How to choose a topic for a VKontakte group. A fair wind is at your back. A post that gets a lot of shares

I have long been inundated with questions about making money on VKontakte. To be precise, by making money in contact using a group or public page.

I think that this topic is known to many, because it is heavily promoted, and, unfortunately, not in better side. The fact is that most people who teach how to make money on VKontakte say that it is very simple, just create a public page and, literally after a certain amount of time, you will receive an income of 30-60 thousand rubles per month. And this is only at the first stage, and over time there will be a tenfold increase in profits. In fact, most of what they say about making money on public pages is not entirely true, or better yet, an embellished truth.

Why do so many people care about this? Of course, everyone likes easy money, everyone likes to earn good money, everyone needs money for some of their needs, but not everyone wants to work hard for this. There is an opinion that making money on pabriks is a complete “freebie”, that is, you created a public page, promoted it a little and that’s it, you already have money. No, that's not true. In my course, which will also be in video format, I will reveal the whole truth. In it I will touch on such exciting topics as creating a public page, promotion, promotion, correct design, filling. I’ll tell you how to minimize the cost of a subscriber, how to create effective posts, what tools to use, what are the consequences of poor-quality promotion and much more.

Today I will tell you about the first question that all novice public administrators face in social network In contact with:

What topic should I create a group (public) on VKontakte?

On this moment exists three main themes, which are the most popular on the VKontakte social network and about 80 percent of all successful public pages are created on them. Main secret The choice of these topics is that they are relatively easy to promote and easy to monetize.

You probably already guessed, the most popular and most frenzied topic is humor. Our people love to have fun, laugh, love good mood and positive. In principle, this is quite good. It is very easy to get promoted in this topic, that is, the subscriber price will be minimal, from 30 to 50 kopecks. But the fact is that such topics are very difficult to monetize, because most of the audience for this topic are mainly school-age people. This audience is practically not solvent. Here you need to take the quality of your subscribers. I recommend that you think about monetizing this public with 300,000 subscribers; less will not be entirely advisable.

The second topic is business, money, success and everything connected with it. Great topic for a blog. But the cost of a subscriber doubles. You will have to significantly increase the budget for promoting such a public page, but, nevertheless, the result will be several times greater. This topic easy to monetize, because it mainly attracts a solvent audience, businessmen, enterprising young people, people with an active life position. Monetization starts from 50,000 participants, initially, of course, this is not entirely large amounts, but with further promotion, several zeros will be added to your income.

And the third one is women's themes . This theme is very effective. I know people who have made crazy amounts of money on these topics. The whole secret is that the female audience on VKontakte is more willing to subscribe to public pages than the male audience. Maybe the whole reason is in psychology and slightly different thinking. This topic is easy to promote and easy to monetize. However, women are such a specific audience that requires a certain skill that, in most cases, only a girl can understand. Monetization starts from 50,000 subscribers.

Summarizing all of the above, I will name the three most popular topics:

1. Humor

2. Business, success and money

3. Women's theme

The topic in which to create a public page and work is up to you to choose. If you feel that humor is closer to you, then create a public page about humor and fun. If you are interested in the topic of success, personal development, business, then choose a topic in this direction. And if you are a girl, then create a women’s public, since you have more chances to succeed in this topic than men. And remember, when promoting a public site, not only financial investments are important, but also the attitude towards it. It is important that you work with soul and full dedication, then things will go easily and quickly!

In the following articles I will tell you about proper promotion, how and where to buy advertising, how much it should cost, how best to monetize the public, how to design the public, where to get content so that visitors like it, and other important topics.

How to make a VK group popular: step-by-step instructions for creating a group + 3 ways to make content unique + 4 main methods of promotion.

The VKontakte group allows you to unite a large number of users by interests.

This is a tool with which you can popularize ideas and lifestyle, as well as share your own creativity if you are an aspiring writer, musician, hair stylist, etc.

You can even earn money by posting advertising posts, if you gather a lot of “living” participants in the community.

Find out, how to make a VK group popular and attract maximum amount users.

1) How to create a group on VK and make it popular: 4 steps

Obviously, before you promote a group, you need to create it. If you already own a public page, feel free to skip it this section. And for those who are still at the very beginning of their journey, we suggest you carefully study this step by step instructions.

Step 1.

Go to “Groups” and click on the “Create Community” button.

Step 2.

We come up with a name and determine the theme. It is important that the “name” of the community contains a keyword by which it can be found in a search.

The main difference between a group and a public page is that the latter’s posts are visible to absolutely all VKontakte users. But the group can be made closed or private. Then its contents will be available only to participants.

PS. You can also choose the "event" format if you want to spread the word about an upcoming concert, festival, etc.

About additional features groups, public pages and events can be read here: https://vk.com/page-64975608_48466494

Step 3.

Choose a stylish photo that reflects the theme of the group.

*Crib sheet for choosing the size for the cover

It is also important to make a short but meaningful description to attract readers.

Step 4.

Ready! Click on your avatar and add a photo. You can also click the “three dots” button in the left corner and the group management menu will open.

The picture above is the cover we chose in previous paragraph.

2) How to create popular and unique content for your VK group?

Next important step, without which we won’t figure out how to make a group on VK popular: it needs to be filled with thematic information.

The simplest and quick way– copy posts from similar communities, but this approach will make you only “one of.” But to create unique content you'll have to work hard.

In a group you can:

Publish in your VK group interesting materials that a person would like to repost and save on his page:

collections of books on popular topics (self-development, startups, health);
lists of useful mobile applications;
lists of sites with free online courses;
selections of videos from TED conferences;
tops (“top 5 products for healthy skin”, “top 7 romantic comedies”);
posts with links to your previous articles in the public.

Where can I get pictures for a VKontakte group to make it popular?

Collections from beautiful pictures always attract readers, collect a lot of likes and reposts, which allows you to make the VK group popular.

To avoid violating copyright, you need to use free stock photos. There are not so few of them, and there you can find a large number high-quality photos. All you need to do is go to a stock photo site and enter a keyword that describes the picture.

In order to do beautiful collections, use popular stocks:

https://unsplash.com
https://www.pexels.com
http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com

How to increase the audience for a VKontakte group and thereby make it popular?

When to publish posts for the VK group?

To make your VK group popular, publish posts daily on certain time.

In the media sphere, there is the concept of “prime time” - this is the most convenient time for a person to listen to a radio station or watch a TV channel.

Well, you and I have to determine when greatest number people are browsing news feed in contact with. To do this, it is important to study your target audience.

For example, schoolchildren and students often open their pages on social networks after studying at 16:00 and before going to bed at 22:00. Those who are a little older check their accounts during the lunch break from 12:00 to 13:00.

On the infographic green highlighted best time for publishing posts, red, respectively, is the worst.

Also, you shouldn’t update your group’s wall on VK. exact time, for example at 12:00 or 18:00. Because large popular public pages will do this with you, and users may simply not notice your post.

3) 4 best methods on how to make a VK group popular

Here we come to the answer to main question, how to make a group on VK popular.

In order to do so, it is necessary to disseminate information about the community as much as possible. The easiest way to do this is through advertising and sending messages.

a) Advertising on VKontakte.

b) Contextual advertising in search engines will help make your VK group popular.

In this case, the group needs to come up with correct name, which would specifically describe. For example, “Nail salon in Moscow”, “High-quality furniture in Kazan”, “Children’s toys”, etc.

It is important to note that here you pay for each link click. Thus, the minimum order amount ranges from 300 to 500 rubles, while the rate per “click” starts from 30 kopecks.

c) Advertising a VK group in another community.

Choose popular community With big amount views of posts, likes and reposts. Also keep in mind that his topic should be similar to yours.

Often, administrators publish the price list for advertising on their page (in the “information” section or in the discussion form).

The video below shows an example of how it works popular program Vkinformer message mailings ( https://k-informer.ru/).

The license is paid, but you can create your first free newsletter in a two-hour test mode.

d) Sending out advertising messages for joining the VKontakte group.

Send to users private messages with an invitation to join your community. You can do this manually or use special programs mailings.

Summarize: in order to make the VK group popular- you need to create an interesting and quality content, and then take care of its promotion.

Such a community with a large number of participants allows its owner to earn money without leaving home by selling goods or placing advertising posts.

Greetings! Come on, tell me, how many of you have thought about how to create a VKontakte community and monetize this enterprise? I am sure that among you there will be those who tried to become the owner profitable group on the social network, he may even have filled it with content and designed it, but he never achieved the popularity of his brainchild and failed to promote it. That is why I decided to devote today’s article to how to promote a VKontakte group from scratch. You will learn a lot from my review interesting information, learn about what you need to do to the group flourished. All advice will be practical, and you can immediately apply them without putting them into a long box called “Tomorrow”.

Why are we doing this?

So, I would like to start with the fact that on the Internet we can find a huge variety of all kinds of public pages with different thematic focus. However, profitable in this diversity there are only individual units. I think you all understand that the scale of the project primarily depends on the efforts of its owner, the leader who leads his caravan through the endless desert of possibilities. The amount of capital calculated for the creation and promotion of a VKontakte group, in in this case are a secondary factor.

Well, imagine, you decided to a quick fix create a resource, recruit subscribers to it, and now sit and wait for the money to start flowing. I advise you to roll up your lip and wipe away the drool. Nothing in this world falls from the sky(and what falls usually does not bode well).

To earn a couple of pesos, you will have to use your head. First of all, think and decide for yourself, what exactly do you want to do? That is, decide on the topic your community. I offer you several options from which you can choose the one that seems most attractive to you:

earnings from advertising and affiliate programs (in this case the topic is absolutely not important);
maintaining a personal blog;
creating a resource dedicated to your hobby(this could be finance, music, dancing or anything else).

Socelin for getting high-quality public subscribers

Detailed instructions for creating a community from A to S

Creating a VKontakte group from scratch

Setting up a group

Since we have more or less figured out how to create a community in contact absolutely free, I think we can move on to its actual at a construction site. To do this you need to do the following:

Promote VK pages and publics using Brobot

Decor

Since you and I are interested, we need to make sure that in our community there is sufficient number of participants. From design quality group will depend on its attractiveness in the eyes of users, and therefore I suggest moving on to this activity:

Upload a photo (avatar) to your community. Please note that the photo parameters must be 200*500 . Edit the photo and thumbnail, and then save the result.
Download links, leading to your website or other thematic community. Don’t forget to leave your subscribers your Skype, a link to the chat in a telegram, to your Instagram page and YouTube channel. Edit all names and save.
If you are really interested in how to create popular group in contact, then do not ignore this important point How " Latest news" Edit this block regularly, do not neglect the importance of fonts. Before saving the result, preview the page.
In chapter " Discussions» add new topics that will be useful to your readers.
Add videos to your project. It will be great if the videos are filmed by you and posted on YouTube. This way you will increase traffic on the channel.
When performing, remember that the sale of goods in it will be effective only if the “Photography Albums” are well maintained. Upload photos High Quality, make a detailed description of the product being sold, under each photo indicate the price of the product and a link to the seller (administrator or manager).
To the section " Documentation» you can download useful instructions and manuals. Owners of online stores can keep price lists or lists of services provided in this section, for example.
Don't forget about regular interactions with your subscribers. Conduct surveys several times a week, encourage people to express their opinions in the comments. It’s very good to use when expanding a group’s audience. promotions and competitions. They can be carried out once a month, for example.
For those who plan to do business in their group, you need to take care of adding products with a clear name and detailed description . Remember that the demand for a product will depend on how attractive the photo of this product is. Each product must have reasonable price, which also needs to be specified. Don’t forget to indicate who/where to pay for the order, in what form the payment takes place, how and where delivery is carried out, as well as what guarantees you give to your customers (cash on delivery, exchange option).
If you wish, you can change the group and make it a public page. If you don’t know what the difference is between a public and a group, I advise you to read a separate article dedicated to this issue.
Create in a group convenient menu , make navigation easier. To do banner and wiki menu in the community I turned to specialists in this topic, if you need it, ask in the comments or write in a personal message - I’ll send you a couple of guys who are doing this. I decided not to waste time doing it myself, but there are a lot of manuals and articles on how to do these steps yourself on the Internet. You can use a search engine and check.
And, of course, take care of the quality of content. Please note that in the group, commercial posts must contain photographs and make up no more than 50% of the total material you publish. To increase the number of subscribers, pay attention to posts with fascinating information, do not forget that people are attracted by fun and a good sense of humor. Information presented in the form of images is more attractive.
So that clients trust you more and, as a result, advise their friends and acquaintances, provide them with the opportunity to leave feedback about your work. To do this, you can create an appropriate topic in the “Discussions” section. For regular customers offer discounts and give small gifts and bonuses.

Gather your target audience for your business with Pepper.ninja

How to manage a group?

To make adjustments to your community at any time, you just need to click on the three-dot icon located under your group’s avatar. In the window that opens you will see the categories:

« Information", where you can edit the description, name and other fields at any time;
« Participants", which contains full list all subscribers of the group;
« Managers" Here you can add new or change the access rights of existing community administrators and editors;
« Black list» - a place where you can block unnecessary subscribers or persistent violators of the rules of your group;
« Links»;
« Community Statistics" This category is one of the most important and contains data on:

Group attendance– the number of unique visitors, views, characteristics (age, geographic location, gender) of the audience that is interested in your group;
Audience reach, which looks at your community’s posts in the “My News” section and data about your subscribers;
Activities– actions of subscribers, reposts of your posts and reactions of other users of the social network to this data.

Results

Now that you know everything about how a VKontakte group is created, you boldly You can start implementing your own selling platform or increase the conversion rate of an existing community. Remember, your every action and decision affects how your subscribers treat you and what impression your resource makes on them. Don't stop there, be open to experiments and see you soon!

Instructions

To make money on a VKontakte group, you need to actively promote. According to statistics, the first income in groups of general topics appears when the number of participants is at least 50 thousand people. In more specialized associations - from 20 thousand. And it won’t be possible to attract people to all groups; attendance depends on the choice of topic.

Popular Topics for VKontakte groups. In 2013, groups with quotes and jokes were relevant. They gained an audience of one million people in a matter of months. But today there are too many of them. It is almost impossible to reach the top ten, which means you should give up trying to compete. If the TOP 10 includes only millionaires, this topic is not relevant for beginners.

Related topics. It is convenient to combine several areas at once in a group topic. Of course, they should not be contradictory to each other. For example, esotericism can be combined with psychology. Using two topics in the title will help you reach the top for two queries. And now the search returns such publics on good positions, although a couple of years ago they were always lower thematic groups. Cooking goes well with home improvement tricks, handicrafts with gardening, etc.

Groups of fans of series and programs. Every month new series or programs appear in the world. And they will be discussed and watched. And communities dedicated to them will quickly rise in search results. For example, 2 weeks ago a new series was released - Heartbeat. It was translated into Russian in different ways - heartbeat or heartbreaker. And immediately after the premiere the first groups appeared. Today they are not too big, but in a couple of months the number of subscribers will increase significantly. But you can create groups in advance, because it’s easy to find out about premieres many months in advance.

Beautiful design of the VKontakte community is not a whim, but an important element that builds user trust in you and your company. If a public page or group is not professionally designed, your potential clients They can quite logically conclude that you are equally negligent about your work. To prevent this from happening, make sure that your VKontakte page is beautiful, neat and easy to use. How to do it? Read below.

Current sizes of VKontakte images

Some time ago, the developers of the social network VKontakte launched new design. This led to changes in the size and principles of image display. The memo, which will be given below, corresponds to all innovations and contains the sizes that are relevant at the moment.

Now let's go into more detail on each point.

VK avatar size

The minimum avatar size is 200 by 200 pixels. If you try to upload an image that is less than 200 pixels wide or long, you will see an error like this:

The maximum avatar size is 200 by 500 pixels. But, in principle, you can upload images and bigger size– up to 7000 pixels on each side. The main thing is that the aspect ratio does not exceed 2 to 5.

I'll show you with an example.

I have an image. Its size: 200 by 800 pixels (ratio 2 to 8). There are no errors when loading. However, I still cannot use this image, because “Contact” does not allow me to select it completely.

Cover

The cover size for the full version of the site is 1590 by 400 pixels.

Please note: in mobile version and applications, not the full version of the cover is displayed, but only a part of it measuring 1196 by 400 pixels. See how it is cropped in the mobile app:

To prevent this from happening, position the main elements of your cover within 1196 by 400 pixels.

Attached images

In the updated design of Contact, the width of the news feed has become fixed. This means that the images attached to the post are no longer stretched, but remain as they are. Therefore, if you want your image to fill its entire space in the news feed, its width must be at least 510 pixels. It is best if it is a square or rectangle in landscape orientation.

It sounds a little confusing :) So I’ll show you with an example.

Let's say we have a square-shaped image with sides of 510 pixels. If we attach it to our post, it will look very good in the news feed on all devices:

And this is what a horizontal image looks like in landscape orientation (width 510 pixels):

As you can see, the narrower the image (in height), the smaller it looks in the smartphone feed. To see this, look at the picture below:

It is clear that the difference here is not particularly critical, and smartphone users will still look at your image, it’s just that in the second case they will be a little more comfortable.

Images for posts with links

All this data comes from the Open Graph markup code:

If Open Graph is not specified, the title is taken from meta title tag, and the image is from the article. At the same time, you can easily change it - or select another image from the article using special arrows:

Or upload yours:

The minimum size of an image that you can use as an announcement for your article is 537 by 240 pixels. However, you can upload larger images as long as the proportions are maintained.

Image for an article created in the editor

The image size for the cover of an article created in the editor is 510 by 286 pixels. It is better if it is dark in color and more or less monochromatic, since the name of the article and community is lost on a light background.

Good example:

Not a very good example:

Photo and video size for stories

The size for photos is 1080 by 1920 pixels. The video size is 720 by 1280 pixels.

Technical specifications for video recordings:

up to 15 seconds;
no more than 5 MB;
h.264 codec;
AAC sound.

Stories must use vertical format photos and videos.

Please note: stories on behalf of communities can currently only be added by large communities for which the VKontakte developers have opened this function. And this is done with the help official application. This cannot be done from a computer.

Photo album cover size

Video picture size

1280 by 720 pixels.

Wiki page

The content area width of a wiki page is 607 pixels. If you upload a larger image, it will automatically upload at 400 pixels wide. Example: I have an image measuring 1366 by 768. If I add it to the wiki page, this is what it will look like:

To change the size of a picture, you need to click on it and set the desired values:

I will talk in detail about how to work with wiki pages below. Therefore, we will not dwell on this point here.

How to make sure that VKontakte images do not shrink? The influence of background and size on picture quality.

If you've ever tried to upload VKontakte images (it doesn't matter whether it was an avatar picture or just a photo from your trip), then you probably already know that they tend to shrink. This is especially noticeable on a dark (and especially red) background and when the picture is not very big size. Example:

How to make sure that the quality of the pictures does not deteriorate?

To prevent the image from shrinking (or rather, shrinking, but to a much lesser extent), it is necessary to make it 2–3 times larger the right size. For example, if we need to make an avatar measuring 200 by 500 pixels, we take a picture measuring 400 by 1000 pixels. If you need to make a menu with a size of 510 by 400 pixels, take 1020 by 800.

The image on a dark blue background, which I showed just above, has a size of 510 by 350. I made it twice as large (1020 by 700) and saved it. That's what came out of it:

How to fix it? The answer is very simple - you need to choose a different background. The point is that on dark background pixels are visible better than in light mode. Therefore, if you want to achieve perfect quality(although the picture above already looks quite normal), then you need to slightly change the color scheme. For example, make the background white and the text blue:

How to design a page header

The header of your public page or group is the first thing that users see when they come to visit you. In most cases, a navigation menu based on public materials is placed in this place, some interesting posts or important announcements. Let's look at examples of how various companies use this space.

Cover

Not long ago, VKontakte introduced an update - now you can upload large and beautiful covers(1590 by 400 pixels). To do this, go to settings and click the "Download" button.

On the cover you can place anything you want: from the name and motto of your company, to all kinds of promotions, offers and even competitions.

I recommend paying special attention to the possibilities dynamic cover. Read our article about how it works, for what purposes it can be used and with what services it can be installed.

Examples of dynamic covers:

Cover + community description + website link

Some companies specifically do not pin any posts in the header so that users have the opportunity to read basic information about the page and immediately go to the site.

Description with hashtags

Some companies add standard description page hashtags that characterize it. This is done so that the page has a clearer relevance, and due to this, it is higher in the search for relevant queries. Honestly, I don't know if this method works or not. I haven’t seen any cases on this topic, so if anyone knows, I’d be grateful if you could share the link.

Pinned post telling what the page is about

If you want to tell about your page in more detail (with photos, links and beautiful layout), then you can attach a wiki post or an article made in the editor to the header, with a bright picture on the announcement that will encourage users to click on it. An example of such a post:

And this is what the user sees after he clicks on the link:

Group menu is open

I call an open menu a menu that immediately shows what items it consists of. That is, the wiki post announcement picture completely duplicates its content. Thus, users immediately see what awaits them inside. I'll show you with an example.

This is what a pinned post looks like in the Flatro page header:

Group menu is closed

A closed menu is the same wiki post as in the previous paragraph, only the announcement contains a picture with no menu items. Usually they write on it: “Menu”, “Navigation menu” or “Navigation through public materials”.

And this is what we see when we click on it:

By the way, it is worth noting that these are far from the only options. Basically, you can write whatever you want on this picture. The main thing is that the user wants to click on it, and he understands what awaits him after that. Example:

Merged menu for a group

A merged menu is when the picture on the announcement of your menu forms one image with the avatar. Below I will tell you in detail how to make such a menu, but for now just look how beautiful it looks.

GIF and avatar in one image

But this design option for the hat really delighted me. The automatically played GIF merges with the avatar into a single composition and attracts the attention of users, even though there is no information on it at all.

By the way, I spotted this example in the group of SMM marketer Sergei Shmakov. So, I express my gratitude to him for the find :)

Hidden menu

The hidden menu is only available for groups (pages do not have this functionality). To see it, you need to click on the appropriate link. The advantage of this design method is that users can see the main information of the community, and if they want to use the menu, they only need to make one click. However, there is a small disadvantage here - not all users know about the existence of this function, so your menu may receive less attention than if it were pinned at the top of the page.

Autoplay video

At the end of November 2015, an interesting innovation appeared on the VKontakte social network - as soon as a user visits your page, the video attached to the header begins to play automatically. With this technique, you can attract even more attention from users (especially those who visited your page for the first time), and at the same time, do not irritate those who do not like having their content imposed on them, because the video plays without sound and practically does not interfere .

How to add such a video to the header of your page?

To do this, three conditions must be met:

Attach a video to a post and pin this post to the top of the community.
Apart from the video, nothing else should be attached to the recording. Only video and text optional.
The video must be uploaded to VKontakte - third-party players are not supported.

A post that gets a lot of shares

Another way to productively use space in the header of your page is to pin one of your most successful posts in it - one that has already received and continues to receive a large number of likes and shares. Why do this, I think everyone understands - the more reposts, the greater the reach, the more subscriptions the page receives.

Announcements of new videos, albums, events

Presentation of new products/services

Discounts and promotions

Cases, customer reviews

Application advertising

Practical jokes

Community Rules

Links to other social networks

I have not listed all the header design options. Basically, you can put any kind of information on your cover page and pinned post: job openings, announcements, links to top-selling products, etc. So don't limit yourself to the examples above. Use your imagination and use the design of your community to achieve your goals.

What should an avatar be like?

Avatar is not only beautiful image with your company logo, but a marketer’s working tool with which he achieves his goals. Let's look in detail at what it should be like in order to attract the attention of users and encourage them to perform the target action. Let's start with the miniature.

Avatar thumbnail

The text on your avatar thumbnail should be large enough to be read.

The text should not extend beyond the thumbnail.

Users should understand what is shown on the avatar.

If possible, it is better not to use stock images, as they often reduce the credibility of the company.

It is undesirable for the avatar thumbnail to be too faded and boring, otherwise it will be lost against the background of a more bright avatars competitors.

If you want your avatar to look modern, make it in a minimalist style: less text, shadows, gradients and elements that do not carry any semantic load. Your avatar should be as simple and neat as possible. This style is currently trending.

If your goal is to attract the attention of users and stand out from other avatars in the feed, you will have to use your imagination. Think about what you yourself pay attention to when you look for interesting communities? For example, I have been attracted more than once by avatars with a burning light, which usually indicates that a new message has arrived. This is very old trick, but for some reason it still affects me - when I see such a light, I will definitely keep my gaze on it.

I'm not saying that this technique will work on your page. The point I want to make is that there are many, many ways to stand out, you just have to ask yourself and be a little creative. For example, here's another one interesting idea, which I would hardly have thought of myself:

The avatar is a black circle: large and small. It would seem, why do this at all? But when you scroll through the list of communities, such avatars attract attention because they are very different from all the others.

What information can be placed on an avatar thumbnail?

Despite the fact that the avatar thumbnail has a very small size, it can (and should) be used to attract subscribers to your community. How to do it? Let's look at a few options:

Announcement of a new product/service/event

Advantages of the company/service/page

Company phone number

Favorable prices

Free shipping

By the way, very often information about what a company provides free shipping, are added to the group name itself so that users definitely pay attention to it.

Stock

Competitions

Vacancies

What should the avatar itself be like?

I looked at what the avatar thumbnail should be and what text could be placed on it. Now let's move on to the avatar itself. Full version The avatar will only be displayed in the community in which the cover is not installed. It is for such cases that I wrote this section. So, what should your community’s avatar be like so that users immediately understand that your company approached the creation of the page responsibly and professionally.

The avatar must be of high quality. I wrote about how to achieve this a little higher. For those who missed this part, I’ll tell you briefly - the size of the avatar should be 2-3 times Furthermore what you have planned.
It is desirable that the avatar be combined with the menu: it is the same color range, had the same fonts, elements, etc. This will make your page header look cleaner and more professional. Example:
The avatar itself and the avatar thumbnail may be different. For example, you can draw a circle on your avatar, design it the way you like, select that area as a thumbnail, and design the rest of the avatar in a different style.

Another option is to divide the avatar into two parts. One is for the miniature, and the second is for the rest of the avatar.

In order to encourage users to subscribe to your page or write a message to a company representative, you can place a corresponding call to action at the very bottom of the avatar and accompany it with an arrow pointing to the button.

Try not to put too much information on your avatar, otherwise it will look overloaded and untidy. Add only the most important points to it and be sure to make sure that there is “air” between them.

What information can be placed on an avatar?

Basically, you can put anything you want on your avatar. Unlike the miniature, there really is room to roam around here. The main thing is don't abuse it :)

Site domain

Phone/address/opening hours

Competitions/promotions

Most purchased products/new items

information about delivery

Mobile app advertising

The main advantages of the company/page/product, etc.

Assortment update/new creativity, etc.

Information that your community is official

Information about upcoming events

Addresses of accounts in other social networks

Extended page description

Brags

In general, you can place absolutely any information on your avatar. I've just included a few ideas so you can see what others are doing and get inspired. Well, keep the basic recommendations in mind: the avatar should be of high quality, the font should be large, and there should be more “air” between the elements.

How to create a seamless avatar and menu

In order to make a merged avatar and menu, you will need a program Adobe Photoshop or its equivalent. I will explain the whole process using Photoshop as an example. So, let's go.

Download the Photoshop template that I specially prepared for this article. In normal size (menu – 510 pixels wide, avatar – 200) or enlarged (menu – 1020 pixels wide, avatar – 400).
Open the image you want to use as a base.
Copy it, paste it into the template and position it the way you would like to cut it.

Add effects, text, graphics, etc.

If you don't want to lose part of the image (in that 50px gap), move it to the right as shown in the following GIF:

Select the “Cutting” tool and click on the “Fragments along Guides” button.

Delete unnecessary fragments (right mouse click – “Delete fragment”) and edit existing ones (right mouse click – click in empty place– take the desired area and stretch it to the desired size).

Go to the "File" section and select the "Save for Web" command.

Go to the location where you saved the pictures (desktop or some specific directory) and find a folder called “Images”. This is where your images will go. Now all that remains is to fill them in on the page.

P.S. The height of the avatar can be changed at your discretion. I took maximum size– 500 pixels, but your value may be less. For example, as on the “Wiki Markup” page:

How to use widgets

Widgets are also part of the design of the VK community. Using them, the user can: place an order, subscribe to your newsletter, take part in a competition, read and leave reviews, open a search in the community, receive a gift, a discount coupon, etc.

Here are some examples of what widgets look like on the VKontakte page:

How to design images for posts

If you are involved in web design or have artistic taste and a sense of beauty, then it will not be difficult for you to come up with form style for your images. However, it seems to me that such people will be in the minority in this article (I, by the way, am not one of them either). Therefore, let's take a closer look at how this is done, based on examples of successful companies.

By the way, please note that almost all well-known VKontakte companies brand their images, that is, they add a small logo, the address of their page or a watermark. This increases brand awareness and protects your images from being copied. Whether it is worth doing this is up to everyone to decide for themselves. The only thing I would like to advise is: if you decide to do this, try to make sure that your logo is not too bright and does not take up too much space, otherwise all the emphasis will go on it, and the image will lose its attractiveness.

Where can I get good images?

We have it on our blog good article about this theme - " ". They are all free, but some require registration. If you don't find anything suitable for yourself, try searching by keyword+ wallpaper (or, if in English, wallpaper). Usually this request results in high quality images. But here you need to be careful and check the type of license, otherwise, if you have a serious business, you can run into trouble.

What should those who do not know how to work in Photoshop do?

If you have never worked in Photoshop (or any other graphic editors) and are not yet ready to devote time to mastering it, you can use services that already have ready-made templates pictures for different social networks:

1. Fotor.com

After that, on the left side of the screen, select the template that interests us. Please note that only those templates that do not have a diamond icon are provided for free.

We insert it into the template, select it with the left mouse button, select the Layer command (sandwich icon) and click Move to bottom. This way our picture will go in the background, and all the inscriptions will be superimposed on top of it.

After that, we change the text, font, font size, position of the inscription, etc.

Then click on the floppy disk icon, select the name, image format, quality and click on the Sign in to download button.

2. Canva.com

Another service that will help you beautifully design your image. It works on the same principle as the previous one. Register in the service (you can use your Google account+ or email).

Choose your field of activity. We skip the step where you are asked to invite friends. We get to the main menu, where we select a Facebook post if we need a rectangular photo, or an Instagram post if it’s a square one.

Select a template (if the template is marked “FREE,” it means it’s free), change the text.

If necessary, upload your image, adjust the dimensions, change the text, font and position of the inscription. After that, click the “Download” button, select the image format and save it to your computer or any other device.

How to format articles in the editor

Recently, VKontakte has made it possible to type up articles in a special editor. To create an article, you need to click on the letter “T”:

How to use wiki markup

Well, here we come to the most interesting and at the same time difficult section. Perhaps there are people among the readers who do not know what wiki markup is and are hearing this term for the first time. Therefore, especially for you, I will give the definition that “Contact” itself gives.

Wiki markup is a markup language that is used to format text on websites (usually classified as wiki projects) and makes it easier to access features HTML language. On our website wiki pages - good alternative regular posts and text navigation. If you need to create a large article with different text formatting ( bold font, underlining, headings, etc.) or add graphics to it, or simply create a colorful navigation menu for your community - a wiki is irreplaceable.

Just like Wordpress (or any other CMS) has an HTML editor with which you create articles, Contact has its own editor for creating and editing wiki pages. It looks like this:

Using this editor you can create navigation menus, as well as articles with pictures, videos and audio recordings. Below I will discuss in detail how to work in this editor, but first I ask you to bookmark two links. They will help you a lot in learning wiki markup.