Online Creative Communities — Factors for Success

Cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties online embrace new busi­ness mod­els to give mak­ers a means of sus­tain­ing them­selves finan­cially through their cre­ative out­put. I had the oppor­tu­nity to research cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties for a client project by look­ing closely at four such com­mu­ni­ties.

• Thread­less crowd­sources trendy t-shirt designs
• Etsy pro­vides ecom­merce tools for crafts peo­ple and mak­ers of all stripes
• Pho­to­shel­ter does some­thing sim­i­lar for photographers
• Vimeo offers host­ing space and dis­tri­b­u­tion tools for video and filmmakers

While each of these sites oper­ate in very dif­fer­ent mar­kets, they do sim­i­lar things to sus­tain the com­mu­nity draw­ing on their services. Here are some of the prac­tices that make these com­mu­ni­ties vibrant and productive:

1. Embrace the Val­ues that Moti­vate Cre­ative Production

The val­ues that moti­vate peo­ple to cre­ate con­sti­tute the most impor­tant force bring­ing the com­mu­nity together. Eco­nomic incen­tives may inspire col­lab­o­ra­tion and entre­pre­neuri­al­ism, but the resilience of the com­mu­nity is build on per­sonal val­ues that brought peo­ple to cre­ative endeav­ors in the first place. Suc­cess­ful cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties proudly dis­play those val­ues and develop an aes­thetic to com­mu­ni­cate them. This is evi­dent both in the kinds of work pro­duced by the com­mu­nity and the aux­il­iary activ­i­ties the com­mu­nity embraces.

Three great exam­ples of this include Etsy’s Craftivism Blog and Vimeo’s film fes­ti­val and Thred­less Design Chal­lenges. The oppor­tu­ni­ties that each of these endeav­ors offer speak to the unique impe­tus dri­ving each community.

2. Offer Learn­ing Resources and Update Them Frequently

Tuto­ri­als and edu­ca­tional fea­tures encour­age learn­ing and con­stantly upgrad­ing skills. The edu­ca­tional resources simul­tan­iously lower the bar­rier to entry by show­ing novices the way and sets stan­dards high by ask­ing mem­bers to con­stantly improve their skills rather than rest­ing on their laurels.

Two exam­ples of this are Etsy’s Shop Makeovers and Photoshelter’s ever evolv­ing and expand­ing offer­ing of free tuto­ri­als and webi­nars.

3. Turn Suc­cesses into Role Mod­els to Emulate

Pro­files of suc­cess­ful mem­bers of the com­mu­nity show what suc­cess looks like with insight into the path taken to get there. Such pro­files can serve to com­mu­ni­cate the value of the com­mu­nity to poten­tial entre­pre­neurs and creatives. In the case of Thread­less, many of their most suc­cess­ful design­ers used the plat­form to launch their design careers. This is true with Etsy as well. To deliver value to the com­mu­nity, role mod­els need to get a lit­tle vul­ner­a­ble by show­ing their process so oth­ers can emu­late their suc­cess. Pho­to­shel­ter uses webi­nars and their blog to do this.

4. Empower Aficionados

In addi­tion to cre­at­ing orig­i­nal con­tent such as tuto­ri­als and fea­tured suc­cess stories, successful cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties pro­vide tools for afi­ciona­dos to strut their stuff on their terms for the ben­e­fit of the whole com­mu­nity. Some­times empow­er­ing afi­ciona­dos is as sim­ple as main­tain­ing dis­cus­sion boards where cur­rent issues fac­ing the com­mu­nity can be dis­cussed frankly.  Other times, it entails lever­ag­ing the insight of afi­ciona­dos toward spe­cific projects.

Vibrant mes­sage boards abound on these sites, and this is often the place where afi­ciona­dos make their exper­tise avail­able. Thread­less Cri­tiques is an exam­ple of a spe­cial­ized mes­sage board meet­ing a spe­cific need of the com­mu­nity. If a designer wants input on their design before sub­mit­ting it for vot­ing, they can post the cur­rent design and get feed­back from expe­ri­enced design­ers, updat­ing the post with revi­sions until it’s ready for submission.

5. Enable Innovation

Truly pro­duc­tive cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties will quickly out­grow the forms of cre­ative out­put that brought them together.  Their col­lec­tive energy will spawn new busi­ness mod­els and prod­ucts. The com­mu­nity must embrace and inno­vate on these devel­op­ments to keep pace with mem­bers’ ambitions.

Pho­to­shel­ter is a prime exam­ple of this. They attempted to cre­ate a sales ser­vice much like a tra­di­tional pho­tog­ra­phy agency to rep­re­sent the pho­tog­ra­phers using the host­ing ser­vice.  That effort didn’t work out, but Pho­to­shel­ter con­tin­ues to roll out new fea­tures for dif­fer­ent ways to do busi­ness, such as Word­Press inte­gra­tion through a part­ner­ship with Graph Paper Press and a recently launched print order ser­vice.

Here, I’ve looked at a small selec­tion of cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties. Do you know of oth­ers that also make use of these meth­ods or that defy them? And what about online col­lab­o­ra­tions around knowl­edge pro­duc­tion and edu­ca­tion? Efforts like Wikipedia and P2PU seem to be sus­tained by a dif­fer­ent set of fac­tors. How do they compare?