Quite often, Facebook users complained that their post was deleted and access to their personal page was closed, although there was “nothing like that” in the post. After the scandal amid news of the data leak of millions of users, the Facebook administration began to actively talk about its internal structure and even published detailed rules in which it explains why you can be banned. We studied what you should not write about on three popular social networks. Who is more liberal - Odnoklassniki, VKontakte or Facebook - in the material 66.RU.
You need to start with a content plan
The obvious step is to create a content plan. Then you won’t have to panic about what to upload to the group right now. And using the delayed publishing function, you can upload posts even a month in advance.
So, here are the main types of posts.
- Entertaining
. One of the features of the VKontakte social network is that its users, as a rule, go to it for entertainment. Therefore, memes, jokes, cute photos and GIFs will make them pay attention to your community. - Educational
. However, a share of useful information is also necessary. This includes interesting articles, reviews, webinars. - Selling
. These are materials that serve as an argument why it is worth purchasing a given commercial product. For example, user reviews. - Expert
. Such content must contain a specialist’s assessment. These are sections of consultations, insights, expert comments. - Engaging
. The audience should not only consume your information, but also become involved in the group’s activities. To do this, create polls, discussions, and offer to share opinions.
You should also clearly define the purpose of each post. Publications can bring traffic to a third-party site, involve the audience in a project, talk about a product, service, event, etc. Separate your content by post purpose and post type.
It is also important to consider the best time to publish so that the post receives maximum coverage. It is generally accepted that the greatest user activity occurs during lunch and evening hours: from 12:00 to 14:00 and from 19:00 to 21:00. SMM specialists only advise not to indicate “zero” time in the publication. Since most promotional posts and scheduled posts are published at exactly so many hours, zero minutes, your post will simply get lost in the background. Put a random time away from the “zeros”, for example, at 13:34.
Once you have covered all this information, your content plan will be a table in which you indicate the time of publication of posts, delivery style, type of content, purpose of the post, presence or absence of a link to another site.
What else you need to know about the VKontakte group
Own skills and wishes
Also remember what you are good at. Maybe you're an accountant or lawyer. Then why not consult people? You should also focus on your tastes. When choosing a topic, start with the question - What do I like? And make a list. Think about what content you will publish. And then start choosing a name.
Group invitations and restrictions
What else do I want to tell you about? Remember that you won’t be able to invite many friends to the VKontakte group at once. Gone are the days when there were no restrictions. At the moment, you are allowed to invite up to 40 people per day. But it is noticed that these “days” expire after 8 hours.
And yet, I advise you to carefully recruit participants to the newly created public. To prevent the system from suspecting automatic requests, send them to friends at intervals. For example, 10 people were invited. In a few minutes, another 15. But in a mature group you can get 40 at once. Just not too quickly.
Group or public?
It is also worth considering when creating a community that by setting it up as a public page, you will not be able to invite friends. But it will appear in search engines. Not always. And personally I don't like this idea. And you can invite friends to the VKontakte group. But this structure can be changed only once every 30 days. Therefore, you should start with the group.
Title and design
In addition, in order to attract maximum attention, you need to somehow stand out from similar publics. So come up with a catchy name. Look in the group search so it doesn't happen again. Let the cover and design be original. You can use the instructions for creating a color scheme in the free Adobe Color service. And the content has its own style.
This begs another piece of advice. If suddenly your choice turns out to be unsuccessful, and there are already a lot of subscribers, you should not radically change the theme of the group. The VC rules talk about punishment for such metamorphoses. But if your members don’t complain, then you’re unlikely to face a ban. Especially if the group has not yet been monetized. But you need to know about this.
You need to know who these publications are for
It is wrong to think that VKontakte is a social network for teenagers and young people. A third of the network’s entire audience is in the age group from 25 to 34 years old. And about ten percent are people over 45 years old. Therefore, when publishing posts, you must understand who they are intended for.
When creating any project, be it a large business or an ordinary public VKontakte, a portrait of the target audience is drawn up. This includes:
- Socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, education, social status, occupation)
- Psychological characteristics (way of thinking, decision-making path, objections or so-called pains of the client).
Read forums on the topic of your project, comments and discussions on social networks. This way you will learn a lot about your audience: what they don’t like, what problems they face, how they try to solve them.
How to choose a VK group topic - recommendations
Let's start with the recommendations. At the end we will continue to analyze important factors. But first of all, you need to decide why you need a group or public VK. You want to run it only for your pleasure and for your friends. For example, a blog about trips to cities and countries.
Or do you want to attract the maximum audience and take top positions. Will you monetize your community in the future? Or your public page is initially set up to make money on a social network. All this needs to be taken into account at the very beginning.
If your goal is to create a group with an army of thousands of subscribers, then you should not choose a narrow topic. Your target audience should be as wide as possible. Let's look at some examples:
- Overheard in pregnant women
- Kebab lovers
- Subtle humor
You can guess what groups of people these public pages are aimed at. The first group is suitable for pregnant women. It is unlikely that she will be of interest to men, young girls or experienced mothers. Unless they have pregnant daughters. But there will be only a few of these. Moreover, we must take into account that invitations can only be sent to friends.
The second group is designed for a wider audience. Men and women, adults and children love shish kebab. But in this case there is the concept of seasonality. And besides, aren’t you afraid that one day there will be an information stupor? The topic is so narrow that constantly writing about one dish will become boring.
But the third option will bring together all kinds of categories of people. Unless depressed people will be indifferent to humor. And here there is where to roam. The content can be memes and jokes, funny incidents from life and funny competitions. Videos and funny photos.
You should not create fly-by-night communities. For example, the topic of coronavirus is currently relevant. In a month there will be a decline. And then he will disappear completely. So, we choose relevance for all years. I think you get the idea. In order to create a group, social networks have been decided. Therefore, let’s move on to the list of VKontakte topics.
Memo for choosing a VK group topic
Look for inspiration in everything
It is impossible to generate dozens and hundreds of ideas for new posts on your own: sooner or later the creativity will run out. However, even the algorithm does not force public pages to post 100% unique content. For him, the main thing is that the feed does not consist of reposts, links and borrowed materials.
You can illustrate your posts with other people's images. The main thing is not to violate copyright.
In the same way, you can use rewriting and write unique texts based on others.
Here are some tips on where to get inspiration:
- Read thematic blogs, and not necessarily only the most popular authors
- Subscribe to relevant YouTube channels
- Follow the news in your industry, topic
- Read forums, thematic discussions on social networks.
You can also look into your competitors’ communities.
You will be banned from any social network
For propaganda and incitement of hatred. On Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, and Facebook it is prohibited to publish information that causes social, national, linguistic, or religious hatred. You will be banned if you promote war, fascism or the ideology of racial superiority.
For calls to violence. It is prohibited to upload, publish, store and distribute information containing threats, calls for violence, or committing illegal and antisocial acts.
For pornography. It is prohibited to publish pornographic materials or links to them. Explicit phrases with details or photos of naked female breasts are also prohibited on FB.
For false accounts. In Odnoklassniki, for example, you cannot post an image of a fictional character, another person, animal or abstraction instead of your own photo. VKontakte does not limit your right to photos in any way; you cannot distort information about yourself. You cannot indicate an incorrect date of birth on FB, register if you are under 13 years old, or impersonate other people. All social networks prohibit one person from maintaining multiple accounts.
For suicide instructions. Social networks prohibit the publication of data that contains a description of means and methods of suicide or self-harm.
For calls to suicide. Social networks prohibit publishing content that incites and promotes suicide.
For promoting drugs. Social networks prohibit advertising drugs, describing their attractiveness, and encouraging their use.
For drug distribution. Social networks prohibit publishing information about the distribution of drugs, recipes for their manufacture and advice on use.
Main news on the topic
Bullying on social networks will be equated to an administrative offense
Spy on your competitors
Sometimes competitors can give you ideas for new topics and publications. This does not mean that you need to copy their content - this is low, and will not add to your rating from the point of view of Prometheus. But you can adopt some tricks, for example, a unified image design, or unusual categories.
You can also find out which posts in competitors’ communities are more popular. To do this, use the analytics services JagaJam or Popsters. On the latter you can check any ten communities for free. Just leave a link to the group, the resource itself will download all the posts and their statistics from there. You will see at what time and which posts are gaining maximum popularity. Then, by changing the ranking of posts from the least popular, you can analyze the mistakes of your competitors. This is how you adjust your content plan.
Remember that you can look for ideas for publications in any sources. The main thing is how you process them - by rewriting, narrowing the topic, adding your own commentary. At the same time, try to create exclusive content. By combining different sources, you can maintain regularity and quality of publications in your community.
Where is it located and what is the description?
The description is located in the group header under the cover and name (the “Information” block). Even if the community is closed, it is visible to all users who open the page.
Like the “Introduction” for a book or the start page for a website, the description of a VKontakte group is its title page. Mandatory design element.
It is also worth noting that the description of a public page for search engines is the description of the page. It is easier for search engines to find a community if the abstract contains keywords.
What type of content will always work?
If you are just starting to work with the promotion of your VK groups, then it is better to start everything with entertaining content: that is, humor, jokes, aphorisms, funny statements about your topic - this is the ideal content that will work even with a multi-million audience.
This also includes shocking hypotheses, interesting facts, news, and expert opinions. Nevertheless, it is too early to expect much activity, discussion and questions. Therefore, the more entertaining posts you publish, the faster you will attract the interest of your target audience.
On a note! To organize communication you need to make a provocation. What does she mean? Ask a question, ask users to share their opinion.
Examples of successful descriptions
The thematic community of authors “Overheard Copywriting” made a capacious but very informative description. The list of what participants can do here and the call to action have been moved to the group cover, which has shortened the annotation.
It is important for entertainment communities to convey to the visitor as clearly and quickly as possible why he should “stay” here.
The description of the official community of the electronic discounter "Citylink" is concise, but at the same time answers all the questions of a new visitor about the group. It is indicated that the information here is of an information and entertainment nature, and contacts, which is mandatory for business.
Since it is beneficial for “selling” groups to convert every fleeting desire of a subscriber to buy a product, it is important to indicate all the contacts of the store so that the client can quickly contact you to make a purchase.
From such groups, visitors expect “usefulness” (discounts, gifts, instructions, comparative analyzes of products) and support from administrators (sending feedback, receiving answers to questions).
Pin a photo to a page
Once the image has been added, you can easily pin it. This is done so that new entries on the wall do not move the photo down the list. This way, it will always be visible until you decide to unpin it.
To pin a photo, select the context menu in the form of three dots in the upper corner of the post.
There you can find the “Pin” item, thanks to which any image will immediately rise to the very top of your wall. A corresponding entry will appear next to it.
You can also unpin a photo in the same way.
Initially, you need to open your images, finding all the albums there. This can be done in the “Photos” menu on the main VK page.
Select the desired album and go to it. To do this, click on the cover of this photo collection.
Once you are inside the folder itself, copy the link in your browser.
With the “send” button you place it on your wall.
In a group, on a personal wall or in a community - it doesn’t matter. Today we will try to figure out how this can be done and why.
How to add a description in a community
You can add a description to a group as follows:
- An annotation can be written directly in the “Add Description” field or filled out in the “Management” section.
- By clicking on the "Add Description" field, you will be given the option to enter text.
- Enter the text and it will immediately appear in front of you on the group page.
- You can also change the group description in the “Management” section in the “Basic Information” block.
- Enter the text and click the "Save" button.
The description will appear on the group page.
Posting a post
First, let's look at how the posts you found are posted. Open this or that post. After this, look in the lower left corner of the message: the time and date when the entry was published should be written there. You need to click on it.
The post you planned to publish will open in front of you. Now find the inscription on the right side of the post. It’s called “Publish”. After clicking on it, the post will be fixed. How to pin a post to the wall of a group (public page, community)? You must have administrator rights to host.
Type of content for different publics
Depending on which category your public page belongs to, you need to select posts and format them correctly.
- Entertaining. To decorate the wall, you need to use unobtrusive educational content that will be colorful against the background of the rest. For example, comics and caricatures look great in such groups.
- News. This is the place for strict informational posts only. They must contain information that will be truthful and relevant for a specific period of time.
- Commercial. This kind of publicity is based on sales. Accordingly, only informational selling content should be published here. It may appear to be of various kinds of goods, to advertise something, and so on.
- Public for interests. On the wall of such a community, content should appear that addresses a specific type of activity: accounting, construction work, website promotion, recipes, and much more. Only those users who are interested in your topic will subscribe to such a group.
- Fan club. The community contains information about artists, musicians, news and various information from their lives. If this is a creative person, then his works and new items are necessarily preserved on the wall.
Don’t forget to create all kinds of surveys on the topic of your community. Users who cast their vote create good activity and PF (behavioral factors).
