Community publishing made easy – a new proven service

The way the public uses media is changing faster than ever before. On the digital side, new products and services are being launched at an accelerating pace. Social media has crea-ted new communities that could also benefit from traditional printed products.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has been investigating the demand for new printed services and their ideal characteristics. “By of-fering communities an easy and attractive way of making publications that support their ac-tivities, we can build an entirely new type of publishing. When Forestcluster Ltd ordered this study in 2010, we looked at the media needs

of three different communities and assessed the commercial potential of printed products for them,” told Programme Manager Esa Tor-niainen of VTT.

The communities chosen in the study varied greatly in their size, activities and communica-tions needs. Kennel Badatam’s is for devotees of long-haired dachshunds. Kisko Lions Club in western Finland is a part of the international Lions Club organisation. Ruokaklubi is a dining association of four families. VTT carried out the study with Vectia, a management consul-tancy, and DMP, an innovative digital printing house that produced the paper publications.

The communities created by social media can’t exist outside cyberspace – or could they? Would online groups start using printed products if the right kinds were available?

For additional information

Lars GäddaResearch DirectorForestcluster Ltd. Tel. +358 50 322 2471lars.gadda@forestcluster.fi

Anu Seisto Team ManagerVTTTel. +358 20 722 7505anu.seisto@vtt.fi

New product and service concepts “We let each community use a demo system that we had developed and build up. It allows people to create content together in a way similar to blogging. The community members agreed that it worked well,” said Team Man-ager Anu Seisto of VTT.

“This kind of community publishing shows how it is possible to develop new printed products on a digital media foundation,” added Esa Tor-niainen. “People are used to sharing pictures and writing online. However, a tangible printed product is even more meaningful. The goal is a system for community publishing that is at-tractive to users and cost-effective for service providers.”

A wide variety of benefitsAll the communities in the study thought that the publication they made was useful in sup-porting or expanding their activities. The Lions members communicated to their neighbour-hood what they were doing, the dachshund owners wanted to exchange experiences and the dining club families enjoyed reliving memo-ries.

“The fact that the publishing system was like blogging inspired us to produce content,” said Pauliina Sjöholm of Kennel Badatam’s. “It was interactive so it brought us together as a community. Everyone could see what everyone else had contributed, which made us more and more ambitious.”

A printed product will also be useful to histori-ans of the future. Unlike electronic media, its interface will always be the same.

The communities were very satisfied with the experiment and would have liked to continue using the trial publishing system. They also informed they would be willing to pay for the service if a commercial application was avail-able.

Fortune favours the braveFinland is the promised land of associations. Everyone seems to belong to at least a couple of clubs or informal communities.

“Some communities consist of a handful of people united by a hobby or a home village. Others have hundreds of members, and a com-munity publication sometimes goes to other stakeholders, too,” Anu Seisto pointed out.

When the number of readers is multiplied by the number of issues, the size of the printing job becomes significant, even if individual print runs aren’t very long.

“A multichannel printing service like this – where a community is the content producer, distributor and consumer – offers an oppor-tunity for an entirely new kind of business. It doesn’t compete directly with any existing printed product. A company bold enough to in-vest in commercialising the service could come to control a large new market for printed pub-lications, spanning the very special subjects that interest us all,” said Consultant Kimmo Koivisto of Vectia.

The service provider could be a media house, a printer, a papermaker or a distributor. On a national scale the pioneer could be a printing house but a company with existing foreign op-erations would be better able to sell the con-cept on the European market.

“The elements needed to construct a commer-cial system for content production already ex-ist. The job that remains is to integrate it with the production system of a printing house,” Anu Seisto added.

www.forestcluster.fi