Public pages and Groups on VK — What’s the difference?

It’s easy to get confused when choosing between a group and a public page on Vkontakte. I know, they look pretty similar :)

However, there are a few differences to consider when choosing the right type of community for your business on VK.

Public pages

So, a public page (or fanpage, like on Facebook) is created primarily for sharing content with your followers. There a few nuances of VK public pages that you should know about:

• Any VK user can see your content. Meaning you can’t create ‘closed’ or private page;
• Only page administrators can publish a post
• However, followers can use ‘Suggest news’ field to send you their own posts. You can accept it and publish like your own, or refuse and delete it:
• sections “Pictures”, “Audio”, “Discussion board” are located on the right sidebar: 
• ability to create events and put them on the sidebar;
• no “Invite friends” option for followers;
• if a user often visits your page, the logo is specified in his profile in the “Interesting pages” section, which is an additional advertising for you.

Groups

The main purpose of a group on VK is communication between users. It will work well if you want to create a community of your brand’s fans:

• can be open to all visitors, closed (user must apply to join), private (requests are sent by the administrators of the group);
• the wall may be closed, restricted (still have the opportunity to comment on posts) or fully opened, so that users can publish their posts:
• sections “Photos”, “Discussion board”, “Audio files” are at the top of the page: 
• no ability to create events;
• there is a section for publishing latest news;
• section “Documents” allows to upload PDF, DOC or some other files;
• each follower can use “Invite friends” function;
• on your follower’s profile your group name is deep in the details, so it’s almost impossible that anyone can see it;
• the user can hide all groups that he follows (useful in case of controversial or sensitive topics);

Besides these differences, all functions of public pages and groups are pretty identical. They both have links and contact sections, you can upload videos and create photo albums, add “Products” section and publish your products or services, you can use private messages to communicate with your followers.

Remember that  you can always change your community type from the public page to the group , and vice versa. If you can’t find this option in your community menu, contact VK support team here: https://vk.com/support?act=new