Getting subscribers on VKontakte: a detailed guide for beginners and not only

Modern social networks are not just a place for communication between friends, like-minded people, and searching for interesting content. This is also a unique opportunity to ensure stable business development, attract a new audience, and maintain interest from regular customers. But such ideas can only be realized if you manage to get a large enough number of subscribers. The overall activity in your account will depend on this, and along with it the number of completed purchases, the income of your company as a whole.

All this is also relevant for the social network VKontakte. It does not matter for what purpose you create your community: to promote a personal brand, to form a community of interests, to ensure sales of goods or services - without forming an impressive subscriber base, it will be impossible for you to implement your ideas and guarantee yourself a stable profit.

As part of today's review, get acquainted in detail with how to gain subscribers in the social network VKontakte. In particular, we will consider the main classifications of the user audience, tell you how the recommendation algorithm works on this platform. Let's talk about free and paid ways to attract subscribers. We will provide a number of detailed recommendations that will allow you to design your VK group as correctly as possible. We will tell you what content best attracts subscribers in this social network and how to use gamification correctly to increase your audience. We will provide rules that will be relevant when holding VKontakte contests and a number of recommendations that will allow you to promote your community through other platforms. We will outline a number of recommendations that will allow you to retain subscribers and increase their activity.

As you can see, the volume of material is quite extensive, but this way you will be able to get the maximum useful information on working with the VKontakte social network and gain as many subscribers as you want.

Classification of VKontakte subscribers

Most subscribers of the VKontakte social network are classified according to different criteria. In particular, depending on their activity, active and passive users are distinguished. Accordingly, active — these are those who study your content with enviable regularity, respond to it with likes, comments, reposts. Also, such people themselves, of their own free will and without any incentives, take part in your activities, sign up for master classes, order goods and services. Unlike active ones, passive subscribers do not interact with your page for some reason. Along with ordinary people who have simply lost interest in your materials, bots may also be present here.

You can also distinguish groups of VKontakte subscribers depending on their interest in your page: target and non-target. We consider all those people who consciously subscribed to your page because they are interested in your products, services, content to be target. In contrast, the non-target audience is not interested in your products at all. Perhaps such people subscribed to you by mistake or simply lost interest in the channel over time.

However, the greatest interest is in the classification of subscribers depending on their behavior on the social network. These are the groups that you can influence by stimulating them to perform a target action. In particular, the following categories are distinguished here:

• Silent. This is a person who, for a number of reasons known only to him, does not unsubscribe from the page, although he does not react to the content in any way. In most cases, such subscribers make up about 50% of the standard profile. To work with such an audience, it is recommended to regularly prepare interesting, engaging content, supplement it with bright pictures.
• Random. Such a user may periodically be active, like, write comments, repost interesting materials or information about products they like. In most cases, such people have already interacted with your business, have a positive user experience, but they are in no hurry to perceive themselves as part of the community. This audience should also be attracted with useful, vibrant content.
• Special offer hunters. These are people who will only interact with your publications if they see a certain benefit for themselves, such as good discounts or bonuses. Try to launch special offers from time to time to retain such customers, arrange sweepstakes. At the same time, you can stimulate such an audience to publish content that is useful for the group: reviews, video reviews, detailed comments, involve them in surveys.
• "Snitches". Here we include those users who file complaints. The fact is that any negative reaction affects the reputation of the business. If it turns out that there are many such users among your audience, then you risk gaining an extremely negative image. In this case, it is important for you to understand how objective such complaints are. If you really have a problem and people have noticed it, then it is imperative to eliminate it. Here you can offer an exchange of goods, additional bonuses, compensation, a gift to smooth out the negativity. It's a completely different matter if these are all the machinations of competitors. In this case, it would be a good idea to contact the site's support service and point out the slander.
• Fan. This category includes all those users who are highly active in your channel, community. Those who like all posts, leave comments, reviews, are among the first to sign up for various seminars, courses, master classes and take part in any other activities. By and large, they are free advertising for your business. These are truly devoted fans of yours and it is important for you to retain them as long as possible. This can be done by providing them with additional bonuses and discounts for increased activity, expressing sincere gratitude for the actions taken. That is, it is important for you to show that you have noticed such a person and appreciate his attitude towards your brand.
• Loyal follower. Here we are already talking about the most valuable category of subscribers. These are people who have been following your page for more than one month, or even a year, while remaining loyal to your products and the company as a whole. At the same time, such people are not always able to write a bunch of positive responses and comments. But at the same time, you can be sure that they follow your content and will never switch to competitors, even if they offer similar products at a more attractive price. To retain such subscribers, it is important for you to encourage their actions, accrue bonuses, provide additional discounts and indicate how much you value their trust.

Knowing all these classifications, you can find an individual approach to each category of subscribers, ensuring their increased loyalty to the business and regular visits to your page on the VKontakte social network.

Features of the recommendation algorithms

To effectively promote your channels on the VKontakte social network, it is important to understand how recommendations work here. In this case, we are talking about a separate section of the site, where it will put the content that will correspond to user preferences. It is clear that all channels want to be here. When selecting content, VK takes into account the main parameters such as which posts a user liked, wrote comments, what content they reposted, what they saved to their favorites, and what they hid.

Based on all this, a recommendation feed will be formed for a particular user. It will be displayed when they enter the site, regardless of whether this is done through a mobile device or a personal computer, laptop. At the same time, the algorithm on the site will recommend different content options to the user:

1. Posts. You yourself influence what content will appear in your feed. If you do not like some material, you can click on the icon with the image of 3 dots, and then indicate that you are not interested in the content, or even leave a complaint about it. If you see something useful for yourself, you can save it to your bookmarks or subscribe to other posts by the same author. Thanks to this, the algorithm will understand what kind of materials you are interested in and will subsequently offer similar ones.
2. Friends. The feed with a selection of posts will also display those users that the platform recommends you add as friends. But in this case, the VKontakte algorithm pays attention to those who have common subscribers with you.
3. Groups. In this case, the platform algorithm will recommend communities to the user that could hypothetically be of interest to him. Common interests and similar subscriptions are taken into account here.
4. Interesting. To see what the platform offers you, click on the smartphone button located in the lower left corner of the screen. Here is the section “For you”, where all the recommended publications are collected.
5. Music. To see such a selection, you need to click on the “Music” button in the main menu. Here you will see a whole selection called “Collected by algorithms”. These are tracks that match your preferences according to the opinion of the algorithms. Also, new releases of the week, similar to your favorite music, may be presented here.
6. Thematic feed. To access it, you need to move to the left in the “Interesting” section. Here at the top, a new feed will appear, which will present several topics. You will be able to navigate through them and choose the most suitable and interesting options for yourself. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that here the selection is initially made by a neural network, and then the most interesting materials are formed by real people.

All these points should be taken into account by business representatives who want to attract an audience to their pages. It turns out that VKontakte algorithms attract your target audience. But here it is also very important to know in what ways you can gain subscribers. All possible options can be divided into 2 separate categories: free and paid. Now we will consider each of them.

Free ways to attract subscribers to VKontakte channels and communities

Getting subscribers and holding their attention over a long period of time is the result of constant work on your community. If you have the strength, energy and free time, then you can very well implement the upcoming work completely free of charge. Some of the solutions we will describe below provide faster results, while others require a longer wait. But they are all quite effective. So, we are talking about the following methods:

• Start promoting your page with your friends. Notify them that you are launching a VKontakte community and inviting them to become the first visitors. Repost to your personal page. If one of your friends ignores your notification, you can send them a personal invitation. You can do this by going to the right menu and clicking on the “More” button, and then selecting the “Invite friends” option from the drop-down list. But here we want to draw your attention to the fact that you can send no more than 40 such invitations per day without sanctions from the site. You cannot use this method when working with public pages.
• Invite friends from other social networks and messengers to your VKontakte community. In this case, you need to create a separate publication for different platforms, taking into account their specifics and features. Your posts here should be as motivating as possible, otherwise the audience simply will not follow you. You can also leave links to your new community on forums, thematic blogs, websites. But you should do this with the administrator's permission. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that these recommendations are relevant even for communities that have no subscribers at all.
• Create content that will be interesting to the audience and will correspond to the topic of the community. This is exactly what will attract people, hold their attention, and make them return to your channel again and again. It is optimal to develop a content plan for the next month in advance, and then follow it and post regularly. The materials themselves should be diverse. So, along with regular posts, you can publish clips and other videos, stories. This way, you can increase the level of user engagement and get more targeted actions from them, including reposts that can attract new people. But it is important not to forget about the uniqueness of the content. If the same materials are published on different channels, people will definitely not appreciate it: they will not follow such communities. That is, it is important for you to offer the audience exactly what they might be interested in, what will be useful for them.
• Optimize your community. It is important to understand that VKontakte channels are included in search results, just like regular sites. This means that it is important for you to adhere to the key principles of SEO when forming them. In particular, it is necessary to add key queries to the content, make short descriptions, prepare meaningful and informative material, present it in a structured and consistent manner.
• Use mutual PR. Surely you have already heard of such a concept as affiliate marketing. Mutual PR is something similar. Here, both participants benefit. That is, you advertise your partner's channel in your community, and he advertises yours. Posts that unobtrusively call for such an action will be highly effective. In addition, they should fit into the content of your page and not stand out too much from the general background. Alternatively, this could be just a publication with a story about your business, its key advantages, distinctive features, indicating why the audience should subscribe to you. Here, it is advisable to choose partners not in the same topic, but in a related one, thanks to which the exchange of audiences will go as smoothly and without conflicts as possible.
• Collect user responses. Collect and post all the reviews that your customers, visitors, subscribers leave on your pages. Based on them, you can even prepare full-fledged posts, showing that you can be trusted, that you are open to interaction. But it is important that these are real reviews from your clients. The modern audience has already learned to distinguish ordered responses that do not contain useful information. Their presence will not only not give the desired effect, but on the contrary, will convict you of an attempt to deceive, which will negatively affect your reputation.
• Periodically hold sweepstakes and other interactive activities. This will be especially useful for businesses focused on a wide audience. For more information on how to launch an interactive activity with subscribers, what options can be used here to interest the audience, read here.

All free methods are aimed at the fact that you will take an active part in the life of your community, maintain communication with subscribers, put a lot of effort and time into creating truly useful and exciting content. If you are not ready for this, then you will need to use paid methods to attract subscribers. More on this below.

Paid methods for attracting subscribers to VKontakte channels and communities

To enhance the effect of free methods for attracting subscribers, speed up this process, use paid methods. In this case, you will have the following tools at your disposal:

• Advertising account of the social network. VKontakte offers a lot of built-in opportunities for promoting the community, attracting new people to it. To use them, you need to go to the tab “Engagement on VKontakte” and select one of the most suitable types of campaigns for yourself: “Joining the community”, “Message to the community”, “Promotion of goods/services in the community”. So, “Joining the community” is used if you want to gain real subscribers. Here it is worth using the available advertising format “Post with a button” and then follow the recommendations provided. “Message to the community” will help you not only attract the target audience, but also receive messages from it. This is what will help establish more friendly, trusting relationships with subscribers. Here you can use both a universal post and a post with a button, the carousel format. For “Promotion of goods or services in the community” you should use a carousel, a universal post or a post with a button.
• VK Advertising. This is a new advertising account of the platform, allowing you to set a goal. Here you should go to the “Community and profile” tab and make the appropriate settings. Next, in the company settings, you should select the “Target action” option, and then the “Subscription to community” tool. After that, the VKontakte algorithm will independently attract subscribers to your community.
• Subscriber exchanges. These are specialized services through which you can boost your accounts. Today, this is one of the fastest ways, but at the same time, it is not safe. VKontakte, as well as any other social network, is extremely negative about such actions. If something like this is detected, your account may be blocked. In addition, boosting subscribers is not at all advisable, since you are attracting a non-target audience, that is, people who are not at all interested in your content, products, services. That is, the community counter will show a good figure, but it will not bring any benefit to your company.
• Cooperation with bloggers. You can contact opinion leaders with a request to advertise your community or individual products or services. All this can be implemented in a native form or in the form of classic advertising, which will be focused on the subscribers of this blogger. Here it is important to choose the right influencer. It is important that he works in the same niche as you or in a related one, that is, that your advertising is aimed specifically at the target audience. You should also pay attention to the number of his subscribers, the number of regularly left comments, likes. This way you can understand whether he works with the help of “white” methods or uses cheating.

Now we will give a number of recommendations that will allow you to create such a VKontakte community, when connecting to which users see you as a professional in your field and will want to subscribe without additional persuasion and promises.

We design a VKontakte group correctly: basic rules

All the rules that we gave above are aimed at attracting users. But whether they will subscribe to your VKontakte channel directly depends on the thoughtfulness of the page design, the literacy of navigation. To get good results in the end, we recommend using the following recommendations:

1. Come up with an interesting name for your community. This is what your potential subscribers will see first. Therefore, it is important to make them memorable, understandable, such that they are associated with your business. But here it is important to take into account that the maximum length of the name is 48 characters. Here you must include key phrases that reflect the essence of the page. If we are talking about a local business, then we must indicate the city, region. At the same time, it is better to avoid superlatives, such as "the best", "the cheapest", because the site may perceive such a decision as clickbait, which will lead to the pessimization of the page.
2. We choose a suitable avatar. If we are talking about a company community, then it is quite reasonable to place its logo here. If there is none, come up with a picture that would reflect the essence of the business. The simplest, but at the same time working option is to write the company name beautifully. Choose a plain background and contrasting shades so that users can easily read the name. It is also important to pay attention to the size of the picture. At least it should be 200 x 200 pixels, but to maintain good quality, it is recommended to use an image of 400 x 400 pixels.
3. We think over the design of the cover. This is the image that will be at the top of the page. It also attracts the attention of visitors. You can make a static, dynamic, interactive cover. Static ones will be displayed both on desktop and mobile versions. That is, it will be a regular rectangular image placed at the top of your page. Dynamic covers will be displayed exclusively in mobile applications. The information placed here will be updated at a certain interval. Most often, it is used to demonstrate promotional products, weather forecasts, exchange rates, etc. An interactive cover assumes the ability to change several images or launch a short video. They will also be displayed only in mobile applications. But you need to understand that they will take up more space on smartphone screens compared to static images.
4. We correctly design the main blocks on the page. In most cases, there will be only 2 such blocks: a description and a section with basic information. In the description, you need to indicate what the page is about, talk about your business, highlight its key advantages for the audience. Semantics are necessarily included here. The main information should be included in the first 100 characters for the desktop version and in 144 characters for the mobile version. But the maximum length of the entire block can reach 4000 characters. If you manage to interest a person in the first words, he will reveal the information and study it in more detail. The text itself, due to its large volume, must be structured, made more visual and easier to perceive. The main information can be highlighted in bold, highlighted in some color. The information block contains information about interaction with the business. Often, contact information, work schedule, a link to the official online representative office, etc. are indicated here.
5. Menu. This is already direct navigation through your community, allowing users to quickly find the information they need. The VKontakte menu is icons with names that are placed right under the channel header. It is important to think through everything to the smallest detail here so that users can get to the page they need with literally a couple of clicks.
6. CTA button. This is a tool for the user to perform target actions. With its help, visitors will be able to subscribe to your community, send a message to your managers and even place an order for a product or service. Most of the time, there is only one such button, so think about which target action will be a higher priority for you.

It is optimal to make the entire design in a single style that would intersect with the design of your official website. This way, you will be able to form associations with your subscribers already at the visual level, which will help increase brand awareness.

Content that will attract subscribers the most

Today, VKontakte offers many opportunities for creating interesting, engaging content. To minimize time costs, experiments and immediately launch materials that will be well received by the audience, bet on the following formats:

1. Videos. They can be launched in posts, stories, broadcasts, clips, covers. With their help, you can interestingly demonstrate your product, show its functionality, quality, dimensions, design. Videos with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a resolution from 1280x720 to 4K pixels are allowed for publication. Engaging videos very often end up in the platform's recommendations, so you should definitely launch them from time to time.
2. Memes. An option for those who rely on viral content. It is difficult to understand what kind of meme will appeal to the audience. Therefore, before creating them, it is important to have a formed portrait of the target audience. When searching for original ideas, pay attention to the publications of your competitors, current trends of our time. The meme should be based on a high-quality picture, because then your post will definitely be noticed. It should be supplemented with a bright inscription, for example, a famous phrase of actors, scientists, media personalities, politicians, or quotes from books, films.
3. Carousel. An excellent option to enhance your publication and get maximum feedback from users. The carousel is a kind of small showcase, consisting of several photos and accompanying text. Thanks to the carousel, you can immediately demonstrate several of your products to the audience. It is important to come up with an interesting title that will make people scroll through your selection to the end. In the description, you can make an unexpected turn, a surprise. Considering that all the photos will be loaded sequentially, ahead of time, this "trick" of yours no one will notice.
4. Polls. VKontakte allows you to launch both public and anonymous polls, warming up the interest of your visitors to new publications, an interesting offer. Alternatively, you can initially conduct a survey, and then arrange a drawing with valuable gifts among those who take part in them. Practice shows that it is such materials among all the content that attract the most subscribers. And here everything is trivially simple: people love surprises, gifts.

To get the maximum effect in practice, it is recommended to combine all these publication options. So your feed will look varied, interesting, which subscribers will definitely appreciate.

Using gamification to attract subscribers

The modern audience of social networks loves various interactive activities. And VKontakte users are no exception here. Moreover, they will be encouraged to subscribe by the opportunity to receive some kind of surprise, a bonus. Here are a few options you can run in your community:

• Quest. Give your audience a simple task in several stages, for completing which they will be awarded points. The one with the most points in the end wins.
• Repost contest. Set your audience a task to make several reposts and like your publications over a certain period of time. The winner will be determined randomly.
• Purchase contest. To take part in such a challenge, a person will need to make a purchase of a product or service from you. The winner will also be determined randomly.
• A contest with counting mentions of a certain product or brand name. Create a short video that you will need to run in fast-forward mode and ask the audience to count how many times you mentioned the name of this product or your company in it. The winner among those who indicate the exact number will be determined randomly.
• A quest with a search for gifts. This is a kind of semblance of the game "Sea Battle". On the playing field, you will need to hide gifts, and users will open cells in an attempt to find them.
• Challenge "Word of mouth". Here, one subscriber writes a comment, the second - gives an answer to it, the third - comments on the second, and so on. At some point in time, you will need to write a comment from yourself, and the person who answers it automatically wins the game.
• Contest with blurry photos. You post a photo of a certain product of yours, but in very poor quality. The winner here is the one who is the first to guess what is in this picture.

These are just a few ideas, you can expand them, transform them. The main thing is that the conditions are simple enough and require a minimum of time and effort from users to implement. Also, the rules and conditions of the draw themselves should be clear, such that they would not cause additional questions from people and the feeling that you are trying to deceive them. If you promise a good prize, be sure to provide it. All contests must be launched directly on your pages, that is, within the community. Let us repeat - be honest, because otherwise the audience will not interact with you next time. Be sure to post photos with the winners and the gifts they received in your feed or stories.

Attracting an audience to your community from other platforms

Along with launching advertising, you can attract an audience to your VKontakte community from other platforms. As an option, this can be:

1. Telegram. If you have your own channel in this messenger, you can leave a link to your channel in it. Here you can set up different triggers depending on certain user actions, as a result of which the platform itself will send messages to visitors, respond to their requests, forward photos, audio files. Such settings are performed through specialized integration services.
2. Official website of the business. Directly in the header or footer of the site, online store, you can add an active button, clicking on which will automatically redirect users to your VKontakte community. This can also be done through the "Contacts" section.
3. Video hosting. Here you can also place a link to your profile. You can also mention the community in your videos with enviable regularity. The main thing is to do this not openly, but natively, which will generate additional interest among subscribers and will contribute to new transitions.
4. Instagram, Facebook. If you already have a large audience in these social networks, then you can well attract it to your VKontakte community. In this case, you need to place information with an active link in pinned posts, in the profile header. That is, you need to make a new publication with a story about the fact that you have such a representative office. People who are interested in your publications in principle will definitely want to go and see what you offer them on VKontakte.
5. E-mail newsletter. Despite the fact that the relevance of such a marketing tool has recently decreased somewhat, you can use it to inform the audience about your new representative office. Moreover, here you can immediately offer the audience a bonus for subscribing, which will significantly increase the chance of success.

TOP rules for retaining the attention of the audience

The fact that you managed to attract new people to your VKontakte community and make them subscribe to the channel is only half the battle. It is also very important to ensure that this audience does not become inactive users. To achieve this goal, you need to do the following:

• Publish interesting content with enviable regularity. Your page should be lively: the audience should constantly receive interesting materials.
• Combine different content formats to avoid monotony in your publications.
• Take an active part in the life of the community, respond to comments from your subscribers, process negative reviews in an attempt to minimize their negative impact on your business.
• From time to time, launch interactive content, be it quizzes, polls, giveaways, tests.
• Constantly monitor current trends of our time and offer such topics for discussion to your audience. This is what will allow you to find out their interests, preferences, and attract new subscriptions.

In any case, you will have to actively work with your community and audience, because this is the only way to maintain interest over a long period of time, providing excellent results in practice.

Let's summarize

VKontakte is a social network that is in high demand among the audience, attracting new subscribers. And it is in your interests to actively work on your communities here in order to attract people's attention to your products and services. But, unfortunately, there is no one universal method for work here. You will have to experiment, find different points of contact with your audience, and monitor current trends.

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