Interesting and fun content is the must-have of any community. As the community admin, the content you post is the thing that will engage your members and make them come back to your community again and again.

Viber is full of great tools that will make you a superstar admin who creates super fun, engaging content.

Grab their attention

Announce your topic with a Shout. Shouts can be used to introduce a new topic, make an important announcement that your members won’t be able to miss, or as the focal point of a set of messages. Shouts turn any ordinary text message into something eye-catching and colorful.

Add a Shout to your message now: Tap the GIF+ button > find Shouts > choose a background for your message > and go!

Go live!

Give your community that “live” touch and send a 20-second Instant video message. It’s quick, it’s spontaneous, and it shows what is going on RIGHT NOW. Record a short video directly from the community chat screen, and share it instantly. For example, show yourself buying the ingredients for your next cooking masterpiece, or record your quick commentary on the latest community discussion.

Record and send an instant video: Tap and hold on the record button > record your video > release the button to send.

Pro tip: Regular videos sent in the chat will play automatically (without sound), bringing the chat screen to life! Give it a try!

Be interactive

Your members want to be more involved in the community, and Polls are a great way to achieve this. Ask your members a question, and have them vote by tapping on the button next to a set of answers.

Pro tip: The 90min Fanvoice community regularly uses polls on top of pictures, videos and GIFs, to get members’ views on the most recent football news.

Add a poll: Tap the polls button > ask your question > add options > and create. Watch your members vote in real time as the count on the poll goes up.

Ask me anything

When you really want to hear from your members, open yourself up to Hidden-number chats and encourage them to write to you in private. These chats are safe, all phone numbers are hidden from everyone in the chat.

These chats have been used by some communities for “Ask me anything” or “Q&A” days. Community members send their questions, and they are answered in the chat.

Pro tip: The FC Barcelona community uses Hidden-number chats for members to send in questions to their “Q&A with a Soccer Star” days.

Turn on Hidden-number chats: Open the community info screen > turn ON Receive private messages.

We’ve given you the tools, now’s the time to get out there and be that superstar community admin you always knew you were!

New to communities? Check out our other blogs in this series:

• Get started with your very own Viber community!
• Your time to shine: Manage, grow and engage a Viber community!
• Community Insights: Measure the success of your community
• Master your community: New ways to add members & more

Communities on Viber are growing and evolving all the time, offering you exciting opportunities to grow and engage with your audience.

As community superadmins and admins, you can do more in communities – from making it easier for people to add new members to your community, to helping them make safe connections.

Read more about Viber Communities in the previous posts in the series:

Community Insights: Measure the Success of Your Community
Your time to shine: Manage, grow and engage a Viber Community!
Get Started with Your Very Own Viber Community!

Invite new people to your community

We know how important it is to bring new members to your community, so that’s why we have updated the way to invite and add new people.

Anyone can add new members to a community simply by tapping on the share button at the top of the community screen and selecting up to 50 members to add to the community at a time.

Bring new members through virality

Your community could go viral throughout Viber when your members forward a message from your community to any of their friends, groups, or other communities. Every forwarded message has a label with your community name on it, so everyone who sees it knows where the message came from, and can tap the community name to join.

Help community members message privately and safely

The members of your community can chat between themselves in hidden-number chats, and stay safe, as they don’t share phone numbers.

As a community admin or super-admin you can choose whether you want to allow your members to message you 1on1. Your members will be able to send you hidden-number chats, meaning that neither of you can see each other’s phone number.

You can leave the 1on1 chat at any time and delete all of the messages you sent. You can also choose to block individual members from messaging you, either by not accepting their initial message, or by blocking them from inside the chat at any time.

Learn all about hidden-number chats in this blog.

Engage with your members with polls

Polls in communities are a great way to get your members opinions on any question you may ask, without being flooded with comments. Polls are quick and simple to set up inside a community, and you can watch how members vote in real-time.

Learn more about polls here.

Manage your community from your computer

You can manage your community from the convenience of Viber on your computer. Add new members, create polls, send messages, block members, reply to hidden-number chats, and more. Viber on your computer is fully synced with Viber on your phone, so you can continue managing your community seamlessly.

Take these ideas and enjoy taking your community to the next level!

This is how some of the most popular characters in literature would have chatted. We present… classical stories, which would have ended differently if only the characters had Viber.

Nowadays, we can’t imagine our everyday lives without smartphones and the Internet, and what would we be if we couldn’t constantly share our emotions in chats with our loved ones? These forms of communication have become mandatory in the really short period of time since the end of the 20th century. And imagine what would have happened if these technologies were available hundreds or even thousands of years ago? How would they change the outcome of some of our favorite stories, and how would technology have ruled over the lives of some of the most popular characters in literature?

Here we take a look at some examples of how Viber, one of the most popular communication apps we have now, could have rewritten literary history, if only these beloved characters had access to it:

Romeo & Juliet, 1597

The troubled outcome of the famous drama of Verona is known to almost everyone. Although written correspondence was a popular form of communication back then, especially when people were experiencing the need either to hide their feelings from others or were planning a secret mission, the possibility for end-to-end encryption, with that extra level of privacy, would have been a great asset to everyone.

Creating a Secret chat

Imagine Juliet sends Romeo a disappearing message:

Oh, Romeo! Father Lawrence and I have found a way for us to escape together! I will take a poison thus everyone would think I were dead, but don’t worry, I will wake up as soon as the effect expires! Let’s meet tonight at the Capulet crypt to plan it all my love! What say you? I can’t wait to see thee!

If there was Viber during Shakespeare’s time, the young lovers could have been fully aligned on their secret mission, escaped from their feuding families, and lived happily ever after.

Robinson Crusoe, 1719

Crusoe was the victim of a shipwreck accident in a storm in South America, 40 miles from the shores of the Orinoco river, that changed his life forever. Crusoe landed on the Island of Despair, where he managed to survive in the wilderness, by making his own hunting tools. Imagine if a man on a lonely island had the chance to interact with his favourite football team’s chatbot?

Subscribe to the FC Barcelona Chatbot ?

Being on a lonely island, with no chance of face-to-face social interaction, he would have been satisfied getting the latest Barça news, competing with his friends for monthly prizes and even paying a remote visit to Camp Nou!

With Viber on his phone, this man wouldn’t have been bored for even a minute!

Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798)

The world’s most famous lover managed to give each of his hundreds of women love, admiration, attention and a feeling they were the center of his world. But during his imprisonment and travels around the world, thousands of paramours were left totally heart-broken without the chance to interact with their lover.

Opening a community

Suppose he had opened a Community, an advanced chat without member limitations, to get in regular contact with his female fans and satisfy their hunger for his poems and intellectual quotes. Since he was a worldwide famous lover, women from other countries would have been able to join the Community as well, and understand everything their crush posted thanks to the translation feature.

If there had been Viber around, there wouldn’t have been a single lonely woman back then.

Snow White (By Grimm brothers)

Chased away by an evil queen, the princess flees into the wood where she meets seven dwarfs and starts living happily with them. Every morning they go into the mountains and every evening when they come back home Snow White has their meal ready and their house tidy.

Using polls

Imagine if Snow White could use Polls to ask what they want for dinner:

• Chicken with mushroom sauce
• Vegetable risotto
• Eggs and bacon

With Viber around, she would have saved plenty of time by knowing in advance what her small friends wanted for dinner and they themselves would have been delighted to eat their favorite foods!

Love stories are the same today as they ever were, but the way we express ourselves has changed dramatically. How lucky we are to have Viber in our lives to make it easy to keep in touch, share our secrets privately, and have fun as we do so!

Are you ready to write your story with Viber?  Try it now!

Many of you have asked us for the option to create polls in group chats and Communities. We are now delighted to announce that Polls are available globally on Viber.

Be democratic!

There are times in a group chat when you want to know what everyone thinks about a topic without losing the point with answers, comments and options from literally EVERYONE in the group.

In a Community this problem is even bigger. You could have literally millions of members who all want their say, and you can get lost in a sea of replies.

When you are in this situation, simply create a poll in your chat!

So, how do you create a poll?

Tap the polls icon at the chat menu, type your poll question and add a set of up to 10 choices to choose from.

Everyone in the chat can vote by tapping on the heart button next to each one. Watch the live results in the chat as the vote count goes up every time someone taps on their choice. In a group chat you can also see who voted for what by tapping on an option.

Polls may be just for fun, used to decide on a discussion topic, a gift for friends, a night out and more.

Make your Community voices heard

Adding a poll is a great way to get members of your Community to contribute to the discussion – letting them have their say, and encouraging more people to engage in your Community more frequently.

Ask Community members anything you want – you set it up with the questions you want to know about. Do you want to know what content people like to see in the Community? Set up a poll. How about who was the man of the match in last night’s game? Create a poll. The options are individual to the group or Community, and they are endless.

Privacy always comes first on Viber, so Community members’ poll votes are anonymous. Whatever a Community member votes for, their choice isn’t visible. Superadmins and admins can only see how other superadmins or admins voted. If you are a regular Community member, there is no way of knowing who you are and what you voted for.

Add a poll to your group or Community today, and get your members involved in the conversation in new ways.

Try adding a poll to your chat now: https://vb.me/1fb4b3