Creating communities on social networks. How to promote a group on a social network

What is better for effective business development - a website or social networks? This question is relevant, first of all, for beginning businessmen who have decided to take their business online. And it is for them that our article is written.

Yes, in Lately The popularity of social networks has grown exponentially. Their audience numbers millions and billions. And every day hundreds of new groups appear that set themselves the goal of business development. So maybe the need for websites has disappeared altogether? Maybe it’s enough to create a group and skim the cream off it?

Let's take a closer look at all the pros and cons of these options.

Social network group

There are many platforms: VKontakte, Instagram, Facebook, Odnoklassniki. When choosing, rely, firstly, on the preferences of your target audience (where there is more of it, go there), and secondly, on your competitors (there are 2 strategies: go where everyone is, or go where there is no one yet). Read more about choosing a site.

Also pay attention to the functionality and focus of the site. For example, the VKontakte community is ideal for creating some kind of online store, and the focus is on textual content, while Instagram is aimed at the visual component, and if your business has the opportunity to create spectacular photos, Instagram will definitely suit you.

There are also disadvantages:

• High competition: These are the consequences of a low entry threshold, because anyone can create a page on a social network.
• Template: if your product/service is the same as your competitors, your groups will be almost like twin brothers.
• Limited functionality: everything remains within the capabilities of the specific social network. For example, VKontakte has the functionality of ordering online and adding goods to the cart, but Facebook and Instagram do not yet provide such “things”.
• Promotion outside of social networks: Promoting offline or in regular search with only a group is much more difficult.
• Unavailability of the b2b sector: B2B products are not searched for on social networks. Social networks are designed for the end consumer market. And trying to sell machine tools or industrial boilers through a group is, as a rule, a waste of time and effort. But there are also exceptions. :)

Website

Your site, created completely from scratch yourself, on a CMS or on a designer, depending on your goals and available resources. Read about all three options, as well as how designers fit into this concept.

But there is no escape from the shortcomings:

• Website building: Creating a website yourself is more difficult. Here you can either pay a web studio or use free constructors, the functionality of which is very limited if we're talking about specifically about the free version.
• Promotion: It takes time and money to bring your website to visible positions and gain traffic. The same applies to other methods of promotion. By the way, we have collected all the options for attracting traffic.

conclusions

From the lists above it is clear that social networks have a number of undeniable advantages, but at the same time they also have limitations that will not allow you to fully develop your business on the Internet. Social networks are ideal for projects at the very start or for very small companies that do not yet plan to scale.

If you really have long-term intentions for doing business on the Internet, then it is better to get your own high-quality website and support it with a group. This is an ideal option, because this is exactly what the world’s leading companies and simply visionary businessmen do.

P.S. If you need a high-quality group or a high-quality website, or a website integrated with social networks, please contact us! We will help in any case. :)

Social networks are not easy new tool communication, this is a chance to win the favor of millions of your potential clients. Many people ask: “Isn’t the official website enough?” Let me make a simple analogy: imagine that the site is a cinema, and the community is a film on TV that you can watch without getting up from a comfortable chair. On social networks, people feel comfortable, like at home, and you can easily build a friendly dialogue with your audience.

The value of communications received through social media cannot be underestimated. At the same time, a common misconception is to mentally translate likes and the number of people joining a group into purchases. Fans of your brand are not always your customers, but always your allies and friends. They are the ones who will advise their wealthy relatives to visit your luxury car dealership or convince a friend to buy a gift for a girl in your online jewelry store.

This does not mean that SMM has no effect on sales. Everything is just the opposite - it more than influences. However, traditional methods of analysis do not work here - think more broadly. Social networks are a complex and unusual marketing tool, and the fact that it is multifaceted and effective has already been confirmed by many successful examples.

Creation and promotion of a group

Many business owners mistakenly believe that the key to successful promotion is being present in all networks at the same time. However, this is a common misconception. The right decision would be to create communities on those platforms where your target audience is more likely to be concentrated. Otherwise, you risk wasting time, effort and money trying to show the advantages of innovative construction equipment housewives or describing the advantages of luxury car dealerships over students.

Therefore, before starting promotion, it is worth familiarizing yourself with the socio-demographic portrait of the social network audience. Sources provide different data on this matter, but we tried to give general statistics for the last half year:

The most popular and numerous SS in Russia. Audience: more than 190 million accounts. Attendance : 28.6 million people monthly (in Russia).

Compound:

Facebook.com

Audience: 960 million users. In Russia 7.8 million registered accounts. Attendance: 17 million people monthly.

Among Facebook users a lot of:

1. Businessmen, entrepreneurs, marketers.
2. Bloggers, geeks, webmasters.
3. People who have friends abroad.

However, before making your final choice, you should take a closer look at each social network. Check if there are communities similar to your future on the selected site and are they successful? Or maybe this is your chance to be the first?

Community management strategy and tactics

A correctly chosen strategy is the key to victory, and social networks are a battlefield where this rule also applies. Before starting the practical part, start developing the theoretical part. In other words, think through the concept of community. First of all, the pages of your competitors will help you with this. See how they lead their communities, remember successful techniques - all this will be useful to you.

Think about how you will lead the community on social networks. Do you have a construction business? Try telling users about successful interior techniques and unusual architectural solutions. Are you working out? computing systems? Gather passionate people and become their industry expert.

Categories

Take care of what exactly you will post in the group in advance. What materials might be of interest to your audience? Make a list of topics - this will make the task of further preparing content easier. The headings must fit into the general concept of the community, the strategy mentioned above. For example, a short rubric for the medical device community might look like this:

1. Articles about healthy way life.
2. News from the world of medicine and healthcare.
3. Unusual facts about the human body.
4. Information about the company's products.
5. Technical innovations in medicine.
6. Active communication with users.

Note that in your community, branded and entertaining information must alternate, so you can increase the level of loyalty: users will be grateful to you for interesting materials and will perceive information about your company more positively.

We create and register a group

Once you have decided on the choice of platform for promotion, you can move on to the next part, the technical one - creating an online community. This stage requires very careful attention: the first impression of users depends on it.

Step 1. Design

The brand community is your virtual customer center; users should enjoy spending such a precious resource as time while being in your group. Fortunately, the modern functionality of social networks provides quite wide possibilities for layout and design. Your group design should reflect the concept of your community strategy. Poor layout and inconvenient navigation indicate disrespect for the audience.

Step 2. Develop a community navigation system

Any community must provide information about the brand and what valuable users can find in the group. Each social network has its own functionality for creating a community, however general principle true for everyone: it is at the moment of receiving primary information about the group that the user decides whether he should join it. Try to briefly outline all the benefits of your community to potential members.

The community menu also changes depending on the social network, however general rules is here too. Not every user will spend time scrolling through your group in search of the necessary information. Therefore, think about the necessary points and sections in advance.

Step 3. Filling the community with content

The next stage is the preparation and publication of posts in the group. First of all, you will need some sort of posting schedule. Be sure to draw up a plan for the week: how many posts will be posted in your community and what they will be. And in the future, try to stick to it. This will significantly save your time and effort, help you distribute materials correctly, and also adhere to your previously chosen strategy.

Example of a publication plan:

Monday
Product Information		Product Information	Interactive with community members	Entertainment article ( Interesting Facts about the industry)
HR content (report on our corporate event)	Interactive with community members	Educational content (expert opinion of our specialists)	Product Information	Community Survey
Industry news	Product Information	Graphic content(thematic picture)	Industry news	Product Information

Prepare material for posts in advance - in order to successfully develop a community, you need constant publications. Before you start advertising campaign and announce the launch of your representative office on social networks, make several publications. It’s ideal if a new visitor to your group has something to read 2-3 scrolls down the screen. An empty community will not interest users. And even if you don’t get a lot of likes at first, you will save your further advertising budget.

We invite the target audience

After launching the community, you can focus on the main thing - attracting target audience. Let's look at a few main ways:

1. We directly invite the users you need to join the group. Mailing is the most obvious way, but far from the most successful. As a rule, the work is very painstaking and often thankless. In addition, you may encounter restrictions on sending invitations and even receive a warning for spam.

2. We use the advertising opportunities of social networks. All the social networks we list provide transparent way attracting users - contextual advertising (targeted, as experts call it). Targeted ads are text and graphic blocks shown to users on their own pages.

The most big advantage This option allows you to select the target audience to whom your ads will be shown based on various parameters: geography, gender, age, etc. These settings are for everyone social platform are different, so you should familiarize yourself with the rules of each of them.

3. Placing advertisements in communities where your target audience is present. The method can be quite effective, especially if you can accurately identify such communities. It consists of posting a paid post with a link to your community. However, here you are not dealing with the administration of the social network, but with the owners of the community, so you need to be careful.

So, you've created a community, reluctantly secured a substantial advertising budget and are waiting for loyal fans of your products? Well, now only the most difficult thing remains ahead - its regular development and building high-quality communications.

Through thorns to likes

There are so many of them, abandoned, lonely and pathetic... brand communities on social networks. And all because many do not realize that running a community is also Full time job, and responsibility to users.

The content, of course, should be of high quality, relevant, and useful, and primarily useful for your brand. Don't get carried away with posting cute kittens, no matter how many likes they get. Posts for the community should be:

• Interesting– surprise users, let yours be remembered among the messages flashing in the feed.
• Useful– your messages should provide some kind of value, even if it’s entertainment value. Users may be happy to smile once again when they see a funny post.
• Current– check the freshness of the information before publishing it.
• Truthful– before you post something, make sure that this is actually the case. A particularly dangerous moment for Internet sensations and events from the lives of famous personalities. Otherwise, you will then have to justify your own incompetence for a long time.

Communities do not watch the clock

There are many answers to the question of when is the most effective time to post online, several studies have been conducted, and yet there is no correct one among them, because it all depends on the time of activity of your target audience. Housewives may not have a free minute during the day to read your posts. And managers get acquainted with the news feed before the working day. So, again we return to the fact that the audience is not just people who buy a product from you. Imagine their collective portrait and lifestyle: when are they most likely to spend time on the Internet.

Building communications

Don’t forget that users on social networks are your friends, and only then your clients. Even if these are not always polite friends. Therefore, communication should be free and friendly. Speaking of style, again you should focus on your target audience. You may have to learn professional slang or try to maintain a dialogue using words popular among schoolchildren. The main thing is not to ignore your visitors, try to respond to all messages, even negative ones.

Separately about the negative. Surely, among the users of the social network there will be those who cannot come to terms with what you are doing, and you will begin to receive unflattering messages. What should I do? After you cope with the desire to deal with the scoundrel personally, calmly and politely try to understand the situation. Ask what exactly in your service or product he was not satisfied with. By receiving feedback, even this kind, you will see your brand through the eyes of the user and will be able to change the situation for the better. Then be sure to promise to solve your opponent's problem, but do not forget to follow through and tell him about it.

In addition to communication, do not forget about interactive activities - arrange various promotions, competitions, surveys, quizzes. This is a good way to increase brand visibility and engagement among group members, but there are rules here:

1. Think over the mechanics of the competition and write rules for participants.

Imagine that your competition was won by a participant from Vladivostok. And the prize was two tickets to an evening show at a Moscow cinema. Or a large refrigerator that you now need to somehow deliver from the capital. And this, at best, will be your compatriot. But what about foreigners - after all, they too may be among the winners. Therefore, in order to avoid getting into an unpleasant situation, think through everything in advance, and most importantly, write it down and publish it.

2. The competition should work to promote the brand.

Try to ensure that the topic of the competition is related to the activities of your company. Here you can show your imagination, but if you go aside, you will not get the desired result.

3. Keep the rules simple.

Everyone should have the opportunity to participate in the competition - you shouldn’t force users to jump on one leg around your office, film it on video and come up with a poetic description for it. There may simply not be anyone willing to do so. Developing and promoting a community is not an easy task, requiring time, effort and inspiration. The main thing is not to stop in the face of difficulties and not to give up what you started. Approach it with all responsibility - and the results will not keep you waiting. Well, we hope that our advice will help you!

Not long ago we wrote about... The article aroused interest among our readers, and many of them began to ask questions related to the development of their group. After all, the basis for business promotion is high-quality and good band, with the help of which you will sell products, or attract visitors to your website.
So it arises then logical question, but how to develop this group, where to get subscribers, how to attract new visitors and increase their involvement. Today we will try to give answers to all these questions, talk about the intricacies of developing and promoting your own public, and pay attention to certain nuances that are very important, but which many beginners forget about.

Article on the topic:

This article was written with the assistance and recommendations of an SMM webmaster specialist who this moment has a network of VKontakte communities with a total audience of several million people.
1. Embed widgets into your website
VKontakte groups are often used to increase traffic on a website. But you can also act way back. If the bulk of your website visitors come from search engines, then you have an excellent opportunity to make them subscribers of your community or group.
How to do it? It's simple. VKontakte, like most other social networks, has special widgets that are built into the code of your site. A person who comes to a website and sees a social network widget there can special problems in a few clicks join your community.
I’m sure that a normal question will arise: “Why do you need to drive site visitors to a social network, since they already come from search, and that’s already good.” Let’s answer this: if a person came to your site through Yandex or Google, then, as a rule, this is a transit visitor. He will get what he was looking for and is unlikely to ever return to the site again. In order to turn a casual visitor into a regular one, you must attract him to a group where he can regularly see various updates to your site.
Another tip is to place widgets on all pages of the site, and give the user the opportunity to choose the social network that he uses most often.
2. Advertising in other communities
Now it’s almost impossible to imagine the development of a public page or VKontakte group without advertising in other, large communities. As a rule, beginners believe that they can do without this and go only with a beautiful avatar, interesting posts, and reposts from their friends. To be honest, this method worked 5 years ago, when a community of 20-30 thousand people was considered large. Today, you won’t surprise anyone with beautiful designs and cute notes on the walls.
Advertising in thematic public pages is what really works. Yes, this is not a cheap thing, but you must understand that there is no other way out. If you are serious about creating a good selling public page, then without investment it will be oh so bad. Most likely you will spend a lot of time and get minimal return.
How much does advertising cost now? It all depends on your topic and the chosen platforms for placing advertising posts. As a rule, in public pages with over a million people, advertising will cost from 1,500 rubles per post. But remember that you can always search and find cheaper and equally high-quality offers. And one more thing, always pay attention to the statistics of potential advertising platforms. You need high-quality public pages, not ones filled with bots.
By the way, if you are seriously thinking about promoting your group, and want to earn from 100,000 rubles a month, then we recommend listening to the free webinar “Social Revolution. Money 2.0,” hosted by webmaster Alexander, an SMM specialist whose income from VKontakte projects exceeds 300,000 rubles.

Article on the topic:

3. Buy offers
I won't say that this is the most good way promoting your VKontakte group, but at first you can’t do without it. It has long been known that people are more willing to join communities in which big number subscribers. This is a mass effect, when a person subconsciously understands what more people subscribed to this group, the more interesting it is. He also wants to become part of something big and interesting.
So, in order to attract real people, you need to fill the group with offers up to a certain value. Where can I get them? There are now many services on the Internet that, for money, will invite as many people to your group as needed. As a rule, offers are real people who join your community for a certain reward. Don’t expect activity from them (likes, comments, reposts, orders), because they are needed only for statistics. Later, when the group begins to fill up real people, you should abandon the practice of attracting offers, because it makes no sense and only entails additional spending of money.

4. Targeted advertising on VKontakte
Another way to develop and promote your public. To be honest, we don’t really like it, because it’s the most expensive, and there’s little effective method, but they must talk about it. Perhaps in our cases it was not effective, but it will be perfect for you.
Currently, Vkontakte offers two payments for targeted advertising - payment for transitions and payment for impressions. It is impossible to say which of these is more effective, because each individual case has its own characteristics. Before replenishing your advertising account on large amounts, we advise you to conduct a series of experiments, try different kinds ads, pictures, headlines. Pick up various parameters for advertisements and choose the optimal solution. Very often, changing the title or image can either improve or worsen the effect of the advertisement.
You should not rely on targeted advertising, like the only way attracting people. If you decide to use it, then only as an addition to all other methods of promotion.

5. Understand user motivations
If you decide to create a community for your company, then you need to clearly understand why VKontakte users need to join there. But think logically, the user goes to the community for some purpose, and if he doesn’t get what he came for, he unsubscribes very quickly. If a person unsubscribes, then consider that you have lost him forever. To prevent this, determine the person’s motives and needs. As a rule, they can be like this:
Obtaining information about your company and the products it provides.
Communication with those who have already used the services of your company. Search for reviews from other customers.
Communication with management and company representatives
Receiving discounts and bonuses for participating in the community.
Here's roughly what you should focus on and what should definitely be in the company's public page.

Article on the topic:

6. Correct group design
As they say, you meet someone by their clothes. Therefore, you should decorate your group as beautifully as possible. What do users pay attention to first? That's right, name, logo, menu and post design. These are the four components that should be the basis correct design your public.
Make the logo bright, attractive, and one that reveals the essence of the community and makes it clear what it is about. If we talk about the name, it should be concise, and also as closely related to the theme of the public itself as possible. Also, do not try to insert advertisements like “Jacket sales Moscow” or “Car rental” into the title. Users automatically have a filter for advertising communities, because no one likes having a product shoved at them.
Also, spare no expense and order a beautiful graphic menu with which all members of your community can quickly find necessary information. It has long been a proven fact that a graphical menu is much better perceived than a regular text one.
And at the end, some tips regarding the design of posts. Posts should be as informative as possible and close to the topic of your public page. If you have tour operator, and you are selling tours all over the world through a public website, then you should not post news about politics, sports, information about business or some cute cats. I would also like to add that it is advisable to accompany all posts beautiful pictures, audio or video materials.
7. Competitions
One of the most effective ways interaction with your subscribers – holding competitions and promotions. Such a move will allow you to solve several problems at once. Firstly, to stir up the audience, forcing them to take a more active part in the life of the group. If the user is involved, he will return to the group more often and follow its updates. Secondly, attract new members to the community. As a rule, all competitions are based on getting as many people as possible to know about the group. Participants in the competition are encouraged to repost, tell friends about the group, and share this information in other communities. And thirdly, with the help of a competition you can fill the group with user-generated content. Very often, according to the terms of the competition, you must write something, take a photograph, or shoot a video message. All this is collected in the group, thereby increasing its value to other participants.
8. Stimulate discussion
Users are lazy and won't do anything themselves. Therefore, you should stimulate their communication. Ask questions, create topics for discussion, raise pressing and relevant issues. All this will force users to join the discussion and be involved in the life of the group. As a rule, a new visitor who just came in and saw a live discussion will understand that the community is alive and subscribe to it.

Article on the topic:

9. Counsel participants
If the group has a topic like “Questions to an Expert”, where everyone can get an answer to their questions, this will significantly increase loyalty to the group. Many users are interested not only standard information about the company, or beautiful posts with cute pictures, as well as more pressing problems. You must provide an opportunity to solve these problems.
It is very important that the consultant really should be an expert in the given topic. It is necessary to outline in advance the range of issues on which consultations are possible. Answers should not be of an advertising nature, but rather objective and informative. You should set a deadline for answering questions in advance.
10. Keep the group clean
As soon as your group becomes popular, spammers and various trolls will definitely come to it. You must monitor the cleanliness of the group and clear it of unnecessary and non-targeted information several times a day. If users see that there is a lot of “garbage” in the group and no one is engaged in it, they will begin to actively unsubscribe.

Both professionals and employees of certain companies, as well as fans can create such communities different brands and phenomena.

In what networks are groups created?

• Facebook
  Facebook pages are a place to post product information. This is a marketing channel for distributing various things, including so-called viral recordings. The peculiarity is the high age of the audience.
  Integrated with external sites, opens up opportunities for . A unique tool is also available - email database conversion, which allows you to upload addresses and automatically send invitations to pages linked to them.
• Twitter
  A popular network for SMM promotion. Event feed tracking creates special hashtags that connect users with common interests. To track the event feed, special hashtags are created that unite users with common interests.
• Google+
  Google+ divides users into circles to determine which group receives which content. We are establishing our own system of brand communities. Video communication function available.
• LinkedIn
  LinkedIn allows you to join existing interest groups or create your own. Communities can be open or closed.
• In contact with
  VKontakte is one of the most popular networks with tens of millions of active users. The secret to successful marketing campaigns is deep, increasing their effectiveness.
  To promote the group, VKontakte supports integration with external sites, useful tools to highlight the audience, announcement in existing groups. Unique feature - Special offers, through which, for example, you can get points in a game or application by joining its group.
• Classmates Popular social network in Russia. When creating and designing a group, remember to take into account positioning.
  When choosing a social network, it is necessary to take into account the objectives that the company sets for itself. This is the only way to achieve maximum efficiency and loyalty of your target audience.

When choosing a social network it is necessary to take into account the tasks that the company sets for itself. The topic of the community, the type and content of the content, and other nuances matter. This is the only way to achieve maximum efficiency and loyalty of your target audience.

Creating a group on social networks

Consists of stages:

• Marketing strategy.

  formulate a goal

  market analysis

  study the specifics of the chosen niche.

  Make a plan for current events.

  Having the ability to comment and creating lively discussions always leads to negativity over time. Authors of negative reviews most often there may be dissatisfied customers, failed employees or competitors.

  Negative comments cannot be deleted; this is ineffective. Instead of one comment, several appear.

  • Natural (constructive or impulsive);
  • Directed;
  • Trolling.

  Natural negativity is created real users who were dissatisfied with the service. We need to figure out the problem, resolve the situation, and apologize.

  Constructive subtype assumes that the client is complaining about real, objective problems. Impulsive comments are left under the influence of emotions and in practice may not even be related to the company’s activities.

  Directed negative differs in organization, which is carried out by ill-wishers or competitors. To distinguish this phenomenon, it is necessary:

  • Check facts, dates, times, presence of a controversial situation;
  • Conduct a semantic analysis, because for a large number of reviews with different pages there may be one author;
  • Conduct marketing analysis, paying attention Special attention timing of publication and intervals between reviews, filling of commentators’ accounts and other nuances.

  An effective way to eliminate directed negativity is to ask for clarification of the details. Most dissatisfied customers drop out at this stage.

  Trolling- a specific subtype of negativity on the Internet, strange people. Its main goal is provocation conflict situations, causing a backlash, arguing for the sake of arguing. Optimal solution- ignoring.

  When working with negativity of any type unacceptable:

  • Show aggression, insult users;
  • Deny real facts;
  • Ignore the situation and leave it to chance.

  For prevention of negativity special events are held:

  • Constant comments and discussions;
  • Forming a circle of authoritative users whose opinions will be listened to by a wide audience;
  • Increasing the level of loyalty of participants, allowing to avoid the impact of negative opinions on their perception of the brand;
  • Informing during mass information attacks, users will be aware of the situation and what measures are being taken to resolve it.

  Who needs online communities?

  Online communities are important for both companies and social network users.

  Managing social media groups for brands:

  • Technical support, communication and customer service;
  • Increasing awareness and improving the company's reputation;
  • Collection of statistics and analytics of the group on a social network, conducting surveys and research;
  • Savings on group promotion;
  • Increasing interest and increasing sales.

  For users:

  • Cooperation, opportunity to receive useful information;
  • Using communities without leaving the social network;
  • The opportunity to exchange experiences, study reviews, receive help and recommendations;

  Group promotion on social networks

  For successful promotion of the group, in addition to technical means There are some tricks:

  • Content strategy is task-oriented;
  • Informational occasions are created in such a way that users want to respond to them with reposts, comments or other actions;
  • It is important to show users that you are interested in each of them and their opinions;
  • It is necessary to competently work with the emotions of subscribers, create materials that can touch a nerve;
  • Any product or event needs proper announcement;
  • Unique texts attract much more attention and collect more likes than copied information;
  • Audience interest is maintained by various innovations, events, seasonal offers and other updates;

  Goals of creating a group on social networks

  • Expanding the audience;
  • Increasing company or brand awareness;
  • Informing users about various events, products, services, and the benefits of various offers;
  • Reputation management to support and adjust the company’s image;
  • Promotions and other events for a wide audience;
  • Direct contact with potential buyers.

  Benefits of groups on social networks

  • Spread of information;
  • Search for like-minded people;
  • Increasing the popularity of the project;
  • Feedback and working with opinions;
  • Gathering of people for various events;
  • Wide targeting options;
  • Subscribe to the group in one;
  • Collection of statistical data about the target audience;
  • Distribution of content with a link to the original source or main site;
  • Promotion among others thematic communities;
  • Content availability;
  • Open source communication that enjoys the trust of users.

  Disadvantages of running groups on social networks

  This requires thoughtful marketing strategy, this is the only way to attract the attention of the audience and stand out among the crowd.

  Promoting groups requires investment in creation and design. These are expenses for advertising, staffing, and community organization. But with proper use of the benefits of social networks, such costs will soon pay off in full.

  conclusions

  Even a beginner can create a group on a social network himself; no programming knowledge is required. But you can also order development and design. In order to estimate the budget for creating a group, just search in search engine query “how much does it cost to create a group on a social network.”

  This material can be used as instructions for use. If you need to promote your page on a social network, just open the text and proceed step by step!

  I tell you how to use an integrated approach based on statistics, analysis and involvement in promoting your business effective tools for SMM promotion. I have developed 7 steps that will help you develop your page from scratch and make it interesting for your customers.

  Step 1. Defining the concept of community

  Your page should convey a certain concept. If this concept has already been formed within your business, this is a significant plus. The concept should represent the guiding concept, the set of views of the company's management on current customer problems, and how your business or product can solve these problems.

  For example: there is no effective and fast service for pizza delivery. Our service helps restaurants deliver their goods to the consumer on time, and for the consumer it ensures fast and inexpensive delivery of pizza, preserving its taste, temperature and taste properties.

  Remember that the concept determines the strategy of action and influences further methods of promotion on social networks.

  Step #2. Setting goals

  We set ourselves goals that will increase key indicators business efficiency. Goals need to be set and based on SMART system, that is, they must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, controllable.

  In our case, we write the following goals:

  • Identify our competitors and analyze their activity on social networks.
  • Identify and analyze our target audience.
  • Optimize our page for the audience.
  • Develop a content plan for all segments of our target audience.
  • Identify the most effective and profitable tools for page development.
  • Test the tools and analyze their effectiveness.
  • Start leading a group.

  Step #3. Data collection and analytics

  This can be done by an individual specialist, an agency, or you yourself. This period includes the following activities:

  • Identify all possible competitors and analyze what they do to attract users and how effectively. Based on monitoring key queries(wordstat), number of users and measurements user activity it is possible to identify the leading market players.
  • Identification based on SMM tools and statistics of the audience cores of groups of competitors (active core, moderately active core, inactive core). What is the core audience? It often happens that in a group or page, 10-15% of users from the total number of subscribers regularly engage in user activity: liking posts, leaving comments, reposting on their pages, or actively conducting discussions. If you look at the most active users, you can identify certain patterns in their behavior and preferences.
  • Conduct and collection user requirements for each core and develop custom scripts.

  For example: Masha Ivanova, 23 years old, works in sales in Moscow, is single, loves smart solutions and life hacks for the home, loves beautiful interior design, cats on Instagram and short useful texts.

  Of course, these scenarios will be conditional, but they will help us develop content in the future that will take into account maximum user preferences.

  • Identification of effective times for posting content (daily, weekly, monthly, holidays), using analysis of user activity in similar communities. For example, on Saturday morning you can publish material at 12:00, since only at this time your subscribers wake up.

  Step #4. Page optimization

  Optimization based on user page scenarios for all audience cores (Wiki markup, design, description, short URL, album titles, discussion titles, etc.). Here you need to really invest in a beautiful and pleasant design, and if you have completed the previous steps, it will be much easier for you to explain to the designer what audience he is working for.

  Step #5. Content plan development

  The most interesting and difficult part of the work is developing a content plan for each core audience. You identify the topic and format of the post.

  Example: Monday at 18:31 the history of the creation of the gadget should be published.

  Now you must find sources of content. These could be RSS feeds, public pages, blogs, news publications, opinion leaders, copywriters, videographers, photographers, artists.

  Describe the content requirements based on the text and title of posts. Indicate what media materials should be present in the group’s posts and albums. What topics should be raised by group members? Ideally, you receive a completed grid of post formats in a content plan for example for a month for posting. Based on these requirements, you can draw up requirements for outsourced performers: photographers, designers, etc.

  Step #6. Testing and identifying effective tools

  At this stage, you begin publishing your content on the page. To determine the effectiveness of the tools, you must not forget about collecting statistics. For example, track the number of transitions, count coverage, attract new users per day, week or other specific period of time.

  Here you should focus on the ROI (return of investment) indicator - the ratio of the amount of profit or loss to the amount of investment. This indicator is expressed in % and will show you the most effective and ineffective channels for attracting audiences on the Internet (advertising exchange, banners, partnership programs, paid publications and posts) for your page. From all these attraction channels, you remove ineffective, time-consuming and expensive ones.

  Step #7. Resource development

  You have done the almost impossible! You have collected content and a systematic approach to publishing it on social networks. You know your audience almost by sight and know what they like. Considering that quite a lot of money has been spent on analysis, a reasonable question arises: what more can be done? Using the data from these studies, you can not only improve your website, but also expand your business by offering a new product or service.

  At the initial stage of community development and business promotion on social networks, fill the group with content for about 20-30 posts. Coming by invitation or contextual advertising the user will want to scroll through the community feed and if you have 1-2 news, then most likely he will not subscribe to it.

  On VKontakte it is better to first create a group (in Facebook is better create a page). VKontakte allows you to convert a group into a page and vice versa. The group will give you the opportunity to invite users for initial content. Invite only those users who may be interested in the group's materials or your business. Do not wait high conversion at the initial stage, do a comprehensive advertising company, using an advertising exchange or direct placement through administrators of similar communities. Pay special attention advertising post, place the “shooting” picture precisely in the context of the community in which you are advertising. Here's an example -