It seems that your business is already represented on all possible social networks: VKontakte, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and even Twitter! But what about Odnoklassniki? Unfortunately, this social network is undeservedly forgotten as a good tool for promoting products and services on the internet, and that's a big mistake!
Let's debunk all myths and learn how to promote your group on Odnoklassniki with material from Postmypost! Let's go!
Why Odnoklassniki is Undeservedly Unpopular among SMM Specialists
Despite the fact that Odnoklassniki is in the top 10 social networks in the AppStore and its active audience consists of more than 330 million users worldwide, SMM specialists still view this network with some apprehension, if not negatively. What’s the deal? Let's try to figure it out.
1. Money Extraction
What we are used to getting for free on VKontakte and Facebook can only be bought on Odnoklassniki. For example, if you want to send emoticons, you will have access to a set of only 50 images in the free format. Want to use others? Pay, and you will be provided with the full set of all social network emoticons, but only for 45 days. By the way, you will also have to pay for the privacy of your profile.
Every photo is strictly moderated during uploading, and sometimes images are removed for rather strange reasons. For instance, the site may not approve a photo if it decides it is not you, or features cartoon characters, or links to third-party sites.
3. Rating System
The five-point rating system for publications brings up memories of school years (ironically, agree?). And you might ignore it, if not for the fact that the social network creates a rating of publications, photos, and personal pages based on these ratings, and any score below "four" can provoke conflicts and scandals among users.
4. Design
The design is truly the Achilles' heel of Odnoklassniki. Many find it too kitschy, overloaded with color, and unreasonably bright. And what about the widely spread “eye-wrenching” color scheme for banners!
5. Association with Older People
Odnoklassniki is inextricably associated with something unyouthful, Soviet, old, overly simple, and even limited. It's the social network of our parents, grandparents, who aren't too gadget-savvy, and so youth—the key audience of all social networks—seem to have no business on OK. Pickled and salad recipes, political disputes, specific low-grade humor—generally that's why SMM specialists aren't particularly fond of Odnoklassniki.
As we said, there is a persistent myth that Odnoklassniki is a social network for old people, who ask their grandchildren to upload photos of the new harvest and click “Like” on beautiful pies. However, this is absolutely not the case.
According to the social network's own reports, its core audience is made up of people aged 26-35 years—this is the same solvent, open to everything new, and not afraid to shop online youth, as on VKontakte and Facebook. The second-largest age group is 36–45 years, the third—46–55 years. Every month, Odnoklassniki receives an audience of 45 million users from Russia—surely among this number there are quite a few who are ready to take interest in and buy your products, so do not dismiss OK for promoting your business.
What does Odnoklassniki represent as a platform for business advertising?
Most of the users live in Moscow and the region, as well as in large locations. About 30% of users log into their account daily (data by VCIOM). With a prevalence of 13%, the majority of Odnoklassniki’s audience consists of women. Therefore, the local target audience profile can be built like this: a woman aged 25 to 45, who is ready to spend 1,500–5,000 rubles from her salary.
As for business niches, beauty and health topics (at a low cost for services) do well in this social network. Clothing and shoes, especially from natural materials, can also do well. One of the hottest topics is games and gifts, both ordinary and virtual.
Additionally, Odnoklassniki visitors are actively interested in education, children's goods, household appliances, car parts, series, and films. If your offer is related to any of these, the chances of attracting clients increase. Moreover, the social network’s audience is not spoiled by professional advertising creatives and complex funnels. You should simply find a special approach to the users: treat them kindly, with light humor, creating a “homey” atmosphere of acceptance and mutual respect in your group.
Where to Start Promotion on Odnoklassniki
So you decided to promote your business on Odnoklassniki—excellent! A group for promotion is just one of the formats of presence on the network, but probably the most common and optimal for beginners.
Creating a group is quite easy:
Theme and Keywords, Group Publicity
Theme design helps to beautify your profile and make it stand out from the rest. You can create your own themes, designing the group according to your brand colors, placing your logo on them.
Keywords are very important for promoting a group on Odnoklassniki, as they can influence the search position and constant influx of visitors, so create them with special attention.
To compile a list of keywords, click on the "More" button on the group’s main page and go to the "Settings" section:
Group publicity is an important factor: it greatly determines how successful its further promotion will be. What publicity factors does Odnoklassniki offer to choose from?
- Creating topics by community members
- Creating photo albums by community members
- Uploading video files by community members
- Commenting for community guests
- Hiding group administration
- Hiding the video files section
- Indicating post authorship
- Indicating what actions within the group can be displayed in the feed
Gathering Subscribers in an Odnoklassniki Group
To gather people into your community, you can invite your friends.
Go to the members’ section and use the "Invite Friends" button.
Additionally, you can get subscribers and future clients from other, already promoted communities of your niche. It’s simple: visit a community similar to yours, find the most active members, and send them a friend request. Once your circle of friends noticeably grows with such "activists," offer them to join your group with just one click.
Become friends with communities in your profile, arrange mutual PR, repost each other's news and texts, and you will surely be able to attract an interested audience to your group. Naturally, you can always pay for advertising and start promoting your group through targeting.
However, remember that even the maximum efforts to attract new subscribers will equal zero if your group is dull and empty. Only genuinely engaging, original content, matching the "genre" of Odnoklassniki, can interest and retain users. Let's talk about it.
Content for Odnoklassniki: Features
To keep the audience's interest over the long term and stimulate its activity, your content should be useful. Use various guides, instructions, life hacks, publish useful tips, reviews. Announce publications to “warm up” the audience beforehand and keep them following your community.
Materials should be published regularly, preferably at the same time: according to independent agencies, the peak social network link transitions on weekdays occurs between 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM — use this data to your advantage.
As for advertising posts: they should significantly differ from your regular content. Because if you use the same formats of useful selections, tips, guides in advertising, users won't be able to react correctly to an ad and will either skip it or bookmark it, repost it, but take no further actions for lead generation.
If we talk about the tone of publications, as we have already found out, friendly content that tunes into sincere, heartfelt communication is welcomed here. Therefore, you can safely use such text formats as emotional stories about love, faithfulness, friendship, useful videos (short and interesting), everyday topics (checking kids' homework, cooking for a large family, communicating with utility services, etc.) and, of course, humor (but considering your audience's interests).
Possibilities of Content for Odnoklassniki: Polls and Reactions
Another effective option for engaging subscribers in content is creating polls and encouraging reactions on posts. In this respect, Odnoklassniki isn’t much different from VKontakte: through polls, you can obtain the necessary information "first-hand."
How to Format Publications on Odnoklassniki
Proper publication formatting is the guarantee of its further success among subscribers!
To ensure that your publication surely attracts attention, be sure to accompany the text with visual elements: images, photos, video recordings—they make people read your posts. If you announce an article published on the website, the image will auto-load (choose a bright, attention-grabbing one).
How to make a quality post in Odnoklassniki? It's simple: click the "Create New Topic" button, insert or write the text of your future publication, add an engaging photo, link, and other necessary content. After that, click the "Publish" button.
Hashtags attract attention to posts; with their help, users can find the publications they are interested in, so don’t neglect such a useful tool.
To add tags to a post, do the following: open the post, below the picture find the "Say a few words" field, enter the necessary hashtags in it, remembering the # sign. After that, click the "Add" button—now your post can be found using the specified hashtags. Alternatively, you can add them directly to the publication text.
Interesting content, polls, reactions—besides these, there are other options for increasing audience engagement and activity in your group.
For example, you can hold product giveaways among subscribers. This method warms up the current audience and attracts new people to you. Consider the contest mechanics: The simpler the conditions, the more participants there will be. Consider all controversial moments that may arise and be sure to include them in the rules. And don't forget about a worthy, genuinely attractive prize: a package of free services, a gift certificate, etc., depending on the focus of your business.
User-generated content publication is also a good way to increase engagement. People like when their work and deeds are positively evaluated. So don't hesitate to repost photos of your subscribers with your products, accompanying them with laudatory notes.
Lastly, games and flash mobs—such activities always go well with users. Offer subscribers to guess what's hidden in the picture, specify which of the five facts about your store is false, mazes, riddles, charades—all this positively influences engagement and stimulates audience interaction with your group.
Targeting Ads in Odnoklassniki: How to Set Up
To promote your community even more, you can use targeting ads. This is a good promotion tool that stimulates community joining and provides lead generation. You can target the ad audience by geographical and demographic indicators and prohibit paid displays to users who have joined the group.
How to Select the Target Audience for Targeted Ads in Odnoklassniki
Then we’ll proceed to setting up the audience of our future ads. Let's start with the basics:
- Gender. For our example (custom wood furniture), we can target both men and women, as both groups may potentially be interested in our product.
- Age. Custom-made furniture from natural wood, as a rule, is expensive, and most often used at dachas and gardens, so it makes more sense to target older people, from 35 years and above.
- Geolocation. Choose the country, area, city, or local spot on the map where your services are available.
- Behavior and social characteristics. On one hand, such segments well-target the desired audience; on the other, users don’t always specify the necessary data on their page. Therefore, targeting these attributes isn't always possible.
- Age limitations. It is important for children's and, conversely, adult products.
- Birthday. A special offer to people on their personal holiday will be taken positively.
- Group membership. For example, you can show ads only to those who aren't subscribed to your community yet, not spending money on those who already are your subscribers.
- Interests. This is a good way to target potential clients.
Try to include a good offer in the ad text (words like “free,” “discount,” “promotion” always work without fail), and select the most beautiful and bright photo to attract attention to your ad.
An important moment: setting the ad display time frame. Despite the fact that user activity peaks during daytime and evening hours, you may experiment. For instance, if you're selling products for young mothers, it makes sense to target them after 9:00 PM, when they have put the kids to bed and have time for themselves.
Secrets of Setting Up Targeted Ads in Odnoklassniki
Regarding the secrets of setting up targeting in Odnoklassniki, there are several universal life hacks that always work for increasing engagement with your ads.
Materials with high viral potential always work well and gather a very high percentage of reach and engagements. What content is this? It is simple, comprehensible, somewhat silly, replicable, evokes emotions, and people enjoy sharing it. Bet on visuals: use familiar memes, collages, images, gifs, videos.
Another guaranteed way to grab audience attention is embedding an autoplay video ad. A cool cover, bright colors—and a short yet effective offer will surely find its client.
What Promotion Methods Should Not Be Used on Odnoklassniki
As we found out at the beginning of the article, the best way to attract an audience on Odnoklassniki is through manual invitation mailing, diverse ad formats, cross-posting, and friendship with communities of similar themes. Some of these methods may seem “long-running” but they ensure a stable growth of organic traffic, and you will have live subscribers, not bots.
All other promotion methods in this social network—blogger advertising, bot farms, group purchases—will almost certainly not work.
How to Install an Odnoklassniki Group Widget on Your Website
To allow your website visitors to join your Odnoklassniki group without leaving the site, use the widget. It is very easy to set up:
As seen, promoting a group on Odnoklassniki is simple, intuitive, and largely even engaging. We wish you high virality of posts, cool content, and active subscribers!
