new applications, programs to simplify routine tasks;
• business stories;
• informative informational posts;
• topics to which you can add expert commentary.

2. If you share the latest news and want new publications to immediately appear in your subscribers’ feed, a business page is suitable for you.

3. In order for the group to rise in the ranking of participants, it is important to collect comments.

The promotion technology here is reminiscent of placing a site in the TOP of Yandex.

Therefore, in such a community, engaging content is important: interesting questions, live broadcasts, provocative messages, quizzes.

4. The number and activity of participants affects the group’s rating.

And if a group is created with the goal of increasing sales, it is important to attract a “fan base”.

In this case, you can periodically use viral entertainment content, promotions, and lucrative offers.

But if it is important to solve other problems - attract users to the site through the community, establish trust with VIP clients - the quality of traffic is more important.

In this case, when creating content, you should focus on the most profitable segment of the audience (for example, successful paying clients).

You can focus on useful posts, stories from the business world, interviews with experts.

5. In addition, to increase the rating of the community on FB, you can motivate participants to create user-generated content.

6. It is even more useful to involve opinion leaders in conducting live events and master classes.

They will help you create valuable expert content and improve your reputation!

The goal of promoting the VKontakte community

Without direction, a ship will not sail. Therefore, the first step to successfully promoting the VKontakte community is setting a goal. “Everything is on VKontakte, I need it too” or just for show – we immediately reject this option. There must be a clear wording:

1. To sell goods and services (yes, the entire sales cycle can now be completed through a social network).
2. For traffic to the site.
3. To generate income from placing advertisements on your site.
4. For leisure (community of interests).

As a rule, sales through social networks and traffic to the website are more important for a business. But the community of interests should not be discounted, because... they help increase brand loyalty.

About the promotion of the group, time and frequency of publications

1. Use mutual PR. By talking about opinion leaders in your group, you get the opportunity to attract their fans to your group.

2. Hashtags will greatly help simplify the mechanism of maintaining and promoting the community.

Firstly, only with the help of this tool can you select categories in the FB community (there are no other options for this).

In the popular group “I am a Scanner,” hashtags remind users of regular sections in which they can share their records and finds.

Secondly, hashtags make it easier to navigate a page or group and allow users to find old posts on a specific topic.

Thirdly, using popular hashtags you can attract target users to the group.

This is an alternative to keywords and tags on websites.

3. According to statistics, users most often access the social network during working hours from office computers.

On weekdays, posts published from 13:00 to 16:00 receive the maximum responses and likes.

At the same time, the degree of involvement at the end of the work week is very high.

At this time, you can get a return on useful stories, expert lives, live broadcasts, and engaging posts.

4. Regarding the frequency of publications, 2 meaningful posts per week will help retain a relevant audience.

But for the development and promotion of the group, the publication feed should be updated more often.