How to create a VKontakte group and format it correctly. Step-by-step instruction

From this article you will learn how to create a group on VK in 2020 and configure it correctly. In particular, select the type of community, the name of the group, set up the main sections, fill out the description, put a memorable community avatar, upload a beautiful cover, and so on. If you are a beginner and are just starting to figure out how to work VKontakte, this step-by-step manual will be especially useful for you.

Advantages and capabilities of the VKontakte group:

1. Fast creation. After reading the article to the end, you will understand that creating a group takes 10-15 minutes.
2. For free. You can create a VKonakte group absolutely free, and with proper promotion, it can be compared in effectiveness to a landing page or website.
3. Easy to use. Most of the actions related to business promotion in VK are intuitive and simple.
4. A lot of information. There are many articles and videos on the Internet about the work of VKontakte: promotion, monetization, etc.
5. The largest audience is a Russian-speaking audience of all ages - among them there are definitely your clients.

Why do you need a group on VK?

A VK group or community is an association of subscribers based on interests that allows you to conduct business, learn news, communicate, exchange information, opinions, conduct discussions or just have fun.

For businesses, this is an opportunity to communicate with their customers and receive feedback.

The community can be used as:

• Representative business;
• Internet media;
• Association of interests for communication;
• Fan club;
• A platform for conducting paid courses and trainings;

The fundamental difference between a community and a personal page is that its members can also add materials to the community.

Flexible privacy settings and appointments of managers allow you to conduct almost any type of social activity in communities: from business and trade unions to fan clubs of stars or films.

How to create a menu for a VKontakte public page

Having a beautiful menu is one of the rules for creating a VKontakte group. This is an important design element that represents an attached wiki page. The menu provides convenient navigation through community sections and gives the group individuality, a unique design, and helps to stand out among competitors.

The community menu can be very simple, if it is a header image and a list of links, then you can design all this using the visual editor of wiki pages. In order to create a more beautiful menu, you will need to work with a graphic editor and manually format the page.

In order for your public to receive a unique graphical menu, you need to complete the following steps:

• Think over the structure of the community, make a list of menu items;
• Create pages or sections to which menu items will link and record links to them;
• Select an image for the background (for example, from free photo stocks);
• Open the background image in a graphics editor and write menu items on it in the required positions;
• Using a graphic editor (the “Slice” tools in Photoshop, the “Guillotine” in Gimp, the grid + magic wand in Paint.net), you need to cut the picture into parts (each menu item is a separate fragment);
• In the community, go to the “Community Management” item, select “Sections” in the menu on the left and select “restricted” in the “Materials” item (this means that only administrators can edit the menu);
• Upload pictures to the group;
• Create an attached Wiki page in the public (in the group, go to the “Latest News” section and click “Edit”);
• Create a menu structure using wiki markup.

How to create a group on VK for dummies

Open the Groups on your personal page and click the Create a community .

Creating a group in contact

A window will open to select the type of community.

Choosing a community type

It seems that we see 6 options to choose from.

In fact, there are only 3 of them:

• Interest Group;
• Public page;
• Event.

The top three views were created to make selection and configuration easier for users for whom the concepts of “group” and “public page” did not clearly indicate anything.

Business (cafe, store, fitness club, bank, cinema, workshop) and thematic community (news and posters, entertainment, thematic blogs and media) are all public pages. Whatever you choose, it will be a public page. The only differences are in the preliminary settings that were made at the time the community was created.

A brand or organization (product, film, company, educational institution, charitable foundation) is a group.

How not to make a mistake in choosing the type of community

Each type of community solves its own problems. I’ll tell you about all 6 types, indicating the presets. The actual type of community will be indicated in brackets.

Within one type (group, public page or event), all features of this type are available, regardless of the selected presets (business, thematic community, brand or organization, interest group, public page, event). Missing settings can be enabled later.

Public page - for doing business and selling goods and services, media and online magazines. A personal brand is also packaged into a public page.

The administrator can add the company address, days and hours of operation of the company, and button settings for communicating with clients. This type is suitable for shops, fitness clubs, workshops, pizzerias, bars, cinema halls, hairdressers, manicure salons. In general, for companies providing services and selling goods and for the media.

Group - suitable for creating a community of interests, entertainment topics, i.e. for selling advertising. You can create closed groups to conduct secret communities or closed paid trainings. Groups are also able to indicate the address and place goods. But they are still more aimed at communication between subscribers.

An event is a slightly more specific type, created more for organizing one-time or periodic events: master classes, concerts, performances, trainings. It’s easier to invite participants, but it’s already functional in terms of selling goods.

If you plan to run your business or entertainment portal permanently, then choose between a group and a public page.

Each type has its own advantages. I’ll say right away that you can effectively use the strengths of both types and transfer a community from one type to another after creation, no more than once a month.

Groups and public pages cannot be exchanged for an event, just as an event cannot be exchanged for groups and public pages.

Be careful when choosing.

To make it easier to make your choice, read the article about the differences between a group and a public VKontakte page.

Click on the desired option and proceed to setting the parameters.

Drawing up a content plan

It’s hard to imagine how to run a VKontakte group without updating the news feed. It is necessary to regularly post high-quality information relevant to the target audience. After all, this is one of the most effective ways to interact with subscribers. If there are no fresh posts on the wall for a long time, the audience’s interest is lost. The best results are visible only with regular activity. Therefore, plan your messages in advance and communicate on different topics. The same type of information becomes boring, and exclusively commercial orientation scares away users. To make it clear what to write about, here are the most popular types of content:

• About the community . Tell clients who you are, what you do and how you do it.
• Posts that solve the problem . These can be short answers to questions or guides in longread format. They fit well with recommendations for the purchase of goods or services.
• Discussions . The activity of participants in the comments is an excellent reason to create a separate topic and discuss the details of a controversial issue in it. It is enough to post the announcement and direct the energy of the audience in a “peaceful direction.”
• Entertainment . Excessive seriousness gets boring and becomes boring. Be sure to dilute your feed with fresh jokes, memes and professional jokes. Use any means available to you to lift the audience's spirits.
• Competitions . They have already been mentioned. This is your “combat tool” that provides an increase in subscribers. Content is a great help in achieving community goals. The main thing is not to go off-topic and not go into full sales. Communication should be natural. To do this, alternate information and look at user response.

How to properly set up a group, public page, event

The settings when creating a group, public page, and event are different.

What all three types of settings have in common is the name and theme.

How to name a group on VK

In order for a group to be popular, promote well and people can easily find it, the name must be approached responsibly.

Namely: the group should be called as people are looking for similar topics in search.

For example, if you deliver flowers in Podolsk and are called “Garden of Eden,” then you don’t need to call the group “Garden of Eden.” Call yourself “Flower delivery in Podolsk” or, as a last resort, “Flower delivery in Podolsk | Garden of Eden".

How to select such popular words by which people search for groups, read the article “How can you name a group on VK so that it becomes popular.”

Subjects

Topics help VKontakte determine what your group is doing in order to recommend you to users with similar interests and advertisers.

Currently there are 114 topics available for groups and 235 for public pages. Choose something that characterizes your group.

The topic of the community can be changed, but only at the initial stage of the group’s life, until there are more than several thousand subscribers. Large groups are blocked for changing topics, because... Previously, the practice was to sell groups and change the topic by the next owner. It turned out that people subscribed to one information, but in the end they began to receive something completely different.

Group

If you selected “Interest Group” or “Brand or Organization”, the following window will open:

Group settings in VK

A group has its own specific settings: group type, website address and physical address.

Group type

3 types of groups:

• Open - anyone can join;
• Closed - entry by invitation or application;
• Private - you can join only by invitation of managers.

If you are not going to do paid courses, a closed club or some other secret society, then choose an open type of group so that everyone can join.

Web site

If you have a website, write its address here.

VKontakte has ample opportunities for integration with the site.

There is a Community Messages widget that can be placed on the site and displays the group itself with a join button, which can be placed on the sidebar of the site or in the footer (bottom of the site).

Address

If your company has an office, a store, in general, a place where clients can come, you must indicate it here. So that clients don’t look in other sources for where you are located.

Public page

If you selected “Business”, “Thematic community” or “Public page”, the following window will open:

Settings for a public page in VK

A public page, unlike a group, cannot be made private.

The public page has its own list of topics, different from the group.

Event

Event settings window:

Event Settings

The events have 20 different themes to choose from.

Meeting type:

• Open - everyone can take part;
• Closed – participation is by invitation only;

Start Time and End Time - This setting is only available for events.

Organizer

The organizer can be either an individual or a group (public page).

If the organizer is a group or public page, then they can invite all their participants to the event. The invitation limit is 500 people per day.

Phone, e-mail, address - for a meeting you are asked to indicate contact information immediately when creating it.

We have filled in the minimum required settings. Now you need to click on the Create community button.

The community has been created.

How to make a group interesting?

To make your group interesting, you need to make an effort and follow a few simple rules.

1. Create quality content. Do not constantly publish posts with the content “Buy, order, call” and so on. There should be selling posts, but in moderation.
2. The time when you could post cats and demotivators is long gone. Therefore, first, think carefully about what might be interesting to your target audience.
3. Be consistent. Don't abandon the group and publish 1-2 posts a day.
4. Make polls about what content your subscribers would like to see.
5. Post real photos of your office, store, warehouse, your workplace and yourself.

Conclusion. Well, now we have figured out how to create a group on VK, set it up correctly, add photos and the first entry.

What to do next? Read our materials on promoting VKontakte:

• Setting up a VKontakte group
• How to promote a group on VK
• Mass liking VKontakte
• Cheating likes on VK

Write in the comments the address of the group you created following our guide! Let's see who did better

How to properly form a group

The appearance of the group, public page and event is absolutely identical, so the design tips are suitable for all three types of communities.

If 5 years ago it was possible not to register a community at all, to call it “a community of those who like to lose their left sock” and people would pour out, but now, due to too much competition, every little thing is important.

First scroll

The first scroll is what a person sees when he first joins your group; everything he manages to view in 5 seconds.

This is also called the Dory fish rule. Remember, in The Adventures of Nemo there was a fish that forgot everything after 5 seconds.

If during this time the visitor does not understand how your group can be useful and interesting to him, he will leave and forget about your group, after the same 5 seconds.

And if you attracted him through paid advertising, then consider that you wasted your money.

Therefore, the first scroll should be designed perfectly.

What design elements are included in the first scroll:

• Avatar and cover;
• Community name;
• Status;
• Pinned post (banner);
• Section information about the community: description, address + map, phone, e-mail, website.

First scroll

Name

About the title, I hope you read the article above.

Status

In the community status, you need to put the essence into one or two lines so that the visitor immediately understands what your group does. Status is a line that is located under the name of the community, in smaller font.

In the status, place one of the following meanings, if you can, then formulate everything in one or two sentences:

• The essence of the group's activities;
• How to achieve the goal for which the user came to the community;
• USP - unique selling proposition;
• Benefits of your community;
• Contact details of your business;
• Information for the user about your group.

Lifehack #1: Use emojis in your status. This attracts extra attention and will make your group stand out from others. If you have a public page, then emoji will be displayed on interesting pages of subscribers.

Emoji in the status This is how Emoji look in the block of interesting pages

Community Information

The information section is located immediately after the name and status of the group.

This block contains a description of the group, as well as contact information.

What should be in the block:

• Description of the community: what is it about;
• USP is a unique selling proposition: how you differ from others. Why should they buy from you or subscribe to you?
• Briefly and succinctly tell us in a few words what your group does and how it can be useful;
• Opening hours, telephone, address. Be sure to include all possible contact information. If there is an address, then place a map. It looks nice and makes it easy for people to find you. Opening hours must be filled. Read more in the article “How to add an address and working hours in a VKontakte group”;
• How to place an order, delivery information.

Life hack #2: Add a call to subscribe to notifications in the first line of the information block. This will increase the number of subscriptions. This way we can bypass the smart feed: subscribers will see notifications about your new articles, even if the smart feed does not show the articles.

Life hack No. 3: Even if you have a menu and there is information on how to place an order, do not hesitate to duplicate it in the information block. A visitor should be able to find out how to buy from you from anywhere in your community. Don't make him look.

Visual design

From the visual component, the very first thing you need to do is:

• Avatar;
• Cover;
• Pinned post (wiki menu or banner)
• Banner template for regular publications.

For dimensions of all group design elements, see the article “All dimensions of VKontakte group design.”

Make your design recognizable and unique

Groups on different topics should have different designs and take into account the characteristics of your subscribers. If your hands are growing in the wrong place, then it’s better to hire a designer at the same Quorka (an inexpensive service exchange), where they will make you a beautiful design for 500-1000 rubles. The expression “one meets people by their clothes” is exactly about this.

If you design each post differently and change your avatar often, your subscribers will simply skip your new posts because they will not recognize you. And in the feed there are a lot of irritants that distract attention.

Agree that the same Layz chips and Tide laundry detergent are so ingrained in the subconscious that you can unmistakably recognize them on store shelves even from a distance.

In the same way, your group should be recognizable as Tide even in passing.

Avatar or cover?

To design a group, you can use both an avatar and a cover image.

The cover is a horizontal banner in the group header.

An avatar is a vertical banner in the group at the top right.

What should be in the avatar or cover:

• Community name;
• Description of the community, its USP (maximum 3-5 words);
• Contact details;
• Arrow for subscription.

If a group has a cover image, the avatar is hidden and displayed only as a small icon. This is the circle to the left of the group name and status. It can also be seen when you write on behalf of the group in messages, comments, or posts.

Cover benefits:

• Larger size 1590x400 - more information can be placed;
• Horizontal position - the text is easier to read, it does not break into words;
• Audience activation: the cover page can display active subscribers, donors, and competition winners;
• Increases conversion: if you place instructions on the subscribe and message buttons on the cover;
• You can place additional information and promotional offers: for example, on the right side, set aside a place for the promotion of the day and change the promotional product in the cover daily.

Advantages of an avatar:

• Arbitrary height: you can make a square, medium rectangle, long;
• The proportions of height to width are less than 2 to 5;
• Contains information about the community;
• Can be integrated with a pinned post - this is perhaps the most significant advantage. Valid on the condition that you completely remove all information from the information block so that it is not displayed. Otherwise, a single whole will not work, since the banner will go too far.

Based on your preferences, but I would recommend the cover. It is used by the vast majority of communities and there are many more opportunities to use it for self-promotion of a group.

Banner

A banner is a pinned post that comes immediately after a block of information about the community.

Banner options:

• Just a picture;
• Animated banner - GIF;
• Picture + text;

When you click on the banner, the group menu should open.

What should be in the banner:

• Community name;
• Description of services, USP, benefits or other information about the community;
• Menu;
• Visual identification of the menu: from the banner, the visitor should understand what awaits him in the menu, what sections or content are there;
• Menu button with cursor.

Banner purpose:

• Convey information about community goods or services: categories of goods or services;
• Show that clicking will open a menu. For example, write on it: “Open me” or “Menu”;
• Form a unified group style along with other design elements.
• If there is an avatar instead of a cover, then form a single whole block with it.

How to properly lead a VKontakte group: secrets and tips

When promoting, different goals are set:

• increase in the number of clients;
• sale of goods or services;
• attracting additional traffic to the site;
• increasing the level of trust in the brand.

Depending on this, the methods of work differ. For the image page of a machine tool production plant, a large number of visitors is useless. At the same time, the majority of participants are narrow-minded. But for entertainment portals, a clear classification of the target audience is not so important. In the first case, linking from thematic resources is suitable for development. In the second, the best results are achieved by frequent publication of native viral content.

Let's list the main ways to develop public pages:

1. Promotions and competitions . They provide an opportunity not only to invite a person, but also to increase the significance of the community. Ask people to be active and offer worthy gifts. Likes, reposts and comments raise the page in search results.
2. Links from the site . They work great in developing companies with a large number of news feeds. Moreover, each new entry on the main resource links to a page on social networks.
3. Targeted advertising . It’s hard to imagine how to run a group on VKontakte for business without this tool. The method is paid. But with the right company, you get the cheapest leads.
4. Publishing posts . The higher the frequency, the greater the audience reach. At the same time, unique, high-quality content attracts subscribers to the community organically. This ranks it higher in search results.
5. Private messages . Only suitable for beginner bloggers. A rather labor-intensive process with a high probability of account blocking for spam.
6. Newsletters . Chatbots for social networks allow you to communicate massively with people in private. Unlike emails, the open rate is close to 100%.

To work effectively, it is better to use several promotion options. And the most universal one is publishing posts.

To close the topic of effective public management, here are a few tips that few people talk about on the Internet.

Tips for beginners on how to lead a group on VKontakte:

• Keep your content unique . Not everyone focuses on writing texts and creating original photos, borrowing them from thematic communities. This lowers rankings and reach in the smart feed. Can also lead to blocking.
• Choose your posting time . The vast majority of administrators post messages exactly on the clock (8:00 ... 16:00). This is how a huge amount of news appears simultaneously. Using minutes (10:15 ... 13:42) significantly increases the viewing of publications.
• Strive for unity of style . This makes it possible to use content theft for your own purposes. Develop a unified style in the design of all elements: color scheme, fonts, logo, design, etc. This is how people start coming to you even from other people’s news.

What to remember

• Consider what type of community is right for you before creating a group, as the ability to change it later is very limited. The event cannot be changed at all. Group to public and back no more than once a month;
• Remember the 5 second rule: it is in 5 seconds that the user decides whether to subscribe to your community or move on, whether it has hooked him or not;
• Design the group in the same style so that it is recognized as Lay's chips or Lego. Become memorable;
• Give the user information on how to buy from you wherever possible. Do not be shy.
• Leave calls to action: a sign in the cover to subscribe to the group, in information about the community a call to subscribe to notifications, in the banner an arrow calling to go to the menu;
• First of all, design the first scroll: avatar or cover, title, status, information block, banner.

After creating and registering a group, the next stage is promotion, which lasts as long as the community exists.

Subscribe to new articles on the site so as not to miss useful information about the promotion and promotion of groups.

Where to get ideas for creating a VKontakte public page

This social network has not only millions of users, but also hundreds of thousands of communities. There is only one way to win the competition for the audience over competitors - to offer users interesting and unique content. Therefore, the creation of a VKontakte public should begin with an original idea. You can find it by reading discussions in other communities with a large audience - what users care about is what they write about. Each option is worth checking using Google Trends, starting with large trends and paying attention to the “Related queries” block.

When working with affiliate programs, it is wise to start from those offers to which you are going to send traffic. For example, if you are going to make money from gaming offers, then you need to create a community for gamers. If you intend to sell DVRs, create a group based on a popular car brand or automaker. For any topic of the group, you should not copy other people’s materials, but offer users something new and interesting, then they will become subscribers.

Group avatar

A community avatar is an important detail in the overall construction of a high-quality design; in this article we have highlighted several very important points that need to be taken into account when creating a community avatar. Taking into account the fact that now they mainly use community covers, the avatar itself in the group is displayed as a miniature. Therefore, here we will talk about how important it is to design the avatar miniature. As mentioned above, the avatar thumbnail size is a circle with a diameter of 200px.

1. Text
   If you place text on an avatar thumbnail, it is important that it is large and does not extend beyond the avatar.
2. Understanding
   You need to place an image on your avatar that makes it clear what is depicted.
3. Minimalism
   In order for your avatar to look relevant, you can make it in a minimalist style: fewer words and unnecessary elements that carry virtually no semantic meaning. The avatar thumbnail must be as simple and readable as possible.
4. Attract attention
   So that the avatar thumbnail attracts attention. You need to design it so that it is not too white and boring, otherwise it will get lost against the background of the more colorful avatars of competitors.

What should I put on my avatar thumbnail?

Let's consider options for using an avatar thumbnail to attract subscribers to the community.

Community Description

In the description, the main thing is to describe as briefly as possible the main advantages of the company. Important point:

there is no need to describe everything that your company has done, is doing or will do. No one will read a long description. You have a few seconds to attract attention before the client starts looking at posts on the community wall. Therefore, the description should contain only key points that reflect the essence of the community/company.

Lifehack:

In order to make a description of the community in more detail (with photos, links and beautiful layout), you need to add a wiki post to the pinned post, which will contain a bright picture and a call to action.

Examples of wiki posts:

Group registration

After choosing the type of community, you can move on to the most important thing, this is the design. The design of your community is a kind of business card of the company; depending on how high-quality the design is, your potential subscribers will draw conclusions about your work. You can download the cover by going to “settings”, then clicking “download”.

On the cover you can place:

• Name
• logo
• motto
• contact information
• promotions or call to action Important point:
  the cover is the first thing a client will see when they go to your group, so the cover should be bright and attract attention.

Cover in the MTS community

Cover in the Tinkoff Bank community

Cover in the “HeadShot” community
Image sizes for the design of the VKontakte community.
Cover size for VKontakte group 1590x400px Avatar thumbnail size - circle with a diameter of 200px

Also, VKontakte recently introduced dynamic covers for communities. Dynamic covers have very rich functionality, with which you can display the last subscriber, the best commentator on the cover, set the background to change at your request, add a weather widget, time and much more.

Community Settings

By going to the “community management” tab, you can come up with a short page address and provide additional information. Next, in the “links” tab, provide links to your page on other social networks and a link to your website.

In the “sections” tab, enable the necessary ones. It is more convenient to set up a limited community wall, so as not to rake it in the future from posts by spam bots.

Include products if your community is for selling products or services. You can also add applications to the community and customize them for your purposes. For example, the Applications application is the most convenient for working with leads. This is online registration and acceptance of orders. Or, for example, the Maps application, with the addresses of your stores, offices, events. Using the Buy Ticket application, you can sell tickets to events directly on the community page, i.e. subscribers/customers will be able to buy a ticket without going to your website.