Special note: Tune in today to watch Kristen and Bob on Threadless TeeV at 4 pm CT.

Some people might describe Threadless as a t-shirt company, but those people are short sighted. It’s actually a community of more than one million people who collaborate to design the t-shirts. Each week designers submit their design and the community votes on their favorites. Then Threadless chooses among the top-rated designs each week and print up to 6 new designs each week. The t-shirts sell because the community chooses what they like most, and the designers with chosen t-shirts win a sweet financial prize of $2,500 with the chance for more prizes. I just bought my first two tees that I’m crazy in love with.

Kristen Studard and Bob Nanna from Threadless’ kickass marketing team were kind enough to do a phone interview with me. Any social media manager would envy their numbers – more than a million followers on Twitter, more than a 100,000 fans on Facebook and not to mention their own thriving community. I didn’t get the feeling they cared about these numbers, they cared about engagement.

Below are my four takeaways on how Threadless has done an incredible job with social media and community.

1) Threadless Empowers Community

Kristen and Bob give credit where credit is due – their community. They love their community wholeheartedly, and Threadless doesn’t put limitations on what they can accomplish. Within the Threadless community, “rogue” contests pop up all the time that community members create themselves. Other companies would try to control or shut down what they didn’t sanction. Threadless loves it. Right now they have a minimalism contest popping up and have nearly 50 participating.

Several years ago, a Threadless community member, Chris Cardinal, came up with Threadcakes – a contest where bakers made

A Threadcakes Winning Submission (photo/entry by Erin Okuno)

cakes based on Threadless t-shirts. An entire non-sanctioned contest based on trademarked designs owned by Threadless. The following time the contest popped up, they sanctioned it and helped run it alongside Chris. Plus, they helped identify cool prizes and judges for the contest. They built upon the success of Threadcakes to create Threadknits – a contest based on knitting designs based on their tees. When your community is knitting cows jumping over a moon, you know you have one of the most rocking communities around. It means you’ve won at life.

Threadless’ didn’t do any type of advertising for the first 8 years they were in business. Their community did the work for them. Threadless is built almost entirely on word-of-mouth marketing, and it is through powering their community that they continue to thrive.  When I was recently backpacking Europe, an Australian started talking about how awesome Threadless tees were while we were at a Munich beer house. That’s love.

They love their community, they listen to their community, and they rely heavily on their community. And they’re not afraid to tell them so.

2) Threadless Takes Risks

Employees at Threadless aren’t afraid to take risks. It permeates the culture that their encouraged to try new things. From the CEO’s personal blog,

“I was never afraid to figure things out on my own. Things may not have been done as well as an ‘expert’ could do them but they got the job done. It is also extremely gratifying to just stumble your way into the unknown and come out of it with something new that you learned or made or figured out.  The feeling of surprising yourself, finding out that you are capable of doing something you didn’t know how to do.”

To this end, Threadless employees are given “awesome time.” This is their time, regardless of their job, where they are encouraged to experiment and come up with a project that will make the Threadless community more “awesome.” Whatever that might be.

One of the projects that’s arisen from awesome time is where Threadless sent flipcams to community members across the globe, so they could record how they feel about Threadless. And they’ve gotten a resounding response. Check out what Thomas from the Dominican Republic, Corrine from Zurich and Ginette from Toronto think of Threadless.

When you’re not afraid to take risks and aren’t afraid of repercussions, amazing things happen in social media.

3) Threadless Has A Personality

The Threadless Refrigerator on the Run

Like our interview with Crowdrise, having a personality percolates to the top of why community members engage with Threadless. Threadless is a company that sent someone dressed up as a cardboard refrigerator created after a t-shirt design to the Shamrock Shuffle Race in Chicago. Threadless knows everyone loves to ask if your refrigerator is running.

Bob and Kristen have a weekly Ustream show that highlights the fun they have working at Threadless and taking part in their community. They do trivia, tell jokes and do massive Threadless giveaways on the chat stream. (Seriously, you should tune into Threadless TeeV at 4 pm CT on Thursdays. They give away mad t-shirts.) Even more awesome, I recognized Kristen and Bob instantly because I’ve seen them in my e-mail newsletter. That’s because Threadless employees model all of their own tees, but in a non-creepy way (you know what other company I’m talking about).

Having a real personality means you’re not perfect, and you’re ok admitting that. Several weeks ago, Threadless sent out their popular newsletter featuring the latest tees, and it was accidentally missing an Unsubscribe button. They saw several customers talk about in on Twitter, held a quick meeting and sent a follow-up e-mail detailing exactly how Threadless subscribers could unsubscribe. Which is also why Threadless owns permission marketing.

4)    Threadless Engagement Starts From the Top Down –

Getting support for using social media and building a community is easy to build at the ground level. But it is miserable if you don’t have support from the top. This is why Threadless owns you when it comes to social media because their founder, Jake Nickell (@skaw), lives and breathes his community. Jake recently said in a TechCrunch interview:

“If you want your life to be fun as an entrepreneur, I suggest going into it with realistic expectations and to measure your success in different ways than financially. I’ve done well financially with Threadless, but if I had to give up one thing, the money would be the first thing to go. The happiness, relationships, enrichment in others’ lives, the community that now exists; the opportunities brought to artists—that’s the success that really matters for Threadless. Build your business in a way that lets you say that, and mean it too.”

Bob and Kristen speak almost in awe of Jake and the thriving environment he’s created at Threadless. He’s started the tone, and the rest of the company has followed pursuit.

Not only is the CEO rocking the community, but so is the warehouse manager. He put together a contest where the Threadless community submits soundtracks for the warehouse to listen to on 8tracks.com. Nearly a hundred people have submitted soundtracks. That is engagement. This is what we all lust for.

In what other ways do you think Threadless rocks at social media and community?