Designing the VKontakte community: the most detailed guide in RuNet for a group or public page. Groups in contact

Greetings, dear readers. Social networks have long been part of our lives, so it is simply vital for all owners of absolutely any business, both traditional and remote, to run them in order to be successful, so today we will talk about how to create a group on VK.

VKontakte, despite the growth of Odnoklassniki and Facebook, and even despite Instagram, remains the leader in promotion, there is a simple explanation for this.

Benefits of social VKontakte networks:

• Different audience segments.

We know that in OK the main audience is women over 30 years old, mainly from the regions, on FB - the most affluent audience, on Instagram - advanced youth. VK has all these segments from children to bankers.

• Habit of buying online.

VK people have developed an understanding of online shopping, they are happy to buy goods without leaving their favorite social network. networks, this is the so-called autonomous trading, i.e. when we do not transfer a person to external sites.

So, we need to sell through social media. VKontakte network, what needs to be done for this?

There are 2 vectors of promotion through VK:

1. Creation and promotion of your community.
2. Purchase of advertising in existing ones.

We will consider both options, and today we will talk about the first.

Many people here have a question: how many of them to create: one or several?

How many communities to create for business?

In some cases you need to create one thing, in others you need to create several different ones, everything here is individual and depends on your business.

Most often, for one business it is still better to create one group or public page; we will analyze which one is better to choose further. For example, if you have a travel agency, then you do not need to create several communities for different tours, for example, “Tours to Egypt”, “Tours to Bulgaria”, etc., because their promotion will not be as effective as if there was one community.

It is necessary to create several communities in the following cases:

• Different audiences.

If your product is consumed by different audiences, for example, if several businesses operate under your brand, it is a mistake to create one community like “Freight transportation in Perm and cheap abstracts.”

IN in this case you need to create separate communities, because these are completely different offers for different audiences and different content is needed here.

If a subscriber receives more than 40% of the content that does not correspond to his interests, then he will leave such a community.

• Bilingual business.

If you have interests, for example, not only in Russia, but also in the CIS countries, then you cannot maintain one community in different languages.

• Differences between offers in different regions.

For example, Internet providers do this, since their tariffs differ in different cities.

• Very intense marketing policy.

For example, the Wildberries store, it has many subscribers, the store has a lot of activity, is advertised, in this case you can highlight different directions, they do just that, they have a common community, there is a separate public for selling household goods and a group with children's goods , there is also a division by country (Belarus, Kazakhstan), etc.

The more targeted information a subscriber receives, the higher the likelihood that he will take the action we are targeting.

When we have decided on the required number of communities to develop your business, we proceed directly to its creation.

How to create a group on VKontakte step by step?

Step 1. Go to your VKontakte page, select “Groups” in the left menu and click the “Create Community” button.

The following window appears.

Step 2. Let's come up with a name.

I advise you to choose a concise and memorable name that will attract attention and reveal the essence of the group itself. In the next article I will talk in detail about how to choose the right name, and you can adjust it.

Step 3. Select the type of community.

What to choose a group, public page or event? Today, the difference between them is becoming less noticeable; the first, second and third formats have their advantages.

Below is a table that shows the differences between the different formats.

Think and choose what best suits your business: a group or a public page. Here, of course, it would be a mistake to create a public page like “Effective treatment of hemorrhoids,” because not everyone wants this to be displayed on their personal page, in this case, you need to make a group.

My advice is to initial stage create a group, so you can invite your friends to it, and when all those who want to join, you can transfer the group to a public page. The creator of a community can change its type independently, without resorting to technical requests. support, if the number of participants does not exceed 10,000. Just as in the case of transferring a public to a group, changing the community type is allowed no more than once a month.

Step 4. Click the “Create Community” button.

Your VKontakte group has been created, and you are in the “Edit Information” menu.

Group settings

• Name- we already have it.
• Community Description— here we write a description of the group, indicating what it does.
• Page address— we change the address to a more beautiful one than the default set of numbers, it is advisable to make it as short as possible so that subscribers can easily remember it and find you.
• Community Topics— select the most suitable topic from the list and indicate age restrictions.
• Website— enter the address of your website, it will be displayed on the main page of the group.
• Comment filter— automatically deletes comments containing obscenities or words you specify.
• Location— we indicate the address if you have an office or you have a regional group, or you want to promote a product in a certain city, for example, if you have a store or do manicures at home.
• Room in Snapster— indicate if it exists (photos similar to Instagram are shared there).
• Community Posts— if necessary, we connect community messages. This is a very convenient thing, messages are addressed directly to the community, and all managers can respond to them. The subscriber does not need to look for the group administrator, who often hides himself from the contacts block, in order to ask a question. And administrators will not get confused about which of their several communities the question is asked about. To immediately see on your personal page that the community has received a message, you need to add your group to the left menu.

Next, we enable the functions that you will need and configure access for them (who can add and edit: editors and administrators or all community members). I think that there will be no problems with setting up privacy, especially since VKontakte prompts pop up.

I do not recommend disabling participants’ ability to comment and show all sorts of activity in albums and other things, and even more so in discussions, because the higher the audience activity, the faster your group is moving. If someone sends spam or behaves inappropriately, then the blacklist will help you.

Let me just explain what materials are. We need them if we want the “Latest News” block to appear on the main page of the group, which is a wiki page; the name of the block can be changed and the page edited as you please.

If you have an online store, then connect “Products”, then cards with the products you created will be displayed on the main page of the community.

Congratulations, you now have your own VKontakte community, the next thing you need to do is to create it.

If something is unclear to you and you still have questions, please ask them in the comments, I will be glad to answer them. Also subscribe to blog news so you don't miss new articles.

The social network VKontakte has “bloomed” on the Internet so rapidly that many of the communities that users join have thousands, or even millions, of participants. The influence of this social network on huge masses of people is so strong that advertising on this resource can compete in effectiveness with television advertising.

About changes related to the transition to new design VKontakte, described at the end of the article.

Popular VKontakte groups unite people with completely different interests; their focus is surprisingly diverse: from women’s clubs and handicraft “circles” to groups on philosophy and the universe. Therefore, if you do not clearly know what exactly you are looking for, then under the influence advertising appeals, you can easily get lost in them, like in the Bermuda Triangle.

How to find a community on VKontakte

The easiest way to find a community that you like is through the search function provided on the site. Click “Communities” in the menu at the top and you will immediately see a list of popular communities in front of you. In the search, you need to type the query you are interested in, for example, and you will see all the corresponding groups.

They will be shown according to the rating, which is calculated depending on the number of participants and subscribers. Here you can also set a search filter by specifying country and city. In the menu on the left you can choose to search by community type. In addition to VKontakte groups, there are also public pages and meetings (almost the same as a group, but dedicated to a specific event).

But it's not that simple. In the list " popular communities» you won't necessarily find everything best groups in contact, we must not forget that the site is a treasure trove for those who are looking for an audience for advertising. Therefore, many interesting and popular groups are not present in the search due to the fact that they were too carried away with the placement of advertising information.

How can this be? How to find groups where all the most interesting things happen. Shouldn’t they wait forever for one of their friends to recommend them and invite them to join?

Where to quickly find a popular group on VKontakte

Even if the VKontakte policy does not allow you to see the real picture, third-party resources will help you do this.

For example, there is a convenient service socialboard.ru/stat, where you can see it. The service has:

Update:

For some time now, search on VK has changed. Now it's just a text string with a magnifying glass. Enter the name of the group in it, it will produce quick search all over VK. To search only communities, press Enter after entering text. An expanded search will open, where there will be categories: “Audio recordings”, “People”, “Communities” and so on.

Search for groups and communities on VKontakte will help you get all this information. To do this, you need to go to the social network using your username and find it on the top ( blue) panel the inscription “Communities”. If you click on this link, you will see a long list of all kinds of groups that VKontakte has. But everything available in social network You don’t need groups, so next you should use the search. All services for promoting your VKontakte page or group can be found.

The simplest search for VKontakte groups carried out by keyword (for example, “recipes”, “fitness”, “Spartak” or any other word that somehow corresponds to what you want to find). Better to use different options: Russian and English spelling, synonyms, this will help you find the group that is most interesting to you, because there can be a hundred or even a thousand groups devoted to one topic, and search for VKontakte groups will offer you all the options with the entered keyword. Read also about searching for information on VKontakte.

After you have received the group options in your own way search word, on the right you can select clarifying parameters to make it easier to navigate the resulting variety of groups. Search for VKontakte groups can be done by indicating the type of community (group, page, meeting or any), you can specify the country and city to find fans of playing hockey in your city. Also, don’t forget to check the “safe search” box so you don’t get dubious communities in your search results. Find out how to add a VKontakte group from this.

If the method described above does not bring desired result, or you couldn’t find the right keyword (or maybe you don’t know what exactly you need yet), you can try search for VKontakte communities by topic. After you click on the same “communities” inscription on a blue background, a column with various thematic collections will appear on the right. You can select “sports”, “culture and art”, “brands” or other options presented, and then search for VKontakte groups on the selected topic. You can also turn your attention to the “recommendations” tab (it will be at the top of this column, here you will see the most popular groups that have gained the most subscribers). Our team will help you get subscribers to your group quickly and inexpensively service .

Search for VKontakte groups without registration

Many Internet users are also interested in search for VKontakte groups without registration. What should you do if you want to find some information, but the person is not registered on VKontakte? It's possible. To do this, you just need to go to the main page of vk.com and select the “Communities” tab. It will be written at the bottom of the page in blue text. Next, search for groups or communities VKontakte everything is carried out according to the same algorithm described above. You can add likes to any image or post on VKontakte on this

The other day we managed to pull off an interesting thing. For all VKontakte groups with the number of subscribers from 5,000 to 10,000 (~100,000 groups), a complete graph was constructed in which the weights of the edges were equal to the intersection of the group audiences.

Firstly, this graph looks beautiful:

Secondly, with its help you can quickly select groups of a given topic. For example, you need to find groups about knitting. Using the keyword “knitting” we find one suitable group, Knitting -Knitting online-, For example. We display the groups with which it is associated:

And we repeat until we get tired of it or until new names stop appearing.

Knitting. In this world everything is connected...:
8.88% YARN Corporation
3.06% Mommy's channel - for creative mothers (CROCHETS!)
2.58%
2.30% Knitting -Knitting online-
2.14% Online Yarn Store "AZHUR"
1.94%
1.85% Yarn store - ღ YOUR YARN ღ
1.76% Yarn
1.72% Openwork world: connected with love!
1.55%

“Madame Vyazalkina” Yarn (supplies for needlework):
2.49% Yarn
2.37% YARN Corporation
1.42% Yarn shop Eesti lõng (Kauni, Kauni)
1.39% Kauni yarn is an Estonian legend. Knitting.
1.32% CHEAP YARN. FLEECE. RUBBERS FOR WEAVING BRACELETS
1.26% Yarn and handicraft store KUDEL
1.24% Knitted hats and more.
1.21% HOBBY & HOME | NEEDLEWORK
1.18% Online Yarn Store "AZHUR"
1.15% Yarn Spaghetti Spaghetti

A similar result can be achieved by choosing wisely keywords for search: “knitting”, “yarn”, “handicraft”, “crochet”. But they are not always easy to come up with.

To construct such a graph, several non-obvious methods were used. technical solutions which I would like to talk about.

To get full list groups given size, the wonderful website allsocial.ru was upgraded. I wonder how they collect this data? Just go through all indexes: vk.com/club1 , vk.com/club2,...? Only medium-sized groups with a number of subscribers from 5,000 to 10,000 people were taken for two reasons: you can’t pump up huge publics like MDK, but, more importantly, membership in them does not carry a special signal, such groups are connected with everything in the world.

To get a list of group subscribers in the VKontakte API, there is a special method. But it allows you to receive 1000 users at a time and only 3 times per second. And it was necessary to upgrade about 1,000,000,000 users, which is a lot. It turns out that you will have to wait 3-4 days if VK responds to every request instantly. This is generally tolerable, but the following note in the documentation confused me:

In addition to restrictions on the frequency of calls, there are also quantitative restrictions on calling methods of the same type. For obvious reasons, we do not provide information about exact limits.

Return [ API.groups.getMembers(id=1, offset=0, count=1000), API.groups.getMembers(id=1, offset=1000, count=1000), API.groups.getMembers(id=1, offset=2000, count=1000), API.groups.getMembers(id=1, offset=3000, count=1000), API.groups.getMembers(id=1, offset=4000, count=1000), API.groups .getMembers(id=1, offset=5000, count=1000), ... ];
There can be no more than 25 calls to the API within a program. That is, the number of requests is reduced to 40,000, and theoretically the ban can be avoided. Each such request was no longer completed instantly, but approximately 5-6 seconds, so we still had to wait. Yes, it would be possible to start downloading in several threads, but it would be scary. After two and a half days, everything was downloaded and took up about 10GB on my disk.

Now the question arises: how to stuff these 10GB into RAM and how to calculate the pairwise intersection of audiences for 100,000 groups. What helps is the fact that each user is usually a member of a small number of groups (99% of users are members of less than 15 groups). You can write down what contributions each user makes to the intersections and then add up these contributions. Let, for example, there be two users: A and B, and three groups 1, 2 and 3. A is in all three, B is only in 1 and 3. A contributes to three intersections: (1, 2), (1 , 3) and (2, 3), B - into one: (1, 3). Adding it up, we get that 1 and 3 intersect by two users, the rest of the groups by one. If you technically ignore users who are in 15 groups or more, then you will have to write out approximately 500,000,000 intersections, which is much better than when solving it head-on, where you will need to count 100,000 * 100,000 intersections.

Great, the only problem left is RAM. Fortunately, the described algorithm fits well with the map-reduce paradigm, so a 50-line nano-hadup was created and the calculation looked like this: we write down the groups and users who belong to them in two columns:

Group user 3953835 10 2065169 100001643 2112714 100001643 ...
The result is a ~9GB file, sort it using the Unix sort in the second column, and see where Pavel Durov is located:
group user 2226515 1 37110020 1 38354466 1 43453499 1 60140141 1 60615047 1 64980878 1 1019652 10 ...
We read the file, group the stream by the second column, keep in memory only the list of user groups, if there are less than 15 groups, write out all the matchings in another file:

Source target 10000 10027193 9980615 9997141 9974 9976553 ...
Since the threshold was chosen correctly, the file is not too large - ~9GB. We sort it by two columns:
source target 10000 100000 10000 100000 10000 10009982 10000 100100 10000 100100 10000 10019194 10000 10019194 10000 1002 10000 1002 1 0000 1002 ...
Then the file is read, grouped into two columns, and the intersection is immediately calculated. For groups 10000 and 100000, for example, there are 2 users. This can be said immediately; there is no need to store anything in memory.