A while ago I did a post on great photo manipulation pieces that was madly popular for a while. It got some great traffic from a few sources (Smashing Magazine amongst others) but also from some less great ones. The visitors that came from sources that had little to do with creativity would come see the post, check the showcase and simply leave without checking out the rest of the blog. Some even closed the site in a matter of seconds. This did nothing for my blog and used up a lot of traffic for no good reason.

Since then I’ve learned that while traffic is always great (depending on your hosting plan!), getting the right traffic from people who actually care is not only much more satisfying, it’s also the way to ensure you accomplish the goals of your site.

How do you get the right traffic? I’ll tell you exactly what technique I use for the blog in a second, first I’m going to put down two points that are key to making this work.

1. Get good traffic
This means traffic from your niche - people who have an interest in what you do. Don’t try to plug your graphic designs on a fashion forum full of giggly schoolgirls. Even if they go to your site they’ll be gone as soon as the find out you’re not hosting leaked screen shots to the new Gucci sunglasses. Find places where creatives from your field come together.

2. Use as many different sources as possible
Unless you have friends with high traffic sites or have such a site yourself you’re usually stuck with small/medium traffic sites. Sure, it’s very possible that you have something great and Smashing Magazine or A list apart will do a post on it. But let’s be realistic, you’re not the only one who wants on there. So small and medium traffic sites will be your main focus. This means that if you get your link up there you’ll get good quality traffic, but not a huge amount. You can solve this by hitting up multiple sources at once.

The first way I always get some easy traffic is through social bookmarking. Social bookmarking sites are in essence communities where users can cast their vote on how useful submitted links are. The more votes something gets the more exposure it receives - meaning more people come and see it. The majority of the general social bookmarking sites will get you the wrong traffic, traffic from outside of your niche. Just like the example I gave above with the photo manipulation showcase, this means that the traffic you get will often be rather meaningless.

Fortunately social bookmarking for creatives is really taking off. Below are four sites that are tailored especially to creatives that I you can use, ordered in the largest populated site to the lowest. There all nearly identical in use. Just make an account, submit a link and hope it gets the designated number of votes to reach the main page. The good thing is that posting a piece of news can be done in a matter of minutes!

I’ve added estimated visitor counts. These are guidelines, you might receive more or less since a lot of factors play into this.

Designfloat
Designfloat is the biggest of the three design related social bookmarking sites, if you only submit to one make it Designfloat.
Estimated visitors: 350

Designbump
The visitor count of Designbump isn’t very high yet but it’s definitely gaining ground.
Estimated visitors: 40

Graphic design links
Slightly lower visitor count then Designbump.
Estimated visitors: 25

Drawar
I’ve only tried Drawar once and didn’t get my post submitted. The page rank 3 however tells me you shouldn’t expect stellar results from Drawar. Only submit to Drawar if you’ve been at the above two sites first.

If you’re still hungry for more traffic the next way to easily gain more without breaking a sweat is to hit a few sites and blogs up that have side blogs and community news. This basically means that on their site they have a section where they link to news submitted by readers of the site.

Submitting to sites like this is as simple as filling in some form fields and pressing “send”. Once you know where to look you can easily hit a few up in 15 minutes or less.

Noupe
Noupe is a blog that has a nice little news side blog that users can submit news to. All you have to do is submit your news, and as long as it is relevant to the site it usually gets featured.
Estimated visitors: 40

Designmag
Haven’t had a go at Designmag yet but I’m going to give it a run soon. I’ll update when I know more.

Smashing Magazine side blog
If your project is really great you might be able to squeeze in some exposure on Smashing Magazine’s sideblog - this equals lots of traffic.
Estimated visitors: 10.000 to 15.000!

Design you trust
Design you trust is an open blog platform where anyone can post inspirational things. That’s right all you need to do is make an account and you’re set. With great power comes great responsibility though. Don’t spam Design you trust and don’t over use it is my advice.
Estimated visitors: 300

If you remember only one thing than make it this. Whatever you do, don’t come across as a too eager spammer. This will only hurt your name or brand instead of strengthen it. Other than that I’d encourage you to experiment, monitor the traffic and see what works for you and what doesn’t. Good luck!

However great online communities are, they do have one downside. It’s costs a lot of time! You have to get an account set up, customize it, upload work, write your info, get and manage your contacts and so on. To put all this time into a community only to later find out it’s not what you hoped for would be a terrible waste of time. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you I’ve compiled this list of communities and added info on what you can expect if you decide to make a profile there. So have a read and get out there!

The Behance network is a community primarily focused on showcasing your portfolio. You have full customization of how your profile and portfolio pages looks without having to modify any coding. Behance has all the usual features for making, notifying and maintaining friends and groups. Read more about Behance and it’s features in this article I did a while ago.

Usefull for
Designers, illustrators and web designers. If you’re one of these and only join one community I’d say make it Behance since this is the one that is most likely to net you useful contacts and if you’re lucky even a lead or two.

Mojizu calls itself a contemporary character design community and that’s exactly what it is. I learned about Mojizu through Scott Jackson when I interviewed him and I must say it’s an excellent community site. Mojizu is well designed, has all the bells and whistles one expects of a community site these days and has a focused community. One feature I absolutely love is the Moji war where characters are pitted against each other and the creators can win prize money and exposure for their piece. Very fresh!

Usefull for
If you’re a character illustrator get yourself on Mojizu…now! It’s the only place that is 100% dedicated to character art so this should be a well of inspiration and like minded souls for you.

Coroflot is a good looking community that has the same approach as Behance in that it’s very much portfolio based. Where Behance is much more of a mixture between showcasing your portfolio and keeping in touch with fellow creatives corofloat pushes the social aspect to the back and focuses on job opportunities more. How usefull the opportunities on Coroflot are I can’t say since I have little experience with that.

Usefull for
Coroflot caters a lot to the same audience as Behance. I feel Behance is stronger as a community and also offers more expression options for your portfolio pieces (also larger images). Have a good look at the type of jobs that are posted and the location of those jobs. If this is what you need consider Coroflot, if not I’d say Behance is the better choice.

Deviant art is a community which has been around for ages. Small updates to the site have kept it up to date feature wise even though it’s not very impressive to look at. Deviant art has a huge community and some very robust options as far as socializing goes. You can also sell prints and other items with your work on them through Deviant art with reasonable rates.

Usefull for
Deviant art is rich with great talent, but richer in anime loving kids who are just starting out. This isn’t necessarily bad, but might be a turn off if you’re looking to interact with peers who are at a professional level. Consider Deviant art if your craft is digital painting or photography and you’d like to sell prints. If you’re on the design side of things I’d say look elsewhere where the community is a bit more mature and more focused.

Shadowness is a community that looks great even though I fear it’s usability suffers slightly because of this. Profiles on Shadowness are customizable so you can really put your mark on them. The size of the community however is relatively small unfortunately. Shadowness has some great artists on the site but also some very mediocre work posted. You might compare Shadowness to a better looking deviant art with less users.

Usefull for
Shadowness is mostly about digital painting and illustration. Consider Shadowness if that’s your thing and you like the very different and highly customizable layout. If you don’t care so much about customization and the way the site looks I’d advise Deviant art over Shadowness because of the difference in community size.

Flickr is a photo sharing community I’m sure most of you are aware of. While Flickr is used by some people simply as an image host it also has a lively community. It’s not just the new Photobucket. The benefit for creatives is that Flickr has a lot of social possibilities but is image minded.

Usefull for
Flickr is in essence a photo sharing community. There are a bunch of designers and illustrators with an active account but my main recommendation still goes out to photographers.

CG portfolio is part of the CG society, a place where digital artist gather for news, portfolios and the popular forum CG talk. I’m not very impressed with the look and feel of CG portfolio and from a usability standpoint it’s not great either. It’s in the list simply because if you want to get into the game industry CG portfolio should definitely be considered.

Usefull for
CG society has strong ties to the gaming and movie industry so if you’re looking for an entry point into those fields it’s definitely worth a look. Good place to hang out for game artists (both 2d and 3d), concept artists and sci-fi or fantasy artists. A strong user interface designer might be able to use CG portfolio as an entry point into the game industry.

Buzznet is a social community focused very much on the alternative music culture. There’s a lot of teenagers on the site and at first glace you’d definitely say that a serious creative has no reason to be on Buzznet. If you’re looking to get into working for artists and bands however, Buzznet might very well be a place where you can make an easy kick start.

Usefull for
Creatives looking to work with artists and bands. If you are already established in this field then you can most likely safely pass up Buzznet, if you’re trying to make a name for yourself however consider giving it a try. If this is what you’re after you can also consider Trig.

Twitter isn’t tailored to creatives at all but I discovered recently that there are a lot of bloggers and web professionals who use the service actively. Twitter is different from regular social communities in the fact that it’s built to send across small messages called “twits” telling people what you’re doing or thinking about.

Usefull for
Bloggers and web professionals looking to network and don’t mind trying this different type of communication method. Graphic designers and illustrators looking to network with like minded creatives had best look on, since these generally aren’t the type to try a totally new social concept like twitter the community for them is rather small.

Myspace is in the list? A daring move I know! It’s here for a simple reason though, every creative (and their mothers!) are on myspace. Yes, it’s ugly, outdated and has a horrible user interface, but it does deserve a mention as a recourse. Myspace has a lot of features for maintaining friends and is actually pretty decent as far as notifying others of new work you’ve put up. Since nearly everyone is on it it’s pretty good for getting into contact with other creatives.

Usefull for
Creatives that would like to network with others for collaboration (If you’re an illustrator wanting to work with fashion photo’s Myspace is a good place to find the right photographers). Do keep in mind you have to be able to stomach horrible page layouts and lots of spam…

Honorable mentions
Below are some other communities that didn’t make the cut either because I’m not sure how useful they’d be to creatives or because I feel the community might be too small for me to recommend them.

• Virb
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• GFXartist
• trig

Good luck deciding where to network and post your work! As always, opinions and suggestions are most welcome.

Sounds good doesn’t it? It is actually, but I think those of us who have been active on social networking sites like Myspace and Virb are inclined to be somewhat pessimistic. Myspace sometimes seems like a virtual dating site with profiles designed by five year olds. Virb on the other hand has a great clean look, is easy to use but has a very small user base so it never really feels alive. So how good is the Behance network really when we examine it critically? And why should you care about being on a creative specific social network? Read on.

Benefits of being on a social network site built for creatives
There are a lot of reasons you could have for social networking. We’ll get into some Behance specific reasons in a bit, first I want to say something about getting work and generating direct leads through social networking. To be blunt, it doesn’t happen often. I’ve interviewed quite a bit of creatives in my time(not just on Designfeedr) and I’ve often asked if social networking led to any real leads. They all said no. Even though the Behance network is slightly different and is set-up to give good exposure I still feel that the average user should not count on this hapenning on a regular basis (if it happens at all). It is however a good way to build an online presence. A strong portfolio with a good online presence(Something I will get into in a future article) will lead to job opportunities.

So what good things do come from networking on Behance? First is of course the chance to be amongst your fellow creatives. You don’t need to filter and search to find the right people in a huge sea like you would on a general social networking site. This means that from day one you can have conversations with people that have the same interests as you. You can get and give feedback, you can even ask for it if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s an excellent way to be inspired and see new trends emerge before the general public catches on and it’s a good way to attract the attention of the press and bloggers like myself.

Closer look at the Behance network
Below I’ll give my take on a few elements which I feel are critical to a creative social networking site like Behance.

Design
If you’re building a site that’s going to host the portfolios of thousand of creatives it had better look good. While most of us are on Myspace which has poor design and horrid usability that doesn’t mean that we’ll easily switch over or add another site to our daily routine if it looks as bad. The target audience of Behance is also very image minded so a good design is essential. Fortunately the Behance network looks great. It has an excellent clean semi web 2.0 design with it’s own character but never overpowers the portfolios of the users on the network.

Usability
Looking good is one thing but a smooth operator keeps them coming back for more. This is especially important on the web where users have built up a certain resistance because there is so much mediocrity and spam around. While I am no usability expert I feel that the Behance network holds up nicely. Whether you’re browsing, communicating or changing your profile most actions can be easily done without much searching or button hovering for tooltips. The configuration options are placed logically and you’re not buried under a ton of settings. The profile and project customization tools are also very intuitive in use while being relatively powerful, more on that below.

Good example of a customized layout

Customization options
While the Behance network is portfolio driven this doesn’t mean that a personal touch in the presentation is not an important element. One creative may design typefaces for a living while another might earn his money doing cute character illustration. Both need to be able to make a profile that they feel represents them properly. The creators of Behance on the other hand wants to ensure that the site doesn’t end up looking like some of the worse Myspace profiles do since that would turn certain people of. This of course calls for a tradeoff.

Behance gives users the maximum amount of freedom without letting them touch any Html or Css code. There is a visual editor that allows you to edit color, font types, font faces, add images, edit background colors and the like, all live. Personally I feel the decision to take out the option of editing the code is a very wise move on Behance’s part. It keeps the network clean and makes it so that people who are not into web code don’t feel like 2nd class citizens.

Membership by approval
Behance is membership by approval, if you want on you fill in a small form and your application will be considered. This approach has it’s pro’s and it’s cons. If you let everyone on the site you’ll end up getting a second Deviant art. You’ll get a site where there’s a lot of great work, but let’s face it, also a lot of crap. Membership by approval solves this problem, but does make it harder for the user wanting to immediately get into the thick of it. Some people are used to instant access to online services and the approval process will turn some people off. In the case of Behance though I think it turned out very well, the somewhat elitist approach is one of the key elements that gives and ensures Behance’s professional look.

Communication options
When you dissect behance on a very basic level you get a social networking site that has replaced the option of adding photos with portfolio pieces. This creates an environment where one is not judged by how he looks but by what he creates. Users can comment on work or on a profile, can give work the “thumbs up” and can send you private messages. You also have the option to send your entire circle of friends a message. All in all very similar to other social networking sites, which is fine since that’s how the medium works.

One downside I’ve experienced is that when you have a large circle of friends the amount of mail you get can sometimes be downright annoying. You’ll get mails which notify you when someone in your circle has posted new work but you’ll also get mails when someone has left you a message. This in itself can be annoying, but when someone posts five new portfolio pieces and then also sends their friends list(with you in it) a message to inform them they have new work up you’ve just gotten six mails in your inbox. And this is only one person. At first I felt this was rather broken, but when I took a good look at the settings I noticed you have the option of turning a weekly notifications on instead of the default instant one. I haven’t tested it yet but if it works like I hope it will that’s another problem solved.

Conclusion
If this article sounds very much in favor of the Behance Network I can only say that, yes, it is. Not because this is a sponsored post or anything, I have no ties to Behance other than the fact that I’m on it to promote Designfeedr. The thing is, if you’re looking for a social networking site tailored especially to creatives there is currently nothing that rivals the Behance network. With great design, portfolio based profiles, solid communication options and a nicely sized user base why would you not be on it?

That’s it for my positive rant on the Behance network. Stay tuned for a showcase I’m working on that spotlights some of the best work on the network.