Social media or social networking websites are an excellent source for creating extra traffic for your company’s website or blog.

If you are a web design company or a freelance web designer, you can benefit from additional exposure on niche social media websites that target web design, graphic design or web development. Social media sites not only provide additional exposure but also improve back links to your web design related resources on your website. Most of these sites allow you publish either articles or links to web design related resources or pages on your site or blog. This also offers opportunities for deep linking to internal pages, which is often not addressed by traditional link building methods that focus on getting back links to the homepage of your website. However it is important that they are not used to spam. While it is OK to use social media to drive traffic to your site, it should only be done to focus attention on resources that can be valuable to others.

The list below includes some interesting and useful social media websites related specially to the web design or development industry. Some of the obvious, established names such as reddit or digg have been left out from the list. You may already be aware of such sites and also because it can be quite difficult to make it to the first page due to competition.

1) Web Design Library

Url: www.WebDesign.Org

A useful resource for web design and graphic design related articles targeting designers and professionals. Comprehensive tutorials covering popular web design fields including html, php, photoshop ,flash and site maintenance.

Google PR: 6
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : 305,879

Submission guidelines:

• Free Account and Login required.

• Site showcase section where you can submit a link to your site with description for inclusion subject to strict, manual review/approval.

• Does not allow standard submissions of links or bookmarks.

• Submit detailed tutorials in related to graphic design. An author link to you website will be included with each approved article.

Other features:

• User rating and comments( without links) on website showcase section.

2) Tweako

Url: www.Tweako.com

Tweako offers information guides and tutorials related to computing and technology. It offers a number of ways to share content including full articles or social bookmark style links. Another positive point for Tweako is the high traffic it receives.

Google PR: 3
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : 16,507

Submission guidelines:

• Free account and Login required.

• You can post full articles with 35% adsense revenue share.

• You can also post links to stories or posts within your site with description, title and link.

• You can even create forum topics.

3) PixelGroovy

URL: www.pixelgroovy.com

Site History
Found on May 5, 2006

Google PR: 3
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : 1,763

Pixel Groovy is a tutorial directory for web and graphic design related topics. The content is fully user driven. Tutorials are submitted by users themselves. It is another website on this list which receives higher traffic.

Submission guidelines:

• Free account and Login required.

• Submit links to tutorials with title, description and url only instead of submitting full articles.

• Users can vote or comment on other tutorials.

4) Design-Newz

URL: www.design-newz.com

As the name suggests, this is a user submitted news website for articles, resources and tutorials written by other designers and web developers. They are soon to launch a blog on the site which is currently in development.

Google PR: 5
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : 52,798

Submission guidelines:

• No login required.

• Submit links to tutorials with title only. No description or full articles.

5) ScriptandStyle

URL: www.scriptandstyle.com

Script & Style is a useful social media site for web designers and developers to promote web design/development related articles.

Google PR: 4
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : n/a

Submission guidelines:

• No login required.

• Submit links to tutorials with description only. No full articles.

6) DesignFloat

URL: www.designfloat.com

Design Float is a growing social media website that focuses primarily on web design. Compared to some other sites, the traffic may be lower but is highly targeted towards web designers.

Google PR: 5
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) :197,873

Submission guidelines:

• Login and free account.

• Submit links to tutorials with description only. No full articles.

• 3 step submission with captcha validation

• Top user feature which is easier to feature in than most other sites

7) Dzone

url: www.dzone.com

Dzone is similar to Reddit but specifically targets web developers. The website offers a similar voting system to Reddit. It is a useful resource for new links from web developers.

Google PR: 6
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : 578,644

Submission guidelines:

• Login and free account.

• Submit links to tutorials with description only. No full articles.

• They have a stricter spam control policy and only allow 3 links from one domain per day.

Other Features:

My account where you can view your posted links and also watch links for email notification.

SlashDot

URL: www.slashdot.org

Slashdot focuses on technology, but often crosses into the design realm.

Google PR: 9
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : 2,868,747

Submission guidelines:

• Login and free account.

• Submit links to tutorials with description only. No full articles.

Other Features:

• My account where you can view your posted links and also watch links for email notification.

9) Pixel2Life

URL: www.pixel2life.com

Pixel2life is also one of the largest source of tutorial index catering to graphic designers, webmasters and programmers. You can submit links to tutorials or create a full tutorial page. There is an extra opportunity for SEO as a link to the homepage in addition to link to the tutorial page is published with each submission.

Google PR: 5
Monthly visits (Compete.Com): 69,100

Submission guidelines:

• Free account and login required.

• Submit links to tutorials on your site. Link to tutorial, plus link to homepage and title published.

• You can also write full articles. Author box is automatically included at the end with link o website and profile.

Other Features:

• Forum

10) QBN

URL: www.qbn.com

Design Industry News & Discussion website. A unique website targeting creative industries with an innovative way to promote popular resources. It also features a paid Job section for design related jobs. You can post discussions on the wall with or without links. Works quite differently to other sites mentioned in this list. Users seem largely New York based in my optinion.

Google PR: 6
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : 540,270

Submission guidelines:

• Free account and Login required.

• Instead of publishing standard stories with link and description, you can either post a short message directly to their wall. Links can be included within the post itself.

• You can also post image slideshow or a single image along with a title and link to the design related resource or story on the web.

• Also features design jobs section where users can post.

11) Design Moo

URL: www.designmoo.com

Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : 12,948

Another user generate content driven website for web designers. It works similar to other social bookmarking sites.

Submission guidelines:

• Login and account required. Free.

• Post story links with title, url and description. Not complete articles.

Other features:

• My account section where all your submissions are stored.

• Twitter integration – Users can also easily tweet your post.

• You can also vote or comment on other posts. Although comments do not links to website but to user profile.

12) Design Bump

URL: www.designbump.com

Google PR: N/A
Monthly visits (Compete.Com) : 89,019

Another user generate content driven website for web designers. A social-bookmarking site with other features.

Submission guidelines:

• Login and account required. Free.

• Post story links with title, url and description. Not complete articles.

Other features:

• My account section where all your submissions are stored.

• Twitter integration – Users can also easily tweet your post.

• You can also vote or comment on other posts. Although comments are not with links to site but to profile. Your profile has a do-follow link to your website.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!