How to involve your Community in the Design Creation Process

As a shop owner, engaging with your community is important to keep them interested and to show them that their opinion is important to you. It also gives you the opportunity to build trust and brand loyalty. You can discover your audiences wants and needs and create products that there is already ensured demand for. Now that we’re in the midst of our Spreadshop Design Challenge, we thought we’d take the opportunity to give you some inspiration for how to get your community involved in your creative process.

Why it’s a good idea to involve your community in your creative process

Having a community that is engaged in general is always a sign of success for any business. A highly engaged online community on social media is a clear sign of both brand awareness and customer loyalty. It shows that they are interested in the brand and keen to be involved.  

Similarly, keeping your community involved with the design creation process means that you can directly listen to them, and always have their interests in mind. They can also help you come up with new concepts or ideas that you would not have thought of otherwise, that are also specific to their tastes. Actively involving your community in your creative processes means learning about their preferences and learning about what to avoid in your designs. 

Fan-centric merchandise hugely increases sales by catering to the target group and ensuring that they are going to buy. Essentially, what you are able to do when you engage with and learn from your audience, is create fan-centric merchandise that resonates with your target group and increases the chance of higher sales.  

Tips on how to get your community involved

There are a number of ways that you can engage with your community and get them involved in your creative process.

1. You can directly ask your community through your social media channels or newsletters about feedback for designs, products, or placements. With any feedback you’ve been given, be sure to implement it and show your community that you take their opinions seriously.
2. You can also check your reviews and share them on your social media platforms for other community members to see. This way, you can share appreciation for your reviewers and also encourage more reviews.
3. Host a design challenge or ask your community to submit their ideas or wishes, and whoever came up with the winning idea gets a free merch piece of the finalised design. Encourage them to post a picture wearing the creation and tag your shop.
4. Try using a survey or poll to let your followers vote on their favourite designs and be a part of the final decisions for your designs. More on this in a moment…

Using a survey

There are different aspects of the creative process that you can let your community vote on. For example, you can let them vote on their favourite design out of a number of designs for the same product. You could also hold a poll to see which placement of a new design on a particular product your audience likes best. Not sure whether to include an additional print on the back of a product? Get your community’s opinion to see what the best choice for your shop would be. The ways you can utilise surveys and polling are endless!

To show you an example of what a survey or poll might look like, here is one for you to vote on yourself. Here you can see one of our six free designs from our Design Challenge “Spread Good Vibes”, where you can vote on your favourite placement.

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This is a great way to make use of voting with your community. It’s always great to show that your audiences voices will be heard, and that you want them to directly have an impact on your creative choices. You can do this on social media as well, for example with the poll function in Instagram stories. Be sure to share the winning designs from your polls, and maybe even turn it into a limited-edition product in your shop!

Involving your community in your design creation process has great benefits both for you and your audience. For you, you have the opportunity to learn from their feedback and increase your community engagement. For your audience, they have the chance to have their voice heard, and be directly involved in the creative process. This then makes them more likely to want to purchase the final product. Keep these tips in mind the next time you’re thinking of how to get more involved with your community, and let their voices be heard!