I’ve been on Dribbble for almost 6 years. I’ve published over 90 designs, and it’s helped me land some really interesting jobs and amazing clients. I wanted to give back to the awesome Dribbble community, so I put together 8 tips that I’ve discovered during my time spent using Dribbble. There’s no silver bullet or universal recipe here. This is just the list of things that have helped me on Dribbble.
1. Share as much as you can
The first important rule to grow your audience is to share as much as you can, and ideally on consistent basis. The worst thing to do is to get afraid and keep your work to yourself (I used to do this and sometimes still do). Don’t be afraid to share your work. It’s only when you share it that you will be able to get feedback from people and get to the next level.
“Never stop sharing, but make sure you keep the quality high.“
2. Produce great work
You shouldn’t be focused on numbers (too much). You should be sitting heads down working on your next big thing, putting in the extra effort required to built something great and new. Trust me, if you combine your maximum effort with a bit of luck, you will be recognized sooner or later.
“Produce great work and numbers will come afterwards.”
3. Show behind the scenes progress
Most people, including myself, are more curious about the actual process of creating a design, rather than only the outcome. Try to share bits of your process with your audience. You can take images of you working on the project, videos, or even write down an entire article on Medium on how you solved that specific problem. It takes extra effort to do this, but it’s extremely valuable for your audience.
“People want to see the magic behind the curtain. Don’t be afraid to pull the curtain and uncover the magic.”
4. Show your passion and story
Have you ever heard about successful people who can’t tell stories or who are bad speakers? The majority of successful people are storytellers. People love stories. If you want to be successful on Dribbble or on any other network, you should share your story and your process with people. This is extremely valuable, since people are looking for insights from the industry, and not just that you have created a new dashboard. Don’t just tell them what you will do next. Tell them how and why as well.
5. Expose your other social accounts
Dribbble is an excellent source of traffic and a great place where people can discover your work. However, it’s also a great way for people to discover your other social accounts, such as Instagram, Twitter, etc. Make sure that you connect all of those accounts to your Dribbble and regularly link them. Share your behind the scenes work on Instagram and Twitter. Keep people motivated to follow your accounts.
6. Plan your posts
When you are working on a project, you spend lot of time and energy on it. You shouldn’t waste all your work with one Dribbble post. Make sure that you spread the work and get more out of it. Divide it into pieces and share it in multiple posts. I usually use the following pattern:
- Introduction post — Share a sneak peek of what you are working on.
- Animation post — Share the project with a nice motion prototype.
- Case study post — Share the full work with an attachment.
- Results post — Share with your audience the design’s successes.
In between, you should share small snippets of the project on your social media. You can share images on Instagram, textual updates on Twitter, and video teasers on YouTube.
7. Give feedback to others
As I mentioned in a previous article, feedback on Dribbble is broken. However, the best way to improve on Dribbble is to give others honest comments. When you see that there might be something off or to be improved on a design, go and tell that to the designer, obviously while maintaining maximum respect since you know they spent time on the design.
8. Never stop exploring new designs
There is no finish line on Dribbble. Just keep producing great work and sharing it with people, and you will see yourself moving forward.
If you are interested in more about my design process and my recent exploration of VR designs, make sure that you check out my Twitter. If you are interested in flying drones and exploring new countries, make sure that you check myInstagram. For anything else, add me on Facebook.
I run the design team at Toptal, where we hold ourselves to a world-class design standard and push ourselves to improve our creative efforts every day.
Those excellent illustrations are by Dan Dragomir make sure you follow him.
Repost from Mockplus.com.
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