The difference between a page and a VKontakte group. Pro internet marketing tools: content, context, SEO

The question of the advantages of a group or public is not so important, especially if you use your VKontakte page for entertainment purposes, but still in some cases (for example, if you use it for business) it is necessary to know this.

• Key advantages of groups over VK publics
• The main advantages of publics over groups

If you decide to start promoting a community, then the question will arise how to formalize it: as a group or public? And this plays an important role. Therefore, it is worth considering the main differences and how they affect the promotion of the community.

Key advantages of groups over VK publics

Design and additional sections in groups

The design of a public page and a group has certain differences. In a group, for example, sections such as discussions, audio recordings, photo albums, etc. are at the top of the feed.

What does this give? If you sell something through the VKontakte community, then this is convenient, since photographs of products, as well as discussions of issues related to them, immediately catch the eye.

Groups are better for sales

In addition, a recent feature that appeared in groups, namely the “products” section, makes groups more attractive for sales. There is no “products” section in the public page. In addition, photo albums, discussions and other sections are not in the most visible place there. They are located on the right under the main avatar of the community, so to see all the most interesting things, a person needs to scroll through the page.

In VKontakte groups it is possible for the audience to participate in filling the group with content

If your promotion is related to the participation of an audience located in the community, then a public page is not suitable for you. The public does not allow community subscribers to post posts or any other content. This feature is not available by default.

VKontakte groups can be closed or private

The group has privacy settings. Therefore, there you can either disable the ability of subscribers to participate in posting materials, or vice versa - grant this right.

In addition, the group can be closed, i.e. a person cannot freely enter here - he can only place an application to join the community and wait for its approval. It is also possible to make the group private, where only administrators can decide who to invite to the community. Such opportunities do not exist in the public domain.

To promote the group, you can use invitation mailings

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For community promotion On VKontakte, it is important to know that group administrators can send out invitations to join their group.

This important function, which many use for promotion, using fake pages for promotion. There is no such function in the public. However, both types of communities have a “tell friends” function. Using this function, you can advertise a group or public to your friends or subscribers through a post on your wall.

This can bring good results - and at the same time can irritate those already in the community. Even if you decide to use this opportunity, it should not be abused.

The main advantages of publics over groups

Shown in the section - Interesting pages

One thing that can be said in favor of the public page is that it is located in the “interesting pages” section, which is located on the wall of any VKontakte user on the left side of the screen, directly under the “online friends” section.

Thus, the public can be advertised on the pages of its subscribers. Groups are not located in this section. Moreover, often in the privacy settings, VKontakte users block the ability of others to see which groups they belong to.

These are the main differences that greatly affect the progress of community promotion. This is not to say that one of the two communities is worse, it’s just that each of them has its own goals.

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Public page more suitable for those who create a community for some common idea, as well as plan make money from advertising And affiliate programs . The content here often consists of banal entries: photographs of cats or all sorts of wise sayings.

The group is more suitable for commercial promotion or advertising of some services, as well as organizing a community around an idea. A VKontakte group can easily be adapted to an online store.

It’s easier to promote a public page

How to easily create a public page on VKontakte

As for promotion, it’s easier to promote a public page. For some reason, people are more willing to subscribe to public pages. It is possible to change the community type from public to group or vice versa, but not in all cases. Therefore, it is best to immediately choose which community is most suitable for your promotion goals.

Today, companies that want to be successful are increasingly turning their attention to Internet consumer audience. This is not surprising, because the Internet has long become one of the most widespread channels for disseminating information, and therefore it is ideally suited for solving many commercial problems. In particular, various methods of advertising on the Internet are currently very popular, among which one of the first places is rightfully occupied by promotion on social networks.

Particularly in demand for companies from Russian-speaking countries is promotion in social network VKontakte, because this network is the most popular in RuNet. Fulfill promotion on VKontakte network You can use groups, as well as public pages. And lately, companies often find themselves faced with a choice: what is better to promote, their group or a public VKontakte page? There are arguments in favor of each option.

Initially the group and public page on VKontakte have completely different goals. For example, the purpose of creating a public VKontakte page is to disseminate information about the brand and news from the company’s activities, while the VKontakte group is better suited for conducting discussions and exchanging opinions.

A public VKontakte page can be created as for a small company, for example, a cafe, cinema, museum, shopping center or a store, as well as for an organization, a famous person or, for example, a specific product. The VKontakte group, in turn, is created to unite people into clubs based on their interests.

The set of functions available for administration in groups and in public pages is quite similar. So, you can optionally include in the functionality of both the group and the public VKontakte page events, discussions, photo albums, videos, audio recordings. Also in groups and public pages a block of links can be included: this block usually includes community-related resources, such as the main company website or thematic groups and VKontakte pages.

On the public page there is ability to display contact information official representative of the company, and only its managers are indicated in the group. In turn, each participant can invite their friends to the group. This option is not provided for public pages: a subscriber can only “tell friends” about the page by publishing a link to the page in his feed.

Thus, when deciding whether to choose a group or a public page for promoting VKontakte, you should first decide on the goals of such promotion: if you just need to share interesting short facts and news with your target audience and at the same time the brand under which the company acts , is quite famous, then you need to opt for a public page. If you need to create a thematic community in which participants can exchange their opinions about the company and its products, then it is better to prefer a group.

Promotion on the VKontakte network, as well as in other popular social networks today is one of the main methods of increasing the company’s popularity among Internet users and increasing the popularity of the site. By ordering promotion of its website on social networks, a company often receives a high “return”, which is expressed not only in an increase in site traffic, but also in an increase in the profit that this site generates.

Before every user thinks about what to choose: a public page (public) or a group. What is most suitable for the chosen topic?

In fact, this issue is very important and we need to approach it very seriously. The future fate of the community depends on this.

In this article we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of each type of community. You will also find out which topics the group is applicable to, and which the public page is applicable to.

Public page(public) - an official platform for an organization (company), brand, personality or specific topic. The direction of the public page is to promote the brand or personality itself.

Advantages and disadvantages of a public page (public):

• All materials are open to access - any user can view them;
• Only admins of a public page can publish posts on the wall, but users can either leave a comment on the post if they are open;
• The " ", "Photos" and "Audio" blocks are located on the right side of the public page;
• On a public page you can ;
• There is no section on the public page "Latest news", but it is possible;
• It cannot be stored on a public page, since there is no corresponding section;
• There is no function in the public page "Invite friends";
• Each subscriber has a block on the page under the "Friends" section "Interesting pages", where the logo of the public page is indicated, which attracts the attention of other users;

Group- a community where users can exchange information with each other. The direction of the group is to unite people with similar interests. The group is popular due to its privacy (): you can unite your friends, fellow students, and classmates into a group. Although you can do no less than in public.

Advantages and disadvantages of the group:

• A group can be open (anyone can view news), closed (to view entries, an application to join is submitted) and private (applications to join are sent by admins);
• If open, then users can publish their entries. The wall can also be limited (you can leave comments on a post) or closed (you can only view posts);
• The “Discussion”, “Photos” and “Audio” blocks are located at the top of the group (under the news);
• You cannot create events in a group;
• In the group you can publish the latest news in the appropriate section;
• The group has a section "Documents", where you can store files of various formats;
• You can join the group through a special function (any subscriber can invite his friends, which greatly influences promotion);
• Each subscriber has a list of groups on their page under their personal information, but this does not really attract the attention of other users (compared to a public page);

Impact on promotion

As already mentioned, public pages lack the function "invite friends", in this regard, the group wins. But on the day you can invite up to 40 people, so for a competent approach to this function you need to have many friends.

List of groups can be found under the personal information of subscribers, but no one pays attention to them and the user can at any time :

As for activity, there is still less of it in the group, since the public page is directly aimed at promotion and mutual PR. Although, with the right approach, you can not give in to public.

There is a psychological point: users join public pages more willingly than groups, especially for entertainment topics. The era of groups is passing and many consider it fashionable and relevant to join public groups.

In any case, it all depends on the community leaders. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a group or a public page, if you don’t take any action to promote it, nothing will happen.

Before creating a VKontakte community, you probably thought more than once about what to choose: a group or a public page. How important are the differences between them and what are their advantages?

Some, in pursuit of fashion, create public pages en masse without fully understanding the differences between them and the group, while others, on the contrary, are more conservative and prefer to work with groups that are more familiar to them, since they have already studied their functionality quite well. But don’t rush to choose the type of community based on the ease of registration and inviting friends. In fact, the choice should depend on the topic and goals of your future community: be it an online store or a humor page.
It is important not only to understand the technical differences between a group and a public page, but also the very reason for the existence of these two types of community.
Public page- is an official platform for a brand, organization, individual or specific topic. First of all, it is intended to promote this very brand or personality. Information on a public page is official in nature, compared to information presented in groups. In essence, a public page can be compared to an online magazine in which users can learn for themselves useful information. The main difference between a public page and a group is that a public page does not have obvious commercial goals of making money from its users. Of course, there is a commercial interest, but no one talks about it openly.

Group is a community where people can communicate with each other, exchange ideas and suggestions. This type of community is the most studied, since it appeared from the very beginning of the existence of Contact and their functionality developed along with the development of the social network. And, therefore, when creating a new community, many, without hesitation, choose the old-fashioned group, afraid of the lack of a function for inviting friends on a public page. But let's not rush.

Let's take a closer look:
Creating a public page and group
When creating a group or public page, we see fundamental differences in presets.
Public page. While creating official page we are offered 4 different types, which are slightly different from each other. When you click Create Page, we will go to the settings window for the created community.

Group. When creating a group, a window with the settings of this group immediately appears, that is, it turns out that we created it in one click.

Access to the information

Public page Any Contact user, as well as an ordinary Internet user who does not have an account on their social network, can freely view all materials on the public page. Public pages are not aimed at hiding information from readers, but, on the contrary, do everything possible to attract subscribers.

Group. Open group, in principle, is no different from the public in terms of access to information. It is also indexed search queries and is visible to an unregistered user. If the group is closed, then only members of this community can access the information. The user submits an application to join the group, which will be approved or not at the discretion of the moderators.

Community Wall

Group. As I already said, the group is more user friendly and it allows users to write messages on the wall themselves. This option is customizable; if desired, the group wall can be made open (everyone can write), limited (they can only leave a comment) or closed (they can only view the wall).

Promotion
Public page You probably already noticed that the public page does not have an “invite friends” function.
There is an option to tell friends. This is actually a very effective and efficient method of promotion compared to pushy invitations from friends. People subscribe to your community voluntarily because they are interested in the information posted on your public page. And if they particularly liked your post, they will definitely share it with their friends. The most important thing is to attract the user with quality content.
Another common method of promoting a page is advertising post in other popular communities. Method requires investment Money, or mutual exchange of posts (by agreement)
With a well-developed company, you can use paid placement, but before you pay money to the first community you come across, study a little about the “VKontakte market” and the principles of money circulation within this social network. I recommend watching Alena Lenskaya’s video seminars. They can be found for free on YouTube.
Another paid method is to place an advertisement on VKontakte. Targeted advertising will help your target audience find your page and tell their friends about it.
On user pages, the public page is placed more advantageously, in terms of location, it is located in the menu on the left “Interesting pages”, this is one big plus for promotion.

Group. Promotion of a group seems easier at first glance. But is this really so? In order to see the list of groups, on the users page you need to click on “Show detailed information”, scrolling through the wall to the “Groups” list and this is a big minus, since users can hide the settings of the “List of Groups”, then the groups will not be displayed on the page.
But from the group you can send invitations to friends; if you have enough friends, it will be easy to recruit the first 100-200 participants. Remember that you can invite no more than 40 people to the group per day.
If you plan to invite more people using this option, then before that you need to add new friends to your personal page.

Decor
The differences between a public page and a group are easily visible to the naked eye in their design. Let's look at what visual opportunities these two types of communities provide us. For convenience, I took a screenshot of an empty public and a group so that we can easily see their differences. Please note that before this I activated all elements of the group and public page in the settings.

What are the differences?

Latest news section
This is where one of the main differences between a group and a public page lies, since the public page does not have this element. Many consider this a great advantage, since a group menu is created in the “Latest News” section. But I don’t think at all that the presence of a menu in the info block will be decisive when choosing the type of community, especially since it is hidden by default, in order to see the menu in the “Latest News” section you will have to open it every time.
It is possible to create a pinned post with a link to the internal menu - it is the same for both the group and the public page.
I’ll reveal a secret in a public page, but it’s still possible to create a wiki page in a roundabout way, details here.

Events, places
Only the public page has these elements, but if you're smart, you can also add them to the group - by creating an event and a photo with the location and adding them to the group's link block. Although, without a doubt, in terms of the presence of this functionality, the public page outperforms the group.

Documentation
And only the group has this element. Here you can store files in doc, ppt, rtf, jpg, etc. formats. But here, too, you can get tricky by creating a document on a wiki page and adding a link to it and a block of links from public pages.

Displaying the community on the user's personal page
Public page Subscription to public pages is displayed on home page user account in the Interesting Pages section, which is very effective in terms of promoting this type of community (this section cannot be hidden).

Group. All user groups are displayed almost at the very bottom of the block detailed information, which is automatically hidden, and to see it you need to click on it. You can also add a group to bookmarks, but getting to the bookmarks is not so easy. In addition, the user can hide the list of groups using privacy settings.
Users' ability to post their information

Removing users

Public pageHere you can only blacklist the user. You will not be able to restrict your community from viewing information; you will only restrict the ability to add comments.

Group.In a group, a user can be either blacklisted or deleted. Moreover, if this closed group, then your information will no longer be available to the remote user.

Selecting the author of a post on the community wall
Let's consider this possibility as an author's choice when creating a message on a community wall. Please note that this option is only available if you are a moderator.
Public page When posting a message on the wall, the post is always published on behalf of the community, i.e. There will always be a community avatar next to her. But you can mark your authorship by checking the Signature checkbox when creating a message.

Group. When publishing a post on a group wall, the user can choose from which person it is published. this entry. If you check the box On behalf of the group, then the group avatar will appear next to it, and if you check the Signature box, then your name will appear under the published message, in the form of a link to your personal page. If you don’t check any boxes at all, then your personal avatar will appear next to the entry.

Let's summarize:
A public page is a more news-oriented community that aims to provide information to users, and with the help of the group, effectively create an online store or promote a product or service.

Some time ago, a new type of community appeared on VK - a public page. What is the difference between a group and a public page? Let's find out.

A group is an official platform, a community where people communicate with each other. This is the oldest type of community that VKontakte has.

A public page or public is an official platform for a person, brand, organization, company, etc. Accordingly, information is presented here about the company itself or the person to whom the public is dedicated.

What are the differences?

A public page is called such for a reason - it is truly public and cannot be hidden from others. So, if you can make a group private, say, for your friends, then this trick will not work with a public one. Moreover, a public page cannot be hidden in the list of communities on a user’s page, which is what many people do - this way more users are attracted. What do you say to the fact that it is impossible to hide a public page even from users who are not registered in VK?

Another important difference is that all posts on the public wall can only be published by administrators. Users in groups can do this if the administrator grants such rights. At the same time, users can comment on posts in the public, as well as offer their news by clicking on the button of the same name. Comments can be left both there and there, and they can be disabled.

Groups have the ability to customize menus, which is a big advantage for some administrators.

It is believed that there is more activity in publics than in groups, since this is due to the fact that publics are focused on promoting the group. This is partly true, but not in all cases.

What to choose?

If you decide to create a community and don't know what to choose, just familiarize yourself with the main differences between communities. It is worth noting that administrators are increasingly choosing public pages.