How to create a group in VK: step-by-step instructions and what type of community is better to choose. Search VKontakte groups

19.08.2019 OS

Imagine Steve Jobs - a black turtleneck, a shrewd eye - trying to present an iPhone in a Papuan village that doesn't even have electricity.

For all his genius, Jobs is unlikely to be successful with such an audience. Advertising placed on a site with an inappropriate audience is also ridiculous and ineffective. By advertising in public pages that are not suitable for the audience, you waste money and time. It is much better to advertise where your potential customers live.

How to find suitable VK groups for paid posts?

The standard VKontakte functionality allows you to find groups that match the topic (very general) or by name. This is not enough. First of all, because the subject matter is declared arbitrarily, as well as the name does not always reflect the essence of the audience. It is simply too short for that.

I will not dwell on the difficulties of selecting sites: they are known to anyone who has tried to advertise in public. Let's go straight to solving the problem.

Another approach: start with the user!

To find the sites we need, we just need to remember why this is being done. Our goal is to find groups with people who are receptive to our advertising. Let's then find these suitable people and see what groups they belong to..

Of course, we will not search manually. I bring to your attention the second tool of the SMMup.ru project - Search for groups by target audience parameters. The tool is located at: http://smmup.ru/target.php

How it works?

The general idea is very simple:

You indicate the main parameters of your target audience
On their basis, a sample of users is prepared.
The program collects data on which groups each user belongs to
The information is summarized, in the end we see which groups are preferred by people who are our potential subscribers or customers.

Haha, you say. Well, as a result, MDK and EP will be - what every second subscribed to. To the point!

Everything is correct. Therefore, the fifth point is the most important! - consists in calculating conformity index.

To understand what it is, you need to remember the basics of marketing theory. The concept of affinity index is well described in Wikipedia. Let me remind you here that this is an indicator of how much better the ad is perceived by the audience of a particular site in relation to the audience as a whole (random people). It might be easier to understand with examples:

So that's it. The probability that a person in our sample is in a particular group directly depends on 2 factors: the size of the group and the affinity index of the site for this sample. But we know the number of subscribers of the group! So what's stopping you from calculating the match index?

I turn this short excursion into theory and move on to practice. You do not need to delve into all calculations with a match index. Now you will see that it works and this is the main thing.

Examples of how the tool works

To begin with, let's pick something very simple so that we can make sure that the idea of a match index works.

For example, we want to launch a website dedicated to football in the regions and decided to advertise in small groups of football fans.

Let's find what football fans are subscribed to in Kaliningrad. We indicate the city, we set the age from 20 years (after all, we need an adult and solvent audience), in our interests we indicate, of course, football. We launch search and analysis.

We get a table with communities sorted in descending order of the index (clickable):

The first lines with a huge index of conformity are occupied by small regional groups of football fans. The rest of the communities are predominantly male, i.e. the audience in them is "warm", which also suits us well. Quite logical results, right? We could have gotten them with a standard community search, although it would have spent more time.

A more complex example. Let's say we sell some special software or service for, well, for example, realtors in St. Petersburg. Is it easy to find groups where realtors are sitting? Not so much anymore:

By standard search we find only groups with a service offer ...

But for smmup.ru this is not a problem. We indicate the city and position:

There is already something to profit from, right?

Another example + a little subtlety in using the tool.

We want to sell fans of the films "The Hobbit" some kind of accessory - at least a ring of Omnipotence with delivery in Moscow. We indicate the "Hobbit" among the interests:

Oops. Somehow pale: small affinity (not tens and hundreds), vacancies ... Something is wrong! Pay attention to the notice above the table. Yeah, of course! After all, pointing out "The Hobbit" in your favorite films is not yet a sign of target audience. The film is quite popular. We add "Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings" to our interests to collect the most ardent fans:

Sounds like the case, doesn't it?

In short: how can a tool be useful?

There are many such examples. Go to the site and try it yourself! You can specify many conditions for selecting an audience: gender, age, interests, geography, job ... Indicate a portrait of an ideal client - you will receive a list of the best advertising sites.

I don't think that my readers need to further explain how profitable it is to advertise in a small group with a homogeneous and active audience that suits you in terms of parameters. Let me just remind you that advertising there is usually very cheap... Or even free if you can offer something more or less interesting. Small thematic groups are often conducted not for profit, but out of interest.

Use the tool (at the moment it is absolutely free),

Everyone loves cars, music genres or bands, certain fashions and styles. This is why people create communities of interest. So how to implement search for Vkontakte communities?

First, go to your page. And press the button shown in the picture.

Next, you enter the name of the community in the line shown in the image. An interface appears where you can join any company or subscribe to various interesting blogs. Also, for convenience, you have a special menu on the right that makes it easier to search both by genre and by popularity. If you like the community - just click the "Join" or "Subscribe" button. This is how the search for communities in Contact occurs, everything is very simple.

As in the case of people, a group in VKontakte can be found without registration. However, searching for VKontakte groups without registration is much less effective than from your personal authorized page. You can log in directly on the main, first page by entering your username and password. If you have forgotten your password, you can restore it, having with you a phone number and a number to which the account was registered.

Any social network (social network) consists of users, such as you and me, and various kinds of publics (groups). They can be in the form of online stores, flea markets, or just an informative page of a specific catering establishment, creative association or a circle of "skillful hands".

Human psychology is such that in any community - real or virtual - he is trying to find his place and his group (the effect of the so-called clustering). It is this feature that marketers use to attract customers to a particular area.

Selection of publics according to personal preferences

Anyway, anyone who loves to paint will subscribe to art stores, artist or gallery pages, art history communities, etc. The musician will probably look for flea markets with instruments, video tutorials and performers with whom he would like to play together or from whom I would like to learn.

VK provides this opportunity at a higher level than any other available social network. Surely you can easily choose the best VKontakte groups just for yourself, based on your hobbies. But what, this is where all the possibilities end? Where are the great benefits of this social network?

Why VKontakte?

Let's look at how VK can especially attract users.

Russian speakers from all over the world, unite! The ru domain is accessible from anywhere in the world. Therefore, its capabilities are much wider than those of the same OK.ru.
Simple interface.
Access to music. The second and third points may seem surprising at first glance, but the very first time you test such options in other social networks, everything will fall into place, and it will become obvious to you that vk.ru was simply created for this.
What to see in the feed and what to disable is up to you, not the statistics module.

List of groups everyone should join

The best VKontakte groups are publics with a population of over one million. Despite the fact that groups breed like Australian rabbits, sometimes a large group - 20 thousand subscribers or more - can simply collapse out of the blue. For a millionaire, this is practically impossible. And the main secret of these publics is that they are created for women. Because the regular readers of VK are representatives of the fairer sex.

Many so-called male groups have a target audience of girls. Just ask yourself the question of how many men will subscribe to a public discussing clothing and outfit, albeit a man's? And how many women will choose a group where breasts and priests are constantly flashing?

We offer only some of the best VKontakte groups. Their list is constantly updated, but for the last year and a half they continue to hold their leading positions:

new.vk.com/lhack (life hack and everything connected with it);
new.vk.com/ria (RIA Novosti, news in Russia and the world);
new.vk.com/dobrie_novosty (good news, stories from the lives of those who were helped and those who helped);
new.vk.com/oroom (humor).

Male choice

The best VKontakte groups for guys, which 99% of men subscribe to and only rare women, generally do not carry highly intellectual information in their bulk, but among their posts there is a purely male topic.

All this is just a cunning marketing ploy, because the bulk of men are also not particularly distracted by the naked ass flashing in the feed, but news on his online game will only be in such groups.

A striking example of this is new.vk.com/newmmorpgame, because there are not so many girls-gamers among us. And even those publics where the description contains the word "male" may not be interesting to all this contingent, for example: new.vk.com/fashionmenblog - a men's group dedicated to fashion on VKontakte.

See the 5 best examples of such groups below:

vk.com/public39399586 - "Cynic Quote";
new.vk.com/public40613208 - "The boys will understand";
new.vk.com/academyofman - "Academy of Decent Guys";
new.vk.com/chotkiy_paca - male group for Ukrainian boys, if you speak the language, you can subscribe - posts are relevant in every country;
new.vk.com/officialpages - this page was not in vain here - it is with its help that you can follow the emergence of new official pages of public people dedicated to cinema, music, cuisine, etc.

The last public is not so much on the list of the best itself as it keeps track of which are the best VKontakte groups. Its beauty is that there are dry facts, strict censorship and, of course, news. If you do not know the news of the cinema yet, you can easily track it down, because before the premiere of a new film, its official VKontakte page appears in cinemas.

Deep dive into the net

Do you make money online, do you have your own store or do you freelance? Then you have to follow the huge amount of news. Remember that not all posts are displayed in the feed, because the Internet is very crowded. And the further, the more and the more expensive its use by both the user and advertisers. And if the first does not think about the fact that it is "heated" by 6 rubles, then the second, in order to "heat" it by 6 rubles, spends 10 thousand.

So you've decided to dive deep and start promoting. Then for you the best VKontakte groups are official:

new.vk.com/team - the VKontakte team. All legal and controversial issues of publics can be found here. The initial publication of the updated instructions and rules takes place immediately. So you need to study it all along and across before starting to create any VK element.
new.vk.com/vkgames - the first swallow is sent here with the advent of a new online game.
new.vk.com/android_app - all VK applications for Android. Information, bugs, features, and more.

Advertising "VKontakte"

Each VK user cannot complain about explicit advertising on the Internet. But we are not talking about its complete absence. Advertising - publications on your favorite public pages, which in one way or another make the reader subscribe to another group where the product is already on sale. Such an indirect and unobtrusive belief is very pleasant, because everyone believes that they are making an independent choice.

If you want to buy a publication, remember that there is such a resource on the network as new.vk.com/publicreview - a group of reviews about advertising placement publics. Check reviews here to stay out of trouble. From time to time, it’s good to look for reviews about yourself. If you find negative, that's good too, because you will know what else to work on. And of course, for the development of the resource, it is worth leaving your comment, good or bad - it's up to you.

Online store or business page

Did you want to make your website to promote goods and services? The free VKontakte platform can be used for testing. In order for a search engine to find it, you need money, but for the very beginning, so that the whole environment knows about your products, this is the best option. Many do not switch over time to other resources because of the convenience and cheapness.

Fast and a lot

In conclusion, we suggest paying attention to the promising pages where they talk about making money with a minimum investment. Do you remember how it was said earlier about the overabundance of information? This is the reason why promoting a page honestly and quickly will not work.

Today they are engaged in fast acquisition of subscriptions with the help of promotions: "Publish, like, and the" random "will choose a winner." But among such promotions there are thousands of pages that do not give anything for free. They don't give anything at all. And stocks are often with fake photos from various flea markets (like OLX or Avito). Their goal is as many publications and subscriptions as possible. After 20 thousand, they sell a page for further promotion of a different topic with completely different people.

So, you choose the best VKontakte groups yourself. Nobody will forbid you to unsubscribe if the material goes on completely uninteresting to you personally. And after reading the article and looking for the information you need, you will already see an impressive list of publics from several dozen. Only with time will you be able to understand the productivity of each of them.

That's all. Have a good mood and inspiration from VKontakte!

Vkontakte API

The other day we managed to pull off an interesting thing. For all Vkontakte groups with the number of subscribers from 5000 to 10,000 (~ 100,000 groups), a complete graph was built in which the edge weights were equal to the intersection of the group audiences.

First, such a graph looks nice:

Secondly, with its help, you can quickly select groups of a given topic. For example, you need to find knitting groups. By 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 bored or until new names stop appearing.

Knitting. In this world, everything is connected ...:
8.88% YARN Corporation
3.06% Mom's channel - for creative mothers (HOOK!)
2.58%
2.30% Knitting -Knitting online-
2.14% Internet-Shop of Yarn "AZHUR"
1.94%
1.85% Yarn shop - ღ YOUR YARN ღ
1.76% Yarn
1.72% Openwork world: associated with love!
1.55%

"Madame Vyazalkina" Yarn (handicraft goods):
2.49% Yarn
2.37% YARN Corporation
1.42% Eesti lõng yarn shop (Kauni, Kauni)
1.39% Kauni yarn is a legend in Estonia. Knitting.
1.32% YARN IS CHEAP.FLEECE. RUBBERS FOR WEAVING BRACELETS
1.26% Yarn and handicraft shop KUDEL
1.24% Knitted hats and more.
1.21% HOBBY & HOME | NEEDLEWORK
1.18% Internet-Shop of Yarn "AZHUR"
1.15% Spagetti Yarn Spaghetti

A similar result can be achieved by correctly selecting the keywords for the search: "knitting", "yarn", "needlework", "crochet". But they are not always easy to come up with.

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

To get a complete list of groups of a given size, the excellent site allsocial.ru was upgraded. I wonder how they collect this data? Just go over all indices: vk.com/club1 , vk.com/club2, ...? Only medium-sized groups with the number of subscribers from 5,000 to 10,000 people were taken for two reasons: huge publics like MDK you chuckle over, 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 subscribers to groups in API Vkontakte, there is a special method. But it allows you to get 1000 users at a time and only 3 times per second. And it was necessary to pump about 1,000,000,000 users, which is dofiga. It turns out that you will have to wait 3-4 days if VK responds to every request instantly. This is generally bearable, but confused by the following note in the documentation:

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 on the exact limits.

In our case, this remark is annoying, because 1,000,000 requests will need to be made. The coolest method comes to the rescue here. execute... Great respect to the guys from VK for him. I wonder if anyone else has such a thing? The bottom line is that through execute you can send programs in a special VKScript language to Contact, push there several requests to the API and, possibly, some kind of logic. In my case, the program looked something like this:

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), ...];
Inside the program, there can be no more than 25 calls to the API. That is, the number of requests is reduced to 40,000, theoretically the ban can be avoided. Each such request was not executed instantly, but about 5-6 seconds, so I still had to wait. Yes, it would be possible to start downloading in several streams, but it was even weird. After two and a half days, everything was up and running and took about 10GB on my disk.

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

Great, only the problem with the RAM remains. Fortunately, the described algorithm fits well with the map-reduce paradigm, so a 50-line nano-hadup was written down and the calculation looked like this: we write out the groups and users that are in them in two columns:

Group user 3953835 10 2065169 100001643 2112714 100001643 ...
It turns out a ~ 9GB file, sort it by the Unix sort by the second column, see where Pavel Durov is:
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 only the list of user groups in memory, 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 is chosen correctly, the file is not too large - ~ 9GB. Let's 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 10000 1002 ...
Then the file is read, grouped by two columns, and the intersection is immediately calculated. For groups 10000 and 100000, for example, user list 2. This can be said right away, you do not need to store anything in memory.

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VKontakte communities are groups of people united by interests.

They can share news, information, listen to music, conduct polls.

Such a kind of creative (or not so) circle in the online mode. Despite the seeming frivolity and simplicity, it is an effective marketing tool. With its help, they organize not only communication between participants, but also business promotion. Just think how many possibilities this site gives. Now it is visited by over 97 million people a day.

All these users not only read, watch videos, but also buy. It is a great sales channel for many companies. And one of the ways to find clients in it is to use platforms in a social network.

How do VK communities differ from each other?

There are three types of communities. To found one of them, go to the "Groups" section of the menu and click "Create". A window like this will appear in front of you.

As for the subject matter, you can choose one of two: for a person, an organization, a store, or a blog by interest. After that, the system offers to choose the direction: beauty, cooking, travel, etc. Let's talk in more detail about each of the three formats of doing business on VKontakte.

The materials posted on it can be seen by all Internet users, even if they are not registered in this social network. Most often, it is through the promotion of brands, online magazines, news resources, services. They are suitable for making money on advertising and affiliate programs. They have features that do not allow the audience to be very active in creating a site, but they help to attract traffic.

The advantages and disadvantages of such a community:

It will be reflected in the profile of each of your subscribers. True, to always be in sight, you only need to generate interesting content. Then you will be in the top five. This increases the reach.
All discussions, videos and photo albums are on the right, below. This is more likely a disadvantage if you are promoting a product.
Only you have the right to leave notes on the wall. Participants will be able to comment on them (the option is disabled) or suggest their notes with a special button.
The description of the VKontakte community is located at its top. There is also a pinned text with important materials (for example, your contacts, links, current article).
It is easier to promote it, since people are more willing to subscribe to public pages. They often catch the eye of visitors and, subject to the availability of fascinating posts, a subscription is inevitable.
You cannot delete users.

Sections that are available for customization in the public. They will be reflected on the right, below.

Group

A universal format that contains many functions. Such a business advertising channel is suitable for the sale of products and services, as well as for pooling by interests. It is possible to create an online store by connecting the "Products".

Community advantages and disadvantages:

Summarize. The public as a whole is easier to promote. It is more often seen by visitors, since it is located on the home page of each subscriber. People subscribe to it voluntarily, without any motivation on your part. This format is the best option for organizing a channel with texts, beautiful photos, promotions, polls, news. It is more difficult to implement an assortment in them. Although they can also upload photos and connect "Products".

The good thing is that it has more functionality. It is more convenient as a platform for direct sales and bringing people together according to some principle. For example, professionally. Promotion is not so simple. In order to learn about the community, you need to send out invitations yourself or ask your contacts about it. It is very difficult to find it. To do this, you need to scroll through all the user's personal information and only then get to the section. Unless, of course, it is hidden by the privacy settings.

Events

The bottom line is to cover all kinds of events and notify participants about them. The functionality is very similar to other formats, but with some differences. The community has an organizer: account, group or public. Also, start and end times are always present. The visitor, after he joins, has three answer options: I will definitely go, Probably and I can’t. The button "Call friends" is available to him.

Advantages:

In the news and alerts there are reminders about the upcoming show / concert.
It is possible to invite up to 5000 people every 12 hours.
It is not necessary to create a new event, it is enough to reschedule its dates.

In addition to all of the above, there are pages, they are also promoted, but as part of the development of a personal brand. When it comes to recognizing a person, not a company.

How to change the format

If you have chosen a public page, but realized that it is not suitable for business tasks, you have the right to transfer it to a different view and vice versa. But it is important to take into account all the nuances. Such an event can be held once every 30 days. At the same time, many functions will change in accordance with the new focus. If the number of participants is less than 10,000, there will be no problems with the changes. If it is more, you will need to submit an application to technical support and wait for a solution.

VK community materials

After you have made a public or a group, there comes a crucial moment for its filling. As we have already described, both of these formats are suitable for filling with text and graphic content. The only difference is the location of the videos and photos. You can connect them in the settings. To do this, you need to follow three steps. Go to the menu as in the screenshot by clicking the three dots next to the words "You are subscribed" or "You are a member" and select "Management". Then open the "Sections" and check the boxes where necessary. Do not forget to highlight whether the entries will be restricted or open. It depends on whether people can add something of their own or not. After that, go back and download the materials.

What to write in the description of the VK community

This is a required part of a public page or group. It should be concise, understandable, and meaningful for your target audience. The person who came to you wants to either understand where he got to, or get important information for him, if he is already your client / subscriber. It is best to combine both options. You can not leave the canvas of text solid, arrange paragraphs, use graphic elements. Add a call to subscribe at the end.

Ideas for describing the community:

The benefits of your company.
Group content. Tell the visitor what he will find here. Leave links to main articles.
Contact information, when and how to contact you.
A short story about you and your activity (field, work experience, achievements).
Offer of discounts, free services, promotions, contests.

It helps participants get to the right topic right away, rather than searching through all the sections. For example, if you are selling something, let it have four items: assortment, prices, conditions, contacts. First, you need to create a background for buttons in graphic editors. You can do this yourself or using a special service. For example, flaticon.com. Then using the instructions from