Step-by-step instructions: How to create a public Vkontakte? Social networks that can replace Facebook, VKontakte and Instagram.
Today, the advertising capabilities of VK are no longer limited to ads in the left block, and depending on the product being promoted, the advertiser has enough big choice accommodation options. Let's look at them in order.
In case Facebook or other popular networks are blocked, DP has compiled a list of resources that can replace them. Everything from Chinese copies to services that have completely eliminated advertising or promised to share revenue with users.
Wondering how people lived before the advent of social networks, it is now pointless. Basically the same as before the advent mobile phones(and even pagers) and personal computers. Those who can still remember these not so distant times will certainly confirm that, in general, it was not bad. Now everything is different. In the summer of 2015, a survey showed that among Russians who use the Internet, only 15% do not access social networks. The American research company Pew Research Center announced a record number of social network users in Russia several years ago.
Meanwhile, for the residents In a number of countries, social networks are an unaffordable luxury, not only for economic, but also for political reasons. For example, it is blocked in Iran, Pakistan, Vietnam, Turkey and China. North Korea need not even be mentioned; not only social networks are blocked there, but also the Internet itself. The country has its own alternative to it, and for obvious reasons one can only guess about the contents of the “North Korean web”.
Source: wciom.ru
By the way, in December 2015 the media disseminated information about the experiment and related to the attempt to shut down the Internet in Russia. Then came the final Rutracker blocking and talk about banning .
In case anything tries blocking will also reach social networks, “DP” has compiled a list alternative resources. Some of them are already actively used in countries where and are banned, others simply can offer interesting work formats.
Chinese copies
Lockdown in China does not interfere Facebook makes money from this country. Advertisers from the Middle Kingdom are ready to spend money on banners in order to reach 1.49 billion monthly Facebook users saw their product.
In this case, those who plans to do business with China, it's worth paying attention to local alternatives to Facebook.
Qzone
Qzone - the first and most popular network in China. Today, the number of service users exceeds 600 million people. And in the world, Qzone takes third place, only ahead of it. There is also a mobile version - QQInternational. However, those who do not use the services of Chinese operators should register cellular communications, most likely, it will not succeed. By at least We never received the treasured SMS confirming registration.
RenRen
A more accurate copy of Facebook from the point of view of the purposes of creation, Renren is not so popular. Like a social network, it was created so that students from different universities could communicate with each other.
Registration in this network untrained users are even more shocked. The unprepared in this case are those who did not have time to learn Chinese. However, for those who really want to break into the world of Chinese analogues of Facebook, instructions were published in English back in 2011, explaining which clicks on which hieroglyphs will lead to the coveted registration.
Sina Weibo
Chinese copy market well-known Internet resources has gone far beyond the Facebook doubles. In 2009, the Chinese Weibo Corporation also copied Twitter. It is called a copy of the famous microblogging service Sina Weibdo. The number of registered users of the service reached 600 million by November 2015, of which 222 million are active users.
By the way, in some ways Sina Weibdo is already ahead of Twitter. While the latter announced the removal of the 140-character limit, Sina said, Sina did - now users can safely write 2 thousand characters. There, unlike the two previous Chinese networks, you can register without any problems. A message with a confirmation code arrives in a few seconds, and the menu in English suggests that you have already become part of the microblogging space. Not really. Everything here, except for a few lines of the menu, is in Chinese. But Weibdo Corporation is now actively working on this issue. Probably, soon even lovers of microblogs with a length of 2 thousand characters who do not know Chinese will be able to roam freely.
A wise use of time
Although Social networks can be used to promote your own business and communicate with partners; the majority still simply waste their time, often working time, with their help. But if you choose the right social network, you can not only not be distracted from your immediate responsibilities, but also have time to earn money by posting photos and videos.
Facebook at work
In December 2015 Facebook announced its intention to seriously compete with LinkedIn by launching Facebook at work. However, the essence of the new service is still somewhat different.
Facebook at work was created for communicating with colleagues within the company, discussing ideas and projects. However, users won't have access to Facebook's usual entertainment features, so anti-social media bosses work time, can be calm. Recently it was announced the creation mobile version, but she is still being tested. So for now, we believe, hope, and wait for the appearance of a useful working tool.
And no advertising
The procedure for creating a community on VK will take at most 10 minutes (including the time spent reading the current article). Another 10 minutes to make the preliminary settings...
VKontakte group, public ( public page), event - all of this is now united by one term: community. However, there are already 6 types of communities now, but... more on that in just a couple of paragraphs. Now, without unnecessary words- Let's start practicing!
We go to the list of our groups from the main menu, find the “Create a community” button - click it, we get to the page for selecting the type of community:
Types of communities in VK. Which one to choose?
The names speak for themselves, plus there are short hints under the headings to make it easier to navigate. If you are still having difficulties with which type of community to choose, now we will tell you everything...
Events– in case you have a date marked with a red marker on your wall calendar, and some event is planned for that date.
Business page. Everything is simple here: you have an “off-line” business - come here (however, not only “off-line”).
Public page– this type is created specifically for public figures, or groups of public persons.
Brand or organization. Having read the name of this type, read 2 lines of “description” (in the picture above): if this describes your future community, consider that you have already made your choice 😉
Interest group. This type is designed to create a community with limited access: for private discussions of personal or work topics (publishing content and everything else that VK allows) with a limited circle of people. Interest groups can be private or closed; they differ in the following:
- Only the group leader can invite new members to a private community (you cannot apply yourself).
- In a closed group, anyone can apply to join.
Thematic community. This type is suitable for everything else for which there was no place in the previous sections: a humorous public where you are going to post memos, or a fan community of shawarma (shawarma) fans. Most likely, this is exactly what you need.
There are only 3 fields in the next window: title, subject, website URL (if any).
After clicking on the “Create Community” button, your group will officially be considered created, for which we congratulate you!
You will be taken to the “Management” page, where you will be asked to fill out several more fields with information and make a number of settings.
Basic public settings
P.S. You can always return to this page and change information/settings (to do this, use the “Manage” button in the menu on the right of the main page of your public).
basic information
Name we have already indicated in the previous step, here you can change it.
Community Description– a few sentences characterizing your group. It must be written down, firstly, to immediately make it clear to visitors to your community “what will it be about?”, and secondly, perhaps in the future this will help bring an additional audience to your public from search engines(from Yandex).
Community cover– image, 1590 by 400 pixels in size: click “Upload”, select the image on your computer. P.S. In the next article we will tell you how to create or where to get beautiful cover for your community on VK.
Page address– Community URL. What the path to your page will look like address bar browser (acceptable english letter, numbers, underscore).
Action button
It will be displayed in the most visible place in your group - immediately below the page cover.
Possible options: go to the website, write by email, call, etc. Depending on the selected type of action, you will need to provide additional information: the name of the button (what will be written on it), enter the site URL, phone number, etc.
Additional Information
Here you can specify the topic of the community (in our case, it’s “Sites”), select its type: community of interests, blog, or page of a store, company, person.
If necessary, set age restrictions (18+), provide a link to your website (if available), phone number, etc. In the “Foundation date” field – indicate current date, or any other – it doesn’t matter.
Last point: choose whether you want your subscribers (or simply Vkontakte users) to be able to offer their posts for publication in your community.
Among other things, you can connect your Twitter account in order to export publications to Twitter (auto-posting) from your VK group.
After making changes, do not forget to click “Save”.
Get to home page your group (to see what it looks like) can be done by clicking on the “Return to page” button.
The VK community page has been created and, partly, configured, but! If you still have some energy left, we suggest spending the next 10-15 minutes playing around with it a little more.
Most VKontakte users believe that public and group are one and the same. However, there are differences.
Although some users are aware of these differences, they still consider them not significant. Indeed if you regular user VKontakte, which is in free time scrolls through the feed of your favorite communities, it doesn’t matter to you whether it’s a public page or a group.
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But if you are the creator of a group or planning to promote something through your community, then it is important for you to know these differences, as they greatly affect the progress of promotion.
1. The first thing we pay attention to is the location of the sections.
If you paid attention, all the main sections in public pages are located on the right.
Therefore, to pay attention to the “discussions”, “photos”, “videos” sections, you need to scroll down the feed a little.
In groups, the listed sections are located at the top above the post feed. Although this difference may not seem significant, if you think about it, this point can significantly influence the promotion process.
If you decide to promote something commercial through the community, then the group here will be more attractive, since a visitor to the community will immediately turn their attention to these sections, where there may be photographs of goods and services, discussions of the offers that your company offers.
In public pages, these sections are located lower, so the visitor does not immediately notice them, and since it is necessary to scroll through the feed, the user may not pay attention to these sections at all, as he will be distracted by community posts.
2. Another significant difference is privacy.
In the group settings, the administration has the opportunity to change the types of its community. For example, a group can be open, where anyone can visit it and join if they like this content. Two more types of groups are “closed” and “private”. By making a group closed, you can only join it if the administration accepts the application.
In some cases this may be useful to prevent non-members from joining the community. target audience, as well as bots and fakes. In this case, the content will not be visible to those who are not members of the group.
And private groups can only be joined by invitation from administrators. This function may be useful for some narrow circle of people with interests that they do not want to disclose to others.
There are no such settings in public pages. Therefore, the public page is always open by default. Anyone can enter and join the public.
3. Another important point that affects the promotion of these two types of communities is the methods of promotion.
Groups have a distinctive “invite friends” feature. Thus, anyone who is in a group can invite their friends to it (no more than 40 people per day).
This is one of the methods for promoting groups, since through fake accounts you can add people as friends and then invite them to your group. In public for some reason this function absent. Many people think this is unfair, but this does not affect the promotion of public pages, since public pages tend to promote themselves. Whereby?
You may have noticed that on each user’s page there is a “interesting pages” section. This section contains a list of publics that a person has subscribed to. This section contains only public highlights, there are no groups there.
It turns out that if a person subscribes to a public page, then in a sense he takes part in the PR of this community, since his friends and all visitors to his page see this community. And in general, VKontakte users are more willing to subscribe to public pages.
The section that lists the groups that a person has joined is located in the header of each page, in additional information user. However, the downside to this is that most people block access to their additional information and it is not available to others.
Taking these points into account, most community creators first create them as groups in order to invite people to them, and when they reach 9,900 subscribers, they change the group to a pvblick so that it can promote itself. By the way, you can change a group to a public one or vice versa only up to 10,000 subscribers, and once a month, after which this function is absent.
So, to summarize, groups are more suitable for commercial promotion. Public pages are more relevant for entertainment content, and they are most often created to make money from advertising.
When creating your own VKontakte community, almost everyone asks themselves the following questions:
- How do the types of VKontakte communities differ?
- Which is better: a group or a public page?
- What type of community should you choose for your business?
What types of communities exist on VKontakte
- Group
- Public page
- Event
How are these three types of communities different? Let's figure it out together.
Public pages (publics)
- All materials are open and you cannot close the page.
- There is no “Invite Friends” function, which makes it difficult to promote at the very beginning of the project’s development.
- There is no News block, the so-called MENU (although it can be created using workarounds).
- There is no main album above the news feed.
- The discussion block cannot be pinned above a community wall.
- Users can leave comments on posts and topics in discussions, but they do not have the ability to leave their posts on the wall.
- Public readers can suggest their posts using the “Suggest news” button.
- The public page is reflected in the block “ interesting pages» on user pages.
Groups
- The group can be opened and closed. If you plan to create some kind of closed club of interests, then create a group.
- The group functionality allows you to invite friends.
- The discussion block can be pinned above the group wall.
- There is a MENU block and you can create your own mini-site using wiki markup. This is especially true for those entrepreneurs who do not have their own website. Many entrepreneurs are not even aware that the functionality of VKontakte allows them to do this.
- There is a location line, but no date of creation of the community.
Events
This type of platform is perfect if you are going to organize any event - a webinar, master class, meeting or concert.
The event is always tied to specific date and before it takes place, all participants receive a reminder about the upcoming event.
Creating an event is practically no different from creating a group. A huge plus is that to promote it, you will only need to fill the event group necessary information about an upcoming event and use the “tell friends” button to notify your friends about it.
The disadvantage of this format is the loss of audience after the event itself. Of course, there are ways to “drag” subscribers from the event to the main community, but part of the audience will still be irretrievably lost.
So what should you choose? Professional opinions are divided
Here, as they say, there are so many opinions, so many people. For example, Damir Khalilov, one of the most famous SMM specialists in our country, believes that a group is best suited for business and he writes about this in his book “Marketing on Social Networks”.
At the same time, Dmitry Rumyantsev is a true professional in promotion on VKontakte and the author of the book “Business Promotion on VKontakte. New practices and technologies,” on the contrary, recommends creating a public page.
So what should you choose? My personal opinion
I will also express my opinion on this matter. In my opinion, you should choose a group if you want to place the main emphasis on communication between subscribers.
Simply put, if you consider communication in the community very important for the development of your business, create a group. Since it is in the group that the discussion block attracts the attention of users and it is possible to organize active, high-quality communication in it.
In Group "BUSINESS Online" I have created 12 discussion topics and I want the discussions to be the ones that catch the eye of people who come into my community.
If for you content is more important- then feel free to choose a public page. Thanks to the “Interesting Pages” block, it will be easier for your community to promote and quickly gain new subscribers.
My little secret
And at the end of the article I want to reveal a little secret. Even if I understand that a public page is more suitable for a project, I still create a group. Why am I doing this?
Everything is simple here. When a community is created from scratch, it is usually difficult to gain the first subscribers. I don’t recommend launching paid advertising if there are only 10 people in the group. People are very reluctant to join such small communities.
This is where I actively use the “Invite Friends” button. And I must say, she helps me out a lot. Using this button, I can easily recruit the first hundred subscribers to the community in 7-10 days.
If your community has fewer than 10,000 members, then you can do it yourself. But remember that a technical limitation allows you to change the community type no more than once a month.