Group link: essence and purpose
A link to a community in VK is the Internet address of the location of a group or public page (public). When using a browser on a computer or laptop, the link can be seen in the address bar when you are in the appropriate community.
When using browsers on smartphones and tablets, the link to the group may be hidden from the user.
However, for further manipulations required within the framework of this study, the link can simply be copied. A community link can be of two types:
- A standard digital identifier assigned to a community automatically when created by default by the system.
- A unique letter address that the user deliberately types in place of the digital identifier in the group settings.
The intended purpose of replacing a direct link with a word:
- Enhancing the aesthetics of a user's post. It is most appropriate when placing advertising posts.
- Making it easier for users to search for a community by post. As a rule, rarely can anyone remember the digital ID of a community, and the search is carried out by name. And in some cases, virtual wanderers are not looking for a specific community at all, preferring a variety of thematic information. Thus, the name of the community in the entry increases the rate of presence of this group on the social network “ VKontakte ” and on the Internet in general.
- Practice your ability to place links in words and feel superior to virtual friends and visitors to your page until they read these instructions.
Chips
- Use pay-per-impression and optimize your ads to lower your advertising costs. There is a lot of competition in pay-per-clicks, so achieving a low conversion cost is very difficult. If you use effective ads, then the cost of a click when paying for impressions can be reduced to 30-50 kopecks for most topics.
- To improve your ad performance, use A/B testing. Create identical ads with different images, text, button text, formats, etc. After running the ad, you will see which ads perform better.
- When paying for clicks, do not rely on the recommended price. Reduce the bet by at least 4-5 times. It is worth increasing the price if the ad is not shown due to high competition.
- Give preference to the “large image” format. A well-chosen picture attracts the audience’s attention better than text.
- Use third-party services to analyze the results of an advertising campaign (Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica, MANGO OFFICE call tracking). Each of these tools has functions that are not available in the VK advertising account.
- If you are advertising a community, set up advertising on an external website, add a retargeting tracker to it and a redirect to the group or public. This will reduce the CTR of your ad, but will allow you to build a base of users who click on your ads.
- Limit the number of impressions per person (for example, 100 pieces). The likelihood that a user will click on an advertisement after several dozen ad views is minimal.
Replacing a link with a “clickable” word: a modern technique
Previously, to create a link word on the VKontakte , you had to use special combinations of characters, similar to complex programming scripts. And if you think that we will omit this outdated technology, then you are deeply mistaken. Our task is to fully answer the question posed and consider all available means to achieve the goal. Moreover, the modern method, although simple, but the old-fashioned method, as practice shows, opens up much more possibilities in the use of words. But we will start with the simplest method of putting a word instead of a direct link. This technology was created directly by programmers of the social network “ VKontakte ” in order to simplify data exchange and improve the search system. So, step by step instructions:
- You must subscribe to the community for which you want to use the “clickable” link word. In theory, this item could be omitted, but in this case you will have to carry out a manual search, and this is very time-consuming. It is possible to unsubscribe if you are in this community or mention this community on the page where the required entry is planned to be posted.
- Move the mouse cursor over an empty field to add an entry and left-click to initiate typing.
- Translate the keyboard into English, hold down the Shift key and press 2 or 8, that is, initiate the input of one of the following characters: “@”
or "*". - As a result, a list of users and communities that you are subscribed to or that are mentioned on the page where you are appears appears. Sometimes the list can be overwhelming and scrolling through will take a lot of time with no guarantee of productivity. To optimize the process, it is recommended that after the above-mentioned symbols, an asterisk or a dog, enter the first letters of the desired community. As a result, the required community appears in the forefront. And the more detailed you type the name, the higher the community will be in the search.
- Select the required community name and get the corresponding name in the entry field. The result of the actions described above can be the example below.
- Type the required text to complement the group positioning.
- Click Send and receive the required post on the community wall. Actions on a personal page are similar to actions in the group’s dungeons. Thus, you get a post with a “clickable” link in the form of the group name.
Types of targeting (target audience)
When setting up the audience to whom the advertisement will be available, you can use more than 15 filters (targets).
Geography
Using geotargeting, you can identify users who regularly visit the same place. Even if the user is in another city, he can see an ad from a store near which he lives or works. VKontakte uses several tools to determine location (IP is not the main one).
Demography
Ads can be shown to users of certain gender, age and marital status. Ads can also be targeted to people who have a birthday coming up.
Interests
An advertiser can target an audience with specific interests. Users' hobbies are determined by internal VKontakte algorithms. This uses information about interactions with external sites and social network resources (communities, music, applications). Ads can be shown to travelers (users who visit VKontakte from different countries).
Targeting community members
Group targeting can be inclusive or exclusive. With inclusive targeting, the ad is seen by users who are members of certain communities. Exclusionary targeting works the other way around—it doesn’t show ads to members of selected groups.
Targeting app and website users
Ads are shown to users who have logged in to the selected site using the OAuth protocol. With app targeting, ads are displayed on the pages of users who have installed the specified app.
Education and work
The target audience can be filtered by position, by year of graduation from the educational institution, as well as by the place of receipt of secondary and higher education (school number; university, faculty).
Retargeting
Targeting advertising to users who are already familiar with the advertiser's company. Retargeting is carried out using a database that is collected using a pixel (special JavaScript code) or file.
Modern technique: variations
From the section above, it could be concluded that the “clickable” word or expression is limited solely to the name of the community. In practice this is not the case. Let's look at how you can use any word:
- Get to the point already described in the previous section to solve the question of how to independently make a link to the VKontakte with a word.
- And now delete the base name of the community “UstanovkaOS.ru - official site group”, not forgetting to leave brackets on the sides. Instead of this name, type any phrase of interest in the empty space between the parentheses.
- According to the tradition, which has already become old and good, if you experimented with the previous section, click the Send button. You get a modest and barely noticeable “clickable” word. Naturally, you can accompany the link word with any related information.
Creating a graphic menu in a VKontakte group
To create, you will need knowledge of a graphic editor, such as Photoshop, and the language of the social network wiki markup. And although you don’t need to be a designer or programmer, you will have to spend some time on development. Therefore, if this is a one-time job for you that does not correspond to your profile, it is better to contact professional developers, for example, us. If you want to do everything yourself, then step-by-step instructions on how to create a menu in a VKontakte group will help you, but first let’s say a few words about the interactive cover.
You often ask...
Before working with the VK advertising account, and even during it, many questions arise, and this is absolutely normal. To solve this problem, you have me, so below will be the necessary answers to the most frequently asked questions.
1. How to get to the advertising account?
You probably thought the first question would be how to create an advertising account in VK. But you have it, or rather on the social network, you just need to get into it. If you are on a computer and there is no “Advertising” button on your page, then point to the area next to any section and click on the gear that appears.
Access your office from a PC
Next, a window with sections will open, tick the advertisement and it will appear among others on the left, and you can enter the advertising account to create an entry.
To access your account from your phone, click on the three bars in the upper right corner, then “Advertising”.
Access your office from your phone
2. What types of VK advertising are there?
On VKontakte, there are eight types of advertisements that are displayed in the news feed and three types of advertisements for the site page. Below I will look at the most popular ones.
Types of VK advertising
– Carousel
According to the observations of many Internet marketers, the “Carousel” advertising format is the most effective because it has ample opportunities. Here are a few ideas for the carousel: a selection of your products or services, competitive advantages of you or your product, promotional products, consistent instructions.
Carousel
– Record with button
If you want the user to take one targeted action - call, join a community, buy a product, select an entry with a button. When you click the “Join” button, a person will immediately subscribe to your public page.
Record with button
Secret . If you want to launch an advertisement that will definitely work, then I recommend looking at ideas from your competitors. This is easy to do using a special service. In addition, it will show not only the best posts, but also the cost of the attracted subscriber. Click -> AdSpoiler (promo code INSCALE, 15% discount).
– Universal recording
A universal post looks like a regular VKontakte post. Unlike other types of advertising, which have a 220-character limit, the universal entry has a 16,000-character limit. It's great for storytelling.
You can use any attachments in such a post: videos, polls, gifs.
Universal recording
– Collection of applications
This type of advertising is suitable if you need the user to register for a course or event, leave a request for a consultation, etc. Just make the form short, no one will bother filling out a bunch of lines.
Collection of applications
– Advertising in clips and stories
For advertising in clips, use only high-quality videos. You can add up to three photos or videos in stories, but you cannot add links in the description. Limit – 200 characters.
Clips
– Website advertising
Website advertising is like a post with a button. However, this format only leads to your website. You can also add a video recording up to 5 minutes long.
Website advertising
– Advertisements on website pages
Users will see such ads only in the desktop version. The ad can lead to a website, community or VKontakte application. The “App” format allows you to advertise the installation of iFrame and Flash applications.
Several ad options can be applied to each advertised object:
- Go to an external site. “Large Image” or “Text and Image”;
- Community advertising. “Community Promotion”, “Large Image” and “Text and Image”;
- Application advertising. “Large Image”, “Text and Image”, “Custom Format” and “App Showcase”.
Ads on the page
To create an advertisement, you may need a short promotional video. It can be created in the free VK editor. To do this, click the “Video” button in the left menu, then “Create layout”.
First, select your video options: aspect ratio, slide duration, transition effect, and music. Next, add slides, write text and insert photos. The result can be seen in the preview.
Setting up side advertising
3. How much does advertising cost?
You decide how much you want to spend on advertising. It is enough to deposit 500 rubles into your account, and you can already place advertisements. By the way, the higher the advertising budget, the wider audience you can reach.
And the more you set the price for 1,000 impressions, the more accurate they will be to the target audience. By selecting “Automatic price management”, you can set a goal - maximum impressions, maximum conversions, applications or joining the public. In “Universal Recording” you can only select the price for impressions.
Advertising cost
4. What is the difference between Targeting and the Market Platform?
Targeting is advertising to a target audience. Correctly configured targeting allows you to show ads only to potential customers or subscribers. It can be shown on website pages, in the news feed (post, carousel, with a button, in clips and stories, collecting applications, website advertising), advertising applications or a personal page.
Targeting section
On the market platform, advertising is placed in the form of a post or repost on a wall in popular groups and communities. Such advertising gives much more coverage for less money. This method can bring more subscribers than with targeting, but not customers. The audience of such communities is quite diverse, and the cost is set by group admins.
Market platform section
5. How to top up the budget in your account?
Click “Top up” in the upper right corner of your account to deposit funds. Be careful, targeting and market platform balances are different. If you put money in the wrong place, write to VK technical support.
Top up from PC
Lifehack . I recommend replenishing your advertising budget through the Getuniq service. With it, the passage of moderation is many times faster and a good bonus. Click -> Getuniq.
To top up your budget from your phone, install “VK Admin”. After logging into the application, click the “Top up budget” button in your advertising account.
Top up from phone
On topic: Replenishing advertising accounts: instructions + services
6. How to set a budget limit?
All advertising campaigns spend money from the general balance. To prevent one ad from spending your entire budget, set advertising limits. The total limit sets the maximum advertising budget. The daily limit limits the costs per day.
Setting limits
7. How can I give access to my account to another person?
Click on the “Settings” button, and then enter the link to the page or email of the person you are giving access to.
Opening access
8. What cannot be advertised?
In general, before conducting advertising activities, familiarize yourself with the law on advertising. Some industries are allowed to advertise with restrictions and will need to provide documents first. These are the industries: medicine and pharmaceuticals, finance and insurance, jewelry and fur products, food, charitable organizations, lotteries, dating services.
As for a complete ban, your ad will be rejected if you advertise:
- Alcohol, smoking and drugs;
- Weapon;
- Erotic products;
- Esoterics, NLP and the like;
- Counterfeit goods or copies;
- Financial pyramids;
- Gambling;
- Hacking pages, promoting communities, etc.;
- Goods and services that violate the rights of third parties.
9. What should not be written in advertising text?
In the text of the advertisement you cannot use obscenities, make spelling mistakes, address people personally by name, or humiliate a person’s dignity. Read more in the VK rules: vk.com/ads?act=office_help&terms=1&union_id=1600147460
10. Is it possible to advertise a personal page?
Yes, from April 2021 you can advertise user pages. This will be useful for those who want to promote their personal brand: bloggers, writers, photographers, etc.
Personal page advertising
On topic: Personal brand: creation and promotion (step-by-step instructions)
11. Can I use photographs of people?
You can use photos of people only with their consent. Moderators have the right to refuse advertising with photographs of people, even if the photo was taken from stock. At least that's what the VK rules say.
12. How to create an ad?
Click on the “Campaigns” button in the left menu. Next – “Create an ad”. Select ad post type. Each post type has a description. I will give an example using a universal one, since this is a familiar type of ad for many users.
Selecting an ad type
You can choose an existing entry for advertising, or you can create one from scratch. Creation is almost no different from regular recording. Next, enter the age rating.
Create an entry
13. How to advertise?
A poorly designed advertisement will not only drain your budget, but will also damage your reputation. Of course, I won’t tell you how to create an ad specifically for you; everything is individual for each company and product. I'll just go over the main points of the image and text.
- Image
Images must be of high quality; it’s not just about aesthetics, but also about resolution. The selected image should not be too small, compressed or stretched.
Good and bad picture
Look for suitable images on stock services such as unsplash.com and pexels.com. However, if you plan to do a lot of advertising, consider purchasing a subscription to a paid stock service.
Do not overuse the text in the picture. It seems that a large number of words will make it more detailed and understandable, which is why they will be interested. But the more text there is in an image, the less you want to read it. VKontakte has a restriction: the text on the image should not occupy more than 50% of the area. But don't try to stick to the 50% figure. It would be best to use a headline in the form of an offer and a small text with the most important idea.
Lots and little text
- Text
Don't write too much. Especially at the beginning. It may seem to you that all the characteristics of your product are important to a potential client, but this is not so. Be sure to publish the details in the community, and in advertising write specifically - What do you offer, what is your uniqueness, how will you be useful.
Another important point is spelling. Any mistake or typo will ruin the impression. Therefore, always check the spelling of the text, for example, on special services, such as text.ru, or entrust this to proofreaders.
Take care of convenience - divide the text into paragraphs, one paragraph = one thought, and do not overload the text with emojis.
Text decoration
There are enough rules for how to create a strong ad for an entire article, and we have it.
On topic: VK promo post: 6 examples + 7 tips
14. What are the audience settings?
Naturally, how to work with targeting without setting up an audience. In the office, you can set geography, demographic characteristics, interests, etc. Now let's look at each setting in more detail.
– Geography
Indicate the country, cities and regions in which your target audience is located, and you can also exclude unnecessary ones. This is useful when you work, for example, only in small cities.
If you are interested in a more precise area, click “Select on map”. This function will allow you to find an audience that is located within a radius of 0.5 to 40 km.
Geo settings
– Demographics
In this section it is possible to filter people by gender, age, marital status and birthday. Pay attention to this section if your product/service has a clear demographic segmentation.
Demographics Settings
– Interests
VKontakte offers a wide range of interests and behavior. Choose one important one, but don’t get carried away, otherwise there is a chance of weeding out only the offers. If you already have an active audience, you can test the automatic selection of an interested audience.
Interesting. A chatbot will help automate the work of VK. He himself will answer all the clients’ questions and help with choosing the right product, and you will only have to count the profit received. Click and test -> BotHelp
You can add community subscribers or its active audience. For example, you can test your advertisement against an active audience of competitors.
Additional settings include “Listen to musicians” - for advertising musical groups and projects, “Applications and sites” - for advertising to users of these applications and sites, “Travelers” - for advertising to people who use their VK in different countries.
Interest Settings
– Key phrases
One of the latest innovations in the office. You can write from 1 to 150 keys. They will highlight an audience that is interested in this. Click on “Show 10 similar” to see relevant keywords for those already written.
Key phrase settings
- Education
Screen your audience down to a specific university and position. Please note that not everyone provides real data, so there is a chance to collect an unhelpful audience.
Education Settings
– Add. options
In this section you can place a ready-made audience that is loaded in your retargeting database. Therefore, if you have a ready-made audience, skip all the audiences above.
You can also highlight the owners of certain devices, operating systems and browsers.
Advanced Settings
– Audience retention
Gather those who responded positively or negatively to the ad. So, with the following advertising settings, you will be able to target an already loyal audience or exclude those who do not like your offers.
Audience retention
– Conversion tracking
This only applies to advertising on the site. Using special pixels, you can create advertising for your website visitors.
Conversion tracking
– Advertising time
Oddly enough, users are not on the social network around the clock. There are certain “lucky” hours when more people see your content. As a rule, this is morning and evening. But you also need to make allowances for whether it is a weekday or weekends and holidays.
Show time
15. How to upload your own audience?
If you already have a ready-made database, you can upload it to your advertising account. To do this, in “Retargeting” click on the “Create Audience” button, and then “Load from file”. The file must be in .txt or .csv format and weigh no more than 20 MB.
Uploading your audience
16. What are lookalike audiences?
Similar audiences (or LaL audiences) allow you to significantly expand your audience. VK algorithms analyze the already collected audience and find a new one based on it. To take advantage of this, go to the “Similar Audiences” tab and click “Find Similar Audiences”.
Similar Audiences
17. How to set up placement?
You can choose advertising platforms. Please note that when choosing “All sites”, you need to check that your ad looks good on both.
It is possible to limit sites from 1 to 20 impressions per person. The higher, the more expensive. You can set a restriction period, so people will gradually remember your advertisement.
Next you need to select an advertising campaign. If it doesn’t exist, then click “Create a new one” and give it a name.
Setting up placement
18. What is an advertising campaign?
A campaign is like a specific group of records. There will be separate posts for each, and in order not to get confused in the entries, they are divided into campaigns. You can give each one its own name and view all advertisements and their statistics on the campaign page.
Save your ad settings as a template so you don't have to do everything all over again. To do this, click the “Save settings template” button, which is located immediately after setting up the audience.
Advertising campaign
To avoid blowing your budget, use limits. It is installed on the page of the finished advertisement and can be changed at any time. Also, don’t be lazy to constantly save your audience and analyze your ads. The first will make it possible to more accurately customize your ads, and analyzing statistics will protect you from wasting your budget on ineffective advertising.
On the subject: VKontakte statistics: how to look + 20 tips from a practitioner
19. How to run advertising?
After creating the advertisement, the advertisement page will appear. If everything is configured correctly, you can click “Run”. After verification by moderation, which usually lasts no more than an hour, your advertisement will run.
Launch of advertising
20. What is retargeting?
Retargeting is the display of ads to an already collected loyal audience. That is, you can give different advertisements to the same people.
To collect a database for retargeting, use parsers. With them, you can gather an audience of competitors who are interested in your product or live in a certain territory. We recommend popular parsers for VKontakte - Pepper ninja (“INSCALE2021” +30 days of the same tariff), Segmento Target (“INSCALE” + 30 days of the same tariff).
Use “Audience Saving” when creating your ad. To view all saved audiences, click on the “Retargeting” button in the left menu.
Retargeting
On topic: VKontakte retargeting: 8 methods + instructions
21. What are the main statistics metrics?
Statistics help analyze the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. For all advertisements you can see:
- Coverage. Counted in unique users. If views are counted every time an entry appears on the user’s device screen, then coverage is counted only once;
- Number of impressions. Please note that one person can watch an advertisement several times. An impression is considered when the upper and lower borders appear on the user's display;
- CTR. This indicator reflects the popularity of the ad. It counts as Transitions/Impressions * 100%. The standard CTR in VK is considered to be 0.5 – 0.8%. However, always try to get it above at least 1%;
- Number of clicks. If a user clicks on an advertisement several times, this is counted as one click;
- The amount of money spent. In the VK advertising account you can see what you are paying for;
- eCPC. An indicator that will show the average cost of one transition.
An important metric that is not displayed in the advertising account is the customer acquisition cost (CAC). To calculate it, divide the total cost of the entire advertising campaign by the number of clients who came. For example, if you spent 15,000 rubles on an advertising campaign, and 30 clients came from it, the cost of attracting a client is 500 rubles.
There are other metrics that reflect the effectiveness of your ads. For example, the number of likes, comments and video views.
By the way, you can download statistics. To do this, click on the “Statistics” button in the left menu. Next, select the parameters you need and click “Get data”.
Export statistics
On the subject: VKontakte statistics: how to look + 20 tips from a practitioner
22. What to do if the account is blocked?
Each advertisement is carefully checked by moderators. If it does not comply with the site rules, it will be rejected. Your advertising account will be blocked if your advertisement is repeatedly rejected due to violations. To unblock your advertising account, write to VKontakte technical support - vk.com/support?act=new.
23. How can I find out why my ad was rejected?
On the disapproved ad page, look for the text in the red box. Each ad is checked by people, so mistakes are possible. If yours is rejected, but you are sure that you have not violated anything, just change some word in the ad and send it for review again.
Ad rejection
24. How to set up alerts?
Go to settings. In the “Alerts” section you can customize notifications for yourself. Just don’t disable them on the site, it may happen that you forget to set limits on the ad you are testing and lose money.
Alerts
25. What should I do if I haven't found the answer?
If I have not answered the question you are interested in, look it up here - vk.com/faq12155. Or contact VKontakte technical support – vk.com/support?act=new.
Why do you need an action button in a community?
It's actually simple. Just one click - and the client calls, writes, books, registers and buys!
Remember, friends, our task is to simplify our interaction with the client to a minimum.
Do you want your sales to grow? Use the golden rule: “The simpler, the better.”
Look at how the action button is implemented in the community of the KSK Free Wind riding school|pony club|Ekaterinburg.
Project manager Lyudmila Mineeva shared her impressions of how the Home button worked in her group:
Action Button Statistics
Is it possible to find out how often users use the action button in our community? This is very easy to do - just look at the group statistics:
After opening the community statistics, go to the “Activity” tab:
The bottom graph in the “Activity” tab will show the statistics of clicks on the action button:
Experiment with call to action in your button. Try different options and see how your subscribers will react to certain actions. Analysis of statistics will help you understand whether you chose the right action.
In this simple way you can install and configure an action button in your VKontakte community. If you have any questions, ask them in the comments. I'll be happy to answer.
Tags: VKontakte business, How to sell from a VKontakte group, action button in VK, VKontakte promotion, VKontakte community
How to share links on other resources
In the telephone version of the messenger, user names, channel and chat names are represented as @name. This link will not work on other platforms. Solutions if the URL needs to be placed on a site outside of the Telegram application:
- send the URL address in the desktop version of the messenger;
- change the @ icon to t.me/;
- open the “Share” interface, click on the address, then on the desired service.
The user can view the content of the channel or community without clicking on the link. To put the option into effect, you need to copy the URL and transfer it to the chat. The user’s personal data and dialogues will not be shared with third parties, as they are reliably protected by the Telegram application.
