8 tips for increasing activity in VKontakte groups

how to get likes

The first indicator of activity in a community is the number of likes. Clicking on the “heart” for subscribers takes a couple of seconds. But admins have to constantly work to ensure that posts regularly receive the maximum number of positive marks. In this chapter I have collected for you key life hacks to increase likes.

First like

Leave it yourself to simulate activity in the community. Oblige other company employees to do the same. When a post already has a couple of likes, new likes will appear more actively.

Call

Place a call to action in the text - ask subscribers to like it if they liked the post or found it useful. In most cases, the audience simply scrolls through the publication after reading it, unless reminded to click on the heart.

Splitting up

Divide the text into several parts and publish a continuation after the entry reaches a certain number of hearts. In a post you can write something like this: let’s get as many likes as possible, and I’ll post the second part.

Contest

Organize a contest among users who like it. Do them, for example, once a week. In this case, a mandatory condition for participation can be made not only to like the competition entry, but also, for example, to like the last three publications.

Interesting. Do you want to promote a group on VK? Do it with the new automated competitions service. The wow effect and sales are guaranteed. Click and test -> Activebot.ru (promotional code “inscale” – 10% discount).

Reminders

Notify users about each new post in stories, make intriguing announcements, motivate them to go to their profile, read the publication and mark “like”.

Memes

You can always brighten up your page/community with life entries with humor. Only the meme must be thematically appropriate to their content. Then users will definitely not pass by and will show their agreement by liking. You can remind them by writing: “Do you agree? Please like.”

Gratitude

Regularly thank your followers for their likes with separate posts. This increases audience loyalty and reminds you of the need to show you activity.

Activity chats

Participate in activity chats, where community owners post links to posts and all participants share likes on a mutual basis. You can find communities where such chats take place directly in the VKontakte search.

Cheat

Use services to get likes. The main thing is to do this not often and without fanaticism - no more than 500 per day. Then the method is safe. But remember that these are not real numbers, but an illusion. Therefore, there is no need to focus on promotion; work more on the community and content.

On the subject: Designing a VKontakte group: 60 TOP examples Quality content: what does it mean + how to do it

How to make a dynamic cover

To hold a competition for the most active subscribers, we used the letscover.me service. Let me explain with his example:

1. Register in the service and pay the required tariff.
2. Add your community.
3. Select the “Create new cover” command.

1. We prepare an image measuring 1590 x 400 pixels and upload it to the service. Be sure to leave room for dynamic content, as well as some white space on the sides, as on mobile the cover is cut off at the edges.

Here's how we did it:

• For the competition “2 most active subscribers of the week”

• For the competition “5 most active subscribers of the week”

How much space should you leave on the sides?

Turn on grid display and the service will show you the boundaries beyond which content will be cut off on mobile.

1. Select the required widgets.

1. Configure the selected widgets.

1. We make a preview, make sure that everything is fine, save and only then click the “Activate Cover” button.

1. If you are holding a competition for the most active subscriber, do not forget to add public administrators, company employees, as well as the winners of the previous competition to the exclusions. To do this, go to “My Groups” - “Settings” and blacklist the IDs of these people.

How to find out a person's ID?

To find out the VKontakte user ID, go to his profile and click “All posts” on his wall. In the link that opens, copy all the numbers - this is the profile ID.

We figured out the settings. Now let's get to the fun part.

how to type comments

It is more difficult to obtain them, since leaving comments for users is much more labor-intensive than clicking “like”. The following tips will help you get your audience to comment on your posts.

First comment

Here everything works by analogy with likes. Write the first comment yourself, so it will be psychologically easier for a person to leave his own, and then further along the chain.

Open questions

Ask them to your readers at the end of each post, motivate them to engage in dialogue. The more subscribers answer your question in the comments, the higher the account's coverage will be.

News feeds

Use fresh, current news for your post topics, which is guaranteed to cause a stir and a flurry of discussions among users. To do this, study your target audience and its interests well.

On the subject: How to determine the target audience: the most detailed instructions Client avatar: 18 questions + life hacks from a marketer

Interactives

Involve your subscribers in interesting games, solve thematic riddles, publish comic predictions, emoji puzzles. If the game content does not fit with your field of activity, use real stories from the life of the company. For example, publish 10 facts about your activities and ask the audience to guess which of them are true and which are fiction.

Contest

Organize a competition for the best comment. This approach activates activity under any post.

Answers

Do not leave subscriber comments unattended, always respond to incoming requests on behalf of the community. This way you will at least double the number of comments under the photo, and also increase audience loyalty.

Present

Play nice bonuses or branded souvenirs among active community commentators. For greater motivation to leave comments, you can publish avatars of active users on dynamic covers at the top of the group.

Record

Register for events via “+” from subscribers in the comments. The approach, of course, is not the most modern, but it will provide high coverage for your posts.

Questions from subscribers

Open a section like this, where everyone can touch on a topic of interest. Post your accumulated questions 1-2 times a week and ask users to share their personal experiences on the topic in the comments.

Story on the topic

Ask users to share a short text on the topic of the post in the comments. This could be either a condition of the competition or simply a request to speculate.

How to increase activity in a group

Competitions, polls and a lot of posts increase activity. As you saw in the video, the program can increase activity significantly, but what about competitions? Come up with interesting polls with answer options, it's not difficult. You can offer some of your goods or services for free and organize a competition. But only under the conditions of a competition there must be a repost, because by reposting you gain more audience!

A service or product, like a prize in a competition, may not necessarily be expensive, but you also don’t need to give unnecessary trinkets, it won’t be interesting for subscribers.

How to get reposts

The last thing that affects coverage from user activity is reposts. Typically, less than 10% of subscribers share community posts. Below are the TOP methods for increasing this amount.

First repost

Be the first to share the post through your personal account to start voluntary reposts. The “pioneer” method is already familiar to you.

Contest

Repost the post as one of the conditions for the draw. This is one of the oldest ways of holding competitions, but is still very effective. Since the post spreads quickly and brings new participants, the coverage increases accordingly.

Call to action

Ask subscribers to share your post using motivating phrases. Great for example: “Was it helpful? Save it on your wall so you don’t lose it!”

Viral content

Post viral videos that touch on humorous or social topics. Interesting ideas will spread across the network at lightning speed on their own, without your participation.

Value

Publish useful content for your audience: guides, cases, selections, checklists. Give your subscribers the content they want to keep on their wall for frequent use.

Loud words

Use catchy phrases like “maximum repost”, “spread the word” to attract users’ attention. At the same time, do not forget that the topic of the post should address a real social problem.

Limit

Set a minimum threshold for the number of reposts, upon reaching which subscribers will receive some kind of value: continuation of the post, branded stickers as a gift, free materials.

Gratitude

Ask your subscribers to repost the post as a sign of gratitude for writing useful materials.

Cheat

A quick way to get reposts. This way you imitate activity under posts, and users will pay attention to your content. But you must understand that if the recording is so-so in quality and usefulness, no amount of cheating will help.

How to increase the readability of posts

Reach is also influenced by the interaction of subscribers in the group with the text. First of all, this includes the percentage of posts being read. Therefore, I have compiled a list of tips for you on what and how to use in a post so that it is definitely read.

Heading

Use your audience's pain, for example, in the form of a question. If possible, include a specific number in the title, this gives confidence that the message contains exclusively useful information.

To make your work easier, identify topics for your audience in advance and create a content plan. You can read about it in the article.

On topic: Content plan for social networks: instructions + 7 examples

Structure

This way you will make it as convenient as possible for the reader. No one will read a continuous canvas, so highlight paragraphs and alternate their size. Follow the rule of one paragraph = one complete thought. But this does not mean that it should just end; make a smooth transition to the next one.

As an option, break the text into paragraphs with subheadings. These could be, for example, the main questions that the paragraph answers: why, how to use, where to buy, etc.

Emoji

If you use emoticons, use them in moderation. They can either add flavor to the text or ruin it. A large number of emoji complicate the text for the reader to perceive. Use emoticons only where you need to clarify an emotion and where it is not obvious. For example, where you leave out the end of a sentence, you don’t finish the sentence.

Call

Warn readers that a nice bonus or important information awaits them at the end of the post. This is a great motivation to read the text to the last line.

First paragraphs

Try to hook the reader with them. Start the post with the client’s fears and problems, this emotion will definitely provoke him to read to the end, for example: “After 30, the skin loses its elasticity, the appearance of wrinkles and sagging of the oval of the face is inevitable. The woman loses her former attractiveness.”

Stories

Divide the text into several parts and publish separately, each time indicating that a continuation awaits subscribers in the next post. This approach guarantees that publications will be completed in at least one series of posts.

Hashtags

They will help you get good coverage and get featured, but only if they are relevant to the topic of your post. Then you can be found by users who are interested in what you offer. Write hashtags related to your activity, company, product in your posts.

Image

Attract the attention of users with a bright, high-quality image. It’s better to avoid stock photos and create your own original branded content.

Literacy

Mistakes turn off the reader, even if the post is super interesting. It's simple: if you don't know how to spell a word, replace it or google the rule. When in doubt about a comma, rephrase the sentence. Or use spell checking services, such as Text.ru or Advego.

By the way. It is very easy to attract subscribers to VK through the mass action service. With it, you can gather a hot audience, like them and add everyone as friends, and also congratulate them on the holidays (we guarantee +73% engagement). Click and test -> VK BOSS.

Competitions for the most active subscribers: the Texterra case

Conditions

We held competitions for the most active subscribers from February 5 to March 2, 2021. There were 8 competitions in total:

1. 2 most active subscribers of the week (02/05–02/09). Conditions. Winners. The cover showed 2 leaders.

1. 6 most active subscribers of the week (02/12–02/16). Conditions. Winners. The cover showed 6 leaders.

1. 5 most active subscribers of the week (02/19–02/22). Conditions. Winners. After holding 2 competitions, we realized that the struggle would be more interesting if the leaders and laggards could see each other. Therefore, this time the cover showed not 5, but 10 people. And we used this tactic for all subsequent competitions.

1. The most active subscriber of the day (02/26). Conditions. Winner.
2. The most active subscriber of the day (27.02). Conditions. Winner.
3. The most active subscriber of the day (28.02). Conditions. Winner.
4. The most active subscriber of the day (01.03). Conditions. Winner.
5. The most active subscriber of the day (02.03). Conditions. Winner.

Each time the conditions of the competition were approximately the same. The only thing we changed was the number of winners and the number of people shown on the cover. Points were calculated by the service using the formula: 1 like = 2 points, 1 comment = 4 points, 1 like for a comment = 1 point (your own does not count). Reposts were not counted as activity, since they are prohibited by the VKontakte rules. The number of points can be changed at your discretion. But we considered it right to give the highest number of points for a comment, because, firstly, we needed to “talk” to our subscribers, and secondly, writing a meaningful comment is much more difficult than giving a like.

All winners were given a prize - the book “100+ Hacks for Internet Marketers” with autographs of the authors. We contacted them immediately after the results were announced, asked for their address, and within a week sent gifts to the recipients. Everything is at our expense, regardless of the winner’s place of residence.

Now let’s look at the statistics of our community during the competition period and compare it with the previous period, and then we’ll look at the most interesting moments.

Community statistics before and after

Competition times: from 05.02 to 02.03. Let's see.

• Views

• Unique visitors

• Coverage

• ABOUT

• Comments

The “5 most active subscribers of the week” competition gave us the largest number of comments. In four working days (it was a short week before the holidays) in our community they left: 170 + 350 + 313 + 659 = 1492 comments .

As I said above, it was this week that for the first time we made it so that 10 people were displayed on the cover, and only 5 could win. Most likely, this is what contributed to such a rapid increase in comments. The struggle on the last day was childish.

Increasing the number of loyal subscribers

As you can see from the screenshots above, we have improved user engagement quite well, but this is not the most important thing. The most valuable achievement is increasing the number of loyal subscribers . The participants enjoyed communicating with us and each other throughout the month, supporting their comrades, praising our content and our company, and giving constructive criticism. In one month, we were able to create a positive atmosphere in the community that had never existed before.

Contest participants began to see our content more often

Despite the fact that there is no significant increase in coverage, it can be assumed that participants who actively commented on posts in our community began to see our content more often. This is how smart tape algorithms work. Although we have no direct evidence. Only reviews from competitors.

Increasing amount of user-generated content

• Book reviews

Many winners voluntarily wrote reviews of the book, and we gladly published them in our public page.

• Questions in the "sentence"

Previously, they threw questions at us in the “suggestion”, but this was extremely rare, because we never managed to accustom subscribers to such an opportunity. During the competitions everything changed. We encouraged users to submit their news (so that there was something to discuss), and they finally began to take advantage of this opportunity.

During the month, 7 posts from the “offer” were published:

1. About the cost of online promotion
2. About promoting non-profit projects
3. About the psychology of marketing
4. About creating interactive pdfs
5. About different formats of articles in VK
6. About blocking an account on Facebook
7. About the differences between a group and a public VK page

Increased interest in our book

Since there was only one prize in all competitions - the book “100+ Hacks for Internet Marketers”, written by specialists from our company, interest in it naturally grew. Throughout the month, we received questions about where we could purchase the book. Moreover, not only competition participants asked, but also those users who did not participate in them.

The third edition of the book has been published. It can be purchased on the publisher's official website.

Please note: We ran this competition series while the book was out of stock. The first edition sold out, but the second has not yet been printed. Therefore, to the question “Where can I buy your book?” (and there were a lot of such questions) I had to answer “Not on sale yet, but you can pre-order.” I don’t know how this affected the number of people who ordered, but purely subjectively, it seems to me that there would have been more orders if the book had been in stock. Not everyone likes to wait, no matter how valuable the purchase. Therefore, competitions had to be launched when the second edition was ready. In my opinion, this would have a very good effect on sales.

We are engaged in comprehensive business promotion on the Internet. We achieve results in any subject. More details

Points worth paying attention to

We held competitions for the most active subscribers, determined using a dynamic cover, for the first time. And despite the fact that they went great, there were shortcomings and obvious mistakes on our part. Let's sort them out so you don't step on our own rake.

1. Participants must clearly understand the rules.

Initially, we did not describe the rules in sufficient detail. For example, we did not indicate that communities cannot take part in the competition (only personal accounts). They didn’t say that only comments and likes on today’s posts count, and not on any community posts. They forgot to mention that participants who increase likes will be excluded from the competition. All these nuances need to be spelled out immediately as clearly and in detail as possible. This is one of the most important rules for holding VKontakte competitions, and we have already written about this in our article “VKontakte competitions: how to get the desired results and not get banned.” By the way, I recommend reading it – there are a huge number of practical recommendations with examples and screenshots. The article has been ranking first in both search engines for relevant queries for a long time. So you can use it with confidence.

2. You can’t let the competition take its course.

You need to actively participate in the discussion of news. Anwser the questions. Engage people in conversation. In general, encourage the audience to be active in every possible way. If you don’t do this (especially at the beginning), there is a chance that your competition will not work.

3. Give participants something to talk about.

If you publish two posts a day, then users simply will have nothing to discuss. Increase the amount of content you publish, at least for the duration of the competition. If you don't do this, you won't get the results you expect. Encourage people to ask questions in the "suggestion" (like we did), this is a great way to increase the number of posts. And it’s not at all labor-intensive.

4. All comments must be moderated.

Otherwise chaos will begin. Participants who make irrelevant comments will become leaders, and the remaining participants will be indignant at this injustice.

5. Cheating of likes must be stopped.

Write in the rules of the competition that you will exclude all participants who dishonestly gain points for themselves, and do not spare anyone. Otherwise, the result will be the same as in the previous paragraph.

6. Participants must see the number of their points.

When we launched the first competition for the two most active subscribers of the week, we made a mistake - we placed the two leaders in terms of points on the cover. And it turned out that the other participants did not have the opportunity to understand how far behind they were. Unfortunately, the service we used to hold competitions did not offer such statistics. In subsequent competitions, we began to feature more people on the cover. For example, there should have been 5 winners, but 10 were displayed on the cover. So we improved the situation, at least a little.

I wrote several times to the service’s technical support about the need for competition participants to see the number of their points to make the competition more interesting and the competition more lively, and literally a month later they added such a function. True, at that time we had already completed a series of competitions.

7. Summing up at the promised time.

If you sum up a day later or earlier, users may complain about you to VKontakte technical support, and your community may be blocked. Keep your promises and sum up the results of the competition on time. The same goes for gifts. They promised to send it within a week? Please keep your promise.

8. Post photos of the winners.

This will show other participants that everything in the competition is fair. The winners receive their gifts, and you keep your word.

9. Create a discussion “Winners of our competitions.”

This is necessary so that users can go there at any time, see what competitions you hold, how often, and make sure of your honesty.

How much did it all cost us?

Now let's calculate how much money we spent on holding 8 competitions:

• Cost of the service for creating a dynamic cover: 200 rubles.
• Number of books sent: 18 x 500 rub. = 9000 rub.
• The cost of packages for packing books: 36 x 18 = 648 rubles.
• Cost of sending via Russian Post (120 rubles within Russia, 450 rubles to neighboring countries): (2 x 120) + (5 x 120) + (3 x 450) + (3 x 120) + (5 x 120) = 3150 rub.

Total: 12,998 rubles.

As most often happens when you do content marketing, it is very difficult to calculate what it has given the business. However, I can say for sure that this had a positive impact on our reputation, increased the core of loyal users and fueled interest in our book (which, in turn, also directly affects our sales). Well, in addition to this, in February of this year we set an absolute sales record. Of course, this is not only due to competitions. This effect is achieved by omnichannel and the synergy of all methods used for promotion. For many, these words are unfamiliar, but they are worth remembering because these mechanics really work. For many years now we have been convinced of this in our projects and in the projects of our clients. In general, try it

Other ways to increase your reach

The reach of the community is also influenced by the work of administrators, in particular the principles of working with content, the systematic nature of publications and other indicators. Let's look at them in more detail.

1. Regularity . Post several times a week, on specific days and times. This will make it more convenient for subscribers; they will not miss a new post, as they will get used to the release schedule.

2. Statistics. Use it to track when your audience is most active and adjust your content output to that time. We have already written a whole article about VKontakte statistics in detail.

On the subject: VKontakte statistics: how to look + 20 tips from a practitioner

3. Formats . Use different post formats: texts, images, videos. This way the content will not be boring to users. Also experiment with presentation, monitor the reaction and determine which one suits your audience better.

4. Articles . Replace long texts with the line “Read more” with short announcements with the article. Clicking the “Read Article” button will increase community interaction and reach.

5. Discussions. Create discussion sections in which subscribers can ask questions and share comments. Just don’t forget to post a separate post about this and periodically remind users that users have this opportunity.

6. Targeting. Targeted advertising will allow you to pre-select the audience you need for impressions, even according to narrow criteria, and attract new users to the page. We have already told you everything about the VK target in the article.

On the subject: Targeted advertising on VKontakte: setup (42 screenshots)

6. Live broadcasts. Use stories and live broadcasts as a source of interaction with subscribers. The number of views will be reflected in the community's reach metrics.

7. Design . Completely package the VKontakte community. Design is the first thing a user sees when entering a page. People more often stay in a VK group with a full-fledged design and easy navigation than in communities where there is only an avatar. And by the way, our article will help.

On topic: Design of a VKontakte group: 60 TOP examples

8. Advertising . Place advertisements in other communities where your target audience lives. These can be publics based on interests, place of residence, urban communities, etc.

On topic: VKontakte advertising exchange: TOP 8 services + 10 functions

What is considered VK audience coverage?

Reach is the number of users who read your posts. It is worth distinguishing between two fundamentally different quantities:

• Full coverage
• Subscriber Reach

As you can see in the screenshot, the reach of subscribers is most often a more or less stable value. This is the number of views from those users who are members of the group and who saw messages in the feed or by entering the community. Full coverage - all VK users who saw your messages. Their number is greater due to reposts, which are also made by other groups. Viral reach - views from friends of subscribers.

Obviously, full coverage, if it is large, is always pleasant and useful, but it can take off due to one successful repost, without particularly adding users to the group itself, and the coverage of subscribers will remain at the same level. Not always high.

BRIEFLY ABOUT THE MAIN THINGS

Reach on VKontakte shows how many subscribers interact with your content. And here are 5 reasons for its increase:

• Attracting the target audience;
• Increasing the number of subscribers;
• Increased trust in the brand;
• Implementation of online sales through the group;
• Possibility of community monetization.

But if you want to promote your business or personal brand on this social network, then coverage is far from the only thing you need to rely on and monitor. Therefore, continue to the article below.

On the subject: VKontakte statistics: how to look + 20 tips from a practitioner

A few final tips:

Increasing engagement (on VKontakte or another social network) only makes sense when there is an initial audience. If you don’t have subscribers, there’s no one to involve yet.

Another interesting point: if you remember school mathematics and consider the formula for engagement, you can understand that there are two ways to increase it: increasing the number of responses or decreasing the audience. In this article we looked at the first option in detail, but what to do if there are a lot of subscribers, you have followed all the recommendations, but there is no result?

Most likely the problem is that your subscribers are not targeted or (whisper) you have bots instead of subscribers. In this case, it makes sense to move in two directions: cleanse the group of uninterested participants and bots and build up a new, already targeted and engaged subscriber base, managing and maintaining communities and in other areas necessary for the development of the project.

Good luck, reposts and likes!