If you’re considering building an online community from scratch (rather than leveraging one of the thousands that already exist), you’ll need to either find a passionate, socially-inclined niche or create a forum for people to share what they can’t share elsewhere.
ClosetCouture.com has done the latter. They know how women deal with clothes in person– they go shopping together, talk about clothes over lunch, flip through each other’s closets, and come over before dates to scrutinize. The next step is to move this interaction online.
Each user on the site uploads a photo of each piece of her wardrobe against a white background. She can then put together and save outfits, which can be sent to friends for a rating of 1-5. Friends can also suggest outfits for each other, or users can pay professional stylists to put together outfits and suggest new pieces (with links to those suggestions on retail partners’ sites).
The site was recently featured in Vogue magazine, where Jane Herman demonstrates why this is a profitable concept:
Forget Facebook. Give me an interactive Web site that lets me post pictures of my clothes in a virtual closet that other style-minded users can access to create looks they think will look great on me. My idea of a useful social networking site is one that involves a continual dialogue about clothes.
Jane doesn’t just want to socialize. She wants to socialize about clothes, like she does when she’s physically with her friends. She’s certainly not alone; the site was growing by approximately 150 users a day before being featured in the publication that reaches more women passionate about clothes than any other medium. (To recap: these women are so passionate about fashion they didn’t balk at taking the time to individually photograph every item in their wardrobe.)
Girls have liked dolls, paper dolls and fashion plates for centuries; and now this concept has not only gone digital but become a way to connect with friends (both real-world and new online acquainstances). Partnerships with designers, stylists and retailers shows the site is having no trouble monetizing (a problem the non-niche Twitter, MySpace and even Facebook are having).
In short, the same advice applies to building an online community as it does to any marketing venture: know your audience, and give them what they want before they even know they’re looking for it.