The DIYist

If you want to understand ‘the social web’ and where it’s going, take a look at what the DIYists are up to.

For years, DIY was the bastion of the weekend jobbing dad. Men would buy tool belts, low-quality hand drills and set about putting up shelves, bleeding radiators or hanging pictures. And their bible was the Reader’s Digest Complete Do-it-yourself Manual. The appeal of DIY is really the time when you’re NOT doing DIY and you look at the thing you did and think “I did that, all by myself”. There’s immense pride in DIY. And the pride can be totally disproportionate to the effort you put in. You can bang a nail into your bathroom wall with a shoe and still feel pretty pleased with yourself when you look up at that C. M. Coolidge every time you perform your ablutions.

And pride is something that communicates well. People like to share the things they are proud of. And conversely, people who don’t even do the do-ing bit of DIY like to admire, comment on and share these things. They may even fantisize that they too will one day create a wind chime out of chewing gum and old socks, instead of just reading blog posts about social media.

There’s a mother of 1 in Lehi, Utah who sells personalised superhero capes for children on etsy.com. They are pretty great. We bought 3 last year and our kids love them. I have no idea how many she sells but I’m guessing she isn’t about to retire off the back of her craft empire. Her bio reads “I’m a stay at home mom of a toddler and I love to craft during naps!!”.

I’m going to speculate that most people who sell their craft items on Etsy or Folksy are driven mainly by pride. Etsy hasn’t seen the hockey-stick explosion of traffic that give Silicon Valley VC types wet dreams but the kind of slow upward, steady and consistent traffic that spells out a slow shift in humanity rather than the exploitation of a spotted opportunity.

Take also instructables – it’s a community site centered around instructions for cool projects you can make with cheap or recycled bits. They range from IKEA furniture hacks to making your own laundry detergent. It’s grown massively, mostly off the back of the success of the makerzine.com magazine and blog. It now gets almost 2 million visitors each month. Other examples are self-publishing services like Lulu, photo-sharing sites such as Flickr, video sharing sites such as Vimeo and YouTube. And also, offline happenings such as hack days, unconferences and pop-up restaurants that are receiving a great deal of attention recently.

DIY is empowering, it gives you the feeling that you could accomplish anything. Of course, a team of writers and technologists might be able to create cool DIY ideas, tips and tricks like Reader’s Digest did, but that centralised method of content creation simply doesn’t satisfy any more. People need troves that are constantly updated and developed and doing that in a centralised manner is expensive.

The DIYist is really at the heart of all things social online. It’s about sharing, openness and collaboration. And most importantly Do-ing.

As far as brands go, the DIY concept might not be entirely appealing. It’s about empowering people. It’s the antithesis of conspicuous consumption and consumer culture. But it might be that this is an area that some brands can convene people over, to sponsor or to provide resources for.

I’m not saying for a second that everyone on the Internet is about to start making their own hats out of egg boxes but if you’re thinking about social media and how it can benefit your business or brand, consider what makes people proud to share and take a look at what the DIYists are up to.