Connect with us on Twitter: @vandelaydesign.

HootSuite
HootSuite allows you to manage multiple social media profiles from one dashboard. It integrates with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and more. You can schedule tweets to be sent at a specific time in the future, monitor mentions, send and read direct messages, see how many people click on links in your tweets, and more. The features mentioned above are all available on the free plan. A premium plan is also available for $5.99 per month that ads features for teams and provides Google Analytics integration.

TweetDeck
TweetDeck is a popular web app and desktop app. It provides you with customizable columns to view what’s most important to you, and filters to see the exact content that you need.  Tweets can be scheduled for the future to get the most exposure. You can manage unlimited accounts with this free app.

Buffer
Buffer allows you to add tweets and Facebook posts to your buffer and it will automatically schedule them to be sent out throughout the day. So rather than being on Twitter, of Facebook, all day, you can simply fill up your buffer and let it do the work throughout the day.

Tweriod
Tweriod is a simple, but helpful, tool. It analyzes your tweets and your followers tweets to find the time of day that will give your tweets the most exposure. Knowing this info will allow you to schedule your most important tweets when they will be seen by the most people.

TweetsMap
If you’re curious about where you Twitter followers are from, TweetsMap will quickly gather and display that data for you.

ManageFlitter
ManageFlitter is a helpful free tool that will allow you to clean up your Twitter account by finding inactive people that you follow and find users that aren’t following you back. You can also search within your Twitter stream and link Google+ to your Twitter account.

Commun.it
Commun.it is an advanced tool that focuses on helping you to manage your community more efficiently. You can see a feed from top influencers and top supports that have engaged with you recently, view all of your engagements with a user in one thread, discover new leads that have shared links to your site, and more.

Tweepi
Tweepi allows you to flush those who haven’t followed you, reciprocate to those who are following you, unfollow inactive users, and helps you to discover new people. Pricing starts at $7.49 per month with a limited free plan available.

MarketMeSuite
MarketMeSuite is a free social media dashboard that includes many features for Twitter users, including managing conversations, managing multiple accounts, schedule tweets, using geo-targeting to find local connections, and much more.

Twilert
Twilert sends you alerts by email when someone’s tweet contains your brand name, product name, or any word/phrase that you setup (similar to Google Alerts, but for tweets).

BirdHerd
BirdHerd is a Twitter app created specifically for groups and teams. Multiple people can update a single Twitter account with BirdHerd. You can also use whatever Twitter client you want for updating the group account.

GroupTweet
GroupTweet is another app for groups and teams. Optionally, tweets can be moderated before being posted if you want to retain full control over the group’s posts. Like BirdHerd, you can also use any Twitter client with GroupTweet.

Twhirl
Twhirl is a desktop client that will display notifications  for new messages and tweets. You can use your choice of several URL shorteners, find tweets that mention you, and more.

Twtpoll
Twtpoll helps with engaging your followers by allowing you to create polls and surveys.

dlvr.it
dlvr.it automatically delivers your blog content to Twitter. You can set up specific times for it to check your blog for new content to share.

For more social media-related resources and content, please see:

• 21 Resources for Effective Facebook Fan Pages
• 40 Sets of Free Social Media Icons
• 5 Steps to a Stronger Social Media Presence

Setting up an effective Facebook fan page isn’t always that easy, but there are plenty of resources out there that can help. In this post we’ll look at some of the best places to get fan page templates that can serve as a starting point, services and apps that allow you to easily create custom fan pages, and apps that help businesses to sell products from their Facebook pages.

Create Fan Pages:

If you’re looking for an easy way to create a fan page for your own business or for your clients, here are some resources that may help.

Pagemodo
Create fan pages with no coding required. Pricing from free to $33 per month. Pro templates are available for plans starting at $13 per month.

Wix
Choose a template as a starting point, then customize it to meet your needs with no coding required.

Fan Page Engine
Use the drag-and-drop page creator with no coding. Create a reveal tab to require visitors to “like” your page before viewing the content.

WP4FB
A WordPress plugin that makes it easy to create custom Facebook fan pages. You can manage an unlimited number of Facebook pages from one install.  Includes viral features like FanGate, ShareGate, and InviteGate.

Fan Page Themes
Professionally designed and coded themes that can be purchased for your Facebook page.

Tab Site
Drag N Build platform to allow for easy customization of fan pages. Pricing ranges from free to $15 per month.

ShortStack
Customize your Facebook page with contests, sweepstakes, videos, custom forms and more.  Set up fan-only content to encourage more likes. Pricing ranges from free to $300 per month.

Fan Page in a Box
Templates, scripts, PSD files, and other resources for creating fan pages. Prices start at $9.95 per month.

Free Fan Page Templates
Free templates as well as step-by-step instructions for setting up your page with one of the templates.

Facebook Templates 2U
Free and premium templates available.

PageRage
A large selection of free templates.

E-Commerce:

E-Commerce on Facebook has become more popular recently, which has led to a large selection of resources and apps for setting up your shop on Facebook. The following apps will allow you to sell products directly from your Facebook page, or integrate Facebook with your existing e-commerce website.

Highwire

Zibaba

Payvment

Ecwid

VendorShop

Storefront Social

SocialShop2

Fluid Social

Tab Juice

Shop Igniter

For other great resources please see:

• 70 Dual Monitor Wallpapers
• 35 Quality Brochure Templates
• 39 Beautiful Email Newsletter Templates
• 19 Resources for Getting Design Feedback
• 5,000+ Free Photoshop Gradients for Designers

Fortunately, there are a number of free sets of quality social media icons. In this post we’ll feature 40 social media icon sets from various designers. Click on the links to be led to the source where the icons can be downloaded. As always when you are dealing with freebies, check the terms and conditions to be sure that you’re using them in a way that is allowed by the designer.

ElegantThemes Social Media Icons

Socializic

Social Media Sleek Icons

Pixel-Perfect Social Media Icons

Old Bottle Crowns

Social Mate

Large Icons Social

A Life in Pixels

Rivet Social

Vector 3D Social Icons

Isometrica

Social Sketches

Cheers

Heart

Page Peel

Handycons

Handycons 2

Circular Social Media Icons

Circular Social Media Icons

Socialize

Social Snow

Buddycons

Social Media Bubblicons

Orb Social Media

Social Media Bubbles

Sleek Social

Social Media Balloons

SocialClean

Glossy Social Icons

WG Social Media Icons

Splatter Social Media Icons

Vintage Icons

Scribble Social Media Icons

Vintage Stamp Social Media Icons

OLED Social Icons

Social Buzz

Hand-Drawn Social Media Icons

Vector Social Media Icons

Starry Site

Social Media Stars

For more resources please see:

• 25 of the Best Calligraphy Fonts
• 25 Beautiful and Free Thin Fonts
• Adobe Illustrator Brushes: Best Of
• 45 Amazing and Free Photoshop Actions
• 35 Tutorials and Guides for Working with Wacom Tablets

Vandelay Design (Blog, Facebook)

Smashing Magazine (Blog, Facebook)

Six Revisions (Blog, Facebook)

Psdtuts (Blog, Facebook)

Nettuts (Blog, Facebook)

Vectortuts (Blog, Facebook)

Webdesigner Depot (Blog, Facebook)

Web Design Ledger (Blog, Facebook)

Abduzeedo (Blog, Facebook)

Onextrapixel (Blog, Facebook)

DesignM.ag (Blog, Facebook)

CSS-Tricks (Blog, Facebook)

Design Shack (Blog, Facebook)

Freelance Folder (Blog, Facebook)

Hongkiat (Blog, Facebook)

UX Booth (Blog, Facebook)

A List Apart (Blog, Facebook)

Speckyboy Design Magazine (Blog, Facebook)

Naldz Graphics (Blog, Facebook)

Boagworld (Blog, Facebook)

1st Web Designer (Blog, Facebook)

WeGraphics (Blog, Facebook)

Pelfusion (Blog, Facebook)

WPCandy (Blog, Facebook)

Inspired Magazine (Blog, Facebook)

Echo Enduring (Blog, Facebook)

PsDeluxe (Blog, Facebook)

PSD Vault (Blog, Facebook)

Creative Nerds (Blog, Facebook)

CrazyLeaf Design Blog (Blog, Facebook)

AEXT.net (Blog, Facebook)

Design Informer (Blog, Facebook)

Designer Daily (Blog, Facebook)

Design Juices (Blog, Facebook)

Think Vitamin (Blog, Facebook)

Colorburned (Blog, Facebook)

The Design Cubicle (Blog, Facebook)

Design Instruct (Blog, Facebook)

Design Reviver (Blog, Facebook)

Little Box of Ideas (Blog, Facebook)

Logo Design Love (Blog, Facebook)

Pro Blog Design (Blog, Facebook)

PV.M Garage (Blog, Facebook)

Smashing Apps (Blog, Facebook)

Tripwire Magazine (Blog, Facebook)

Vectips (Blog, Facebook)

Come join us at Facebook!

Many designers who are using social media are not getting the most out of it. In this post we’ll look at 5 simple steps that you can take to improve your effectiveness with social media, regardless of whether you are already a user or if you have not yet gotten started with social media.

Step 1: Identify Your Goals and Priorities

It’s important to set a solid foundation for your efforts with social media by first defining what you hope to get out of it. This is a critical step that many designers and freelancers overlook. Yes, social media can have a significant impact on your business, but you need to have some direction or else you will be wasting your time.

Some common goals or priorities for designers who are using social media include finding new clients, networking with other designers, increasing traffic to their website or blog, improving name recognition and branding, finding a new job, and simply enjoying activity with the community of users. It’s possible to improve your business or career in any number of ways with social media, but you need to be aware of what is important to you because it should shape the way in which you use social media.

Step 2: Target a Few Specific Social Media Sites

There are literally hundreds of social media sites out there, and there is no way anyone can or should use them all. In order to make the best use of your time with social media, and to avoid having it consume all of your time, it is best to choose a small number of social media sites that you want to use actively and on a regular basis. For designers it may be major sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Digg, or it could be smaller niche sites like Design Bump, The Web Blend, Design:Related, and many others.

When choosing your targeted sites, keep your goals and priorities in mind. If you’re looking to send traffic to your website or blog any of the major sites will have potential, and smaller niche sites can be a great choice for getting targeted traffic. If you’re not interested in getting traffic to your site or sharing useful links with others, social news sites can basically be eliminated and you can focus on sites that are more networking-oriented. If you’re hoping to use social media to land a job, being active on LinkedIn or other professional sites would be a good decision.

So as you can see, the different social media sites have their own distinct characteristics that you should consider. Take some time to check out the audiences of the sites that you are evaluating and find out which audiences would be the best fit to help you achieve your goals.

Once you have a few sites targeted (I would recommend 2-5 sites), set up your profile if you have not already done so, and start to participate.

Step 3: Find Tools to Help

While social media presents great opportunities for you and your business/career, it is also very easy to spend way too much time using social media. You can make the most of the time that you have available and keep yourself organized by finding some tools to help. Here are a few to consider:

Tweetdeck – With Tweetdeck you can update your profile on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google Buzz and more. Tweetdeck also helps to organize your conversations across social media and to see when other people are talking about you.

HootSuite – HootSuite is an online app that acts as your social media dashboard. You can organize your use of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and more. You can schedule messages for the future, track your stats, and even collaborate with team members.

Twirl – Twirl is similar to Tweetdeck and HootSuite in that it helps you to manage your various social networking profiles.

There are hundreds or thousands of other useful apps that may be able to help you. You can search marketplaces like the iPhone app marketplace, Android app marketplace, or you can follow leading sites like Mashable and ReadWriteWeb that often post on various apps.

Step 4: Set Time in Your Schedule for Social Media

If social media is a priority for you and your business, you will need to set aside time to participate at the sites you are targeting or else you will probably get busy with your other work and never get around to it. They key is not to spend tons of time on these sites, but rather to make an impact with the time that you do have. If you’ve done an effective job with the first 3 steps you can easily have an impact with 30 minutes per day, or even less.

Setting aside some time for social media will help to ensure that you consistently use the sites, consistency is key, but it will also help to limit the amount of time that you spend so you don’t waste the whole day browsing through links that you’ve found through social media.

Step 5: Focus on Quality Over Quantity

When it comes to social media there is a huge difference in high-quality connections and low-quality connections. Try not to get caught up in comparing how many Twitter followers or Facebook fans you have in comparison to someone else. Having a high number is not required in order to be successful with social media. Having quality interaction with others and making an impact is possible even without having a lot of followers, fans, or friends.

Focus on using your time with social media to have genuine interaction with other users, and don’t take shortcuts or use tricks to build up numbers that really don’t matter anyway.

What’s Your Experience?

Do you use social media? If so, what role does it have in your business and what tips do you have for our readers?

A few days ago I was contacted about a new site that targets the web design community. Design Bump is a niche social media site that was launched recently and is already building a bit of an audience.

Being built on Pligg, (My apologies. The site is actually built on Drupal) the popular open-source option for social media sites, Design Bump functions in a way that will be very familiar to many of you. The site has similar content and a similar audience to Design Float.

This blog has really benefited from niche sites for designers, like Design Float, so I hope Design Bump takes off as well. It will be interesting to see how both of these sites are able to attract and maintain users since they have essentially the same audience. Personally, I already visit Design Float on a daily basis and adding Design Bump to my daily stops shouldn’t be an issue.

Design Float was able to built part of its audience as a result of being featured in a number of CSS galleries, so we’ll see if Design Bump can do the same. I think Design Float has also grown as a result of offering bloggers the button to put on their posts that allows visitors to “float” the post. That helped to spread the word about the site and it continually encourages users to vote and stay active. At this point Design Bump does not have any buttons or widgets to use.

If you’re looking for a place to promote your own content, I can say that I have received some traffic from Design Bump to my posts that have been submitted. Of course, as a new site it won’t send floods of visitors to your blog, but I did see over 30 visitors the first day after I submitted a few posts.

If you haven’t visited Design Bump, I would encourage you to check it out and consider creating an account.

Twitter seems to be gaining popularity almost every day. As a new user I decided it would be helpful to do some research to find designers who would be worth following. This list is not intended to be all-inclusive (so please add a link to your profile in the comments if you like), but it should give you a great start to following some talented designers. This is a list of over 50 designers, in no particular order, with a link to their Twitter profile.

cssglobe - Alen Grakalic of CSS Globe

chriscoyier – Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks

snookca – Jonathan Snook of Snook.ca

zeldman – Jeffrey Zeldman of Happy Cog

vpieters - Veerle Pieters of Veerle’s Blog

mike9r – Mike Rundle of 9 Rules

randaclay – Randa Clay

cameronmoll – Cameron Moll of Authentic Jobs

andybudd – Andy Budd

simplebits – Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits

danbenjamin - Dan Benjamin of Hivelogic

mollydotcom – Molly Holzschlag of Molly.com

adactio – Jeremy Keith of Adactio

clagnut – Richard Rutter of Clagnut

clearleft – Clearleft

collylogic – Simon Collison of Colly.com

mezzoblue – Dave Shea of Mezzoblue

orderedlist – Steve Smith of Ordered List

ryancarson – Ryan Carson of Carsonified

jophillips – Jon Phillips of Spyre Studios

blogdesignblog – Vinh Le of Blog Design Blog

bartelme – Wolfgang Bartelme of Bartelme Design

tdhedengren - Thord Daniel Hedengren

justcreative – Jacob Cass of Just Creative Design

imjustcreative – Graham Smith of ImJustCreative.com

gracesmith – Grace Smith of PostScript5

feather – Derek Featherstone of Box of Chocolates

danrubin – Dan Rubin of Superfluous Banter

ilovetypography – I Love Typography

jcroft - Jeff Croft

tonychester – Tony Chester of OnWired

meyerweb – Eric Meyer

larissameek – Larissa Meek

stillframe – Brad Smith of The Big Noob

elliotjaystocks – Elliot Jay Stocks

shauninman – Shaun Inman

markboulton – Mark Boulton

rsg – Rob Goodlatte

sarahparmenter – Sarah Parmenter of You Know Who Design

iamluc – Luc Melgar of Octwelve

collis – Collis Ta’eed of Eden

abduzeedo – Fabio Sasso of Abduzeedo

wpcandy – WP Candy

bgardner – Brian Gardner

corymiller303 – Corey Miller of iThemes

youthedesigner – Gino Orlandi of You the Designer

adii – Adii

dustinbrewer – Dustin Brewer

tkadlec – Tim Kadlec

seanHodge – Sean Hodge of AiBurn

chrisspooner – Chris Spooner of Spoon Graphics

Woork – Antonio Lupetti of Woork

As I mentioned at the start of the post, please feel free to add a link to your profile in the comments. My profile is stevensnell.

8 Ways Design Influences Social Media Users:

1. First Impression

The first impression of any visitor, regardless of how they arrive at your site, will be heavily influenced by the appearance of the site. Generally, opinions are formed in a matter of seconds, not minutes, so creating a positive impression is critical. While most of your website’s visitors will have a short attention span, social media users are notoriously quick to leave a site that doesn’t impress them right away.

Obviously, when it comes to social media, first impressions can help you or hurt you. Try to evaluate your site from the perspective of a first-time visitor that is arriving from social media. Would the page increase the chances of getting your vote, or would it make you want to leave and visit another site? Pictures and images can often help with creating first impressions. A great example of this is Blog Well’s post 100+ Resources for Web Developers. This post was popular on Digg, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us. While there are plenty of other similar lists for designers and developers, this one got a boost from a picture at the top of the post (screenshot below). Interestingly, the majority of the comments on the Digg submission (which received over 2,000 diggs) had nothing to do with the article or the developer resources, but rather the girl. This is an example of a blog using a picture to capture the attention of visitors (at least male visitors) and using that to attract social media votes

2. Page Load Time

Because most social media users are impatient, and because they have hundreds of other pages waiting for them to visit, page load time becomes even more of a factor than it is in general. If you plan to market heavily with social media, it’s a good idea to design your site to load as quickly as possible. This doesn’t mean that no slow-loading pages will have success with social media, but it can help you out if visitors are able to get to your content very quickly.

3. Readability of Content

If social media users are voting for content that they like, they need to be able to easily read the content in the first place. Most visitors that come from social media will be scanning the page rather than reading word-for-word, so make it easy on them by using short paragraphs, plenty of whitespace, bulleted lists, bold text, etc. Take the time to consider the layout of the page and how it will affect readability.

4. Emphasis of Content

If you hope to impress social media voters with your content, make sure it is front and center and impossible to miss. Are there other distractions in the design that will keep emphasis away from the content? Sometimes you will see content that is filled with advertisements not doing very well with social media when it could be doing much better with different ad placement.

5. Implementation of Buttons/Widgets into the Design

Most social media sites provide buttons, widgets or links that you can use on your site to encourage visitors to vote. These can be very helpful, especially if they are effectively incorporated into the design. When designing with these in mind, you’ll want them to be located where they will be noticed, but not in the way.

6. Branding

If you are marketing your site through social media on an ongoing basis, as more and more social media users are exposed to your site, your branding will be impacted. How does the design of your site allow you to brand yourself in a way that will make an impact with social media users?

7. Navigation

Typically, social media traffic will average a low number of page views. You can improve this by using effective navigation that leads visitors to other content that they are likely to be interested in. From my experience, the most effective way to encourage social media visitors to look at other pages is to include internal links within the body of the content. With this strategy, you may be able to drastically increase the amount of traffic that older posts receive.

Effect design should also include navigation bars or menus that lead visitors to other relevant content. In my opinion, this can help to increase page views, but not as much as links within the content itself.

8. Subscribers

If you are attempting to gain subscribers through social media marketing, be sure to design your pages so that your subscription options are clear and easy to see. Typically, you will want to keep them high on the page so they are noticed right away, and you may want to use standard icons that are easily recognized by potential subscribers.

What’s Your Opinion?

In what ways do you feel that design impacts social media success? Do you have anything specific from your experience that you would like to share?

Looking for More on Social Media?

If you are interested in social media marketing, check out my other blog Traffikd where I focus on social media and traffic building.

Social networking and social media sites are a great alternative, as they give you an opportunity to quickly find information that other users have submitted and appreciated. But with so many social media sites to choose from, monitoring them can be just as time consuming as subscribing to hundreds of blog feeds.

Because of the time crunch, you may want to spend your time on the social networks that continuously provide the best design-related content. In this post I’ll take a look at a number of different networks and the type of content that is provided on each.

When it comes to finding content that is specific to the subject of web design, you really have two basic choices. There are several niche social media sites that focus on content relevant to web designers and developers, and there are also general sites that offer web design as a category.

Design Float

Design Float is a niche site that takes a broad-based approach when compared to a few other niche sites. There are various categories such as graphic design and business/freelancing. Design Float appeals to designs that use other mediums besides just web design. While Design Float is less than 1 year old, it has a fairly large and active community.

Typically, a submission to Design Float will require about 3 votes, or “floats”, to be promoted to the front page (including the vote of the submitter). There are a number of submissions that become popular each day, and there is an RSS feed for popular entries, as well as separate feeds for each category.

My opinion is that the broad-based approach is both a strength and a weakness. As an active user of Design Float, I appreciate the variety of the content on the front page, and it certainly gives opportunities to more bloggers to gain exposure. However, I also think in some ways it has an effect on the quality of some content that makes it to the front page, and because I go there for web design content, some of it is not relevant to me.

Generally, I visit Design Float every day to find new content, and I like the fact that there are 24 entries on the front page at a time, which means less clicking through to endless pages to find content. Personally, I prefer the niche approach rather than finding design content at Digg, which is why Andrew created Design Float.

Here is a sampling of some submissions that have been on the front page during the past few days:

• Simple Images Slider to Create Flickr-Like Slideshows
• So You Wanna Design T-Shirts? Part 1: There Are THAT Many Ways to Design a T-Shirt?
• Student Questions: What Should I Study to Become a Web Designer?
• Top 12 CSS Frameworks and How to Understand Them
• 30 Years of Jacqueline S. Casey Posters
• Adding Post Thumbnails in WordPress
• Better Blog Design Through Redesigning a Sidebar

DZone

DZone is a social media site for web developers and software developers. Because it emphasizes development over design, the content at DZone is more advanced and technical than what you will find at any of the other social networks mentioned here.

To content that makes it to the front page is very targeted because of DZone’s approach to providing only the most relevant content. Typically, it will take about 5 votes to get a submission to the front page, and content that isn’t relevant to developers has no chance. Not everything that relates to web design will be appropriate for DZone. If you use the site for a while you will get a good feel about what fits at DZone and what doesn’t.

Like Design Float, I visit DZone on a daily basis because I know I will always find well-written and relevant articles. In fact, the RSS feed for popular items has about 12,000 subscribers.

Recent popular submissions that focus on web design and development include:

• Simplicity on the Web: Designing to Hide Features
• CSS Fixed Layouts Starter Kit
• Meta Tags in ASP.NET using MasterPage and ContentPlaceHolders
• reForm: CSS Form Design Template for Any Layout
• The Amazing LI: Using CSS and Unordered List Items to Do Just About Anything
• 10 Websites that Use JavaScript Animation Effectively
• Showcases of Creative Flash Preloaders

Design Related

Design Related is a niche site for designers of all kinds. The site offers more than just links to design content, but it’s news section is really what makes it belong in this conversation. With a smaller audience than the other sites we’re looking at, Design Related’s community is still growing.

The content that you’ll find in the news section is very diverse, and only a portion of it will relate to web design. Currently, there doesn’t seem to be a large amount of content here, but hopefully it will grow with time as the community itself grows.

A sampling of some recent popular submissions includes:

• Adobe Photoshop Express Released
• The Lone Web Designer: Strategies for Competing Against the Big Agencies
• What Are Your Principles of Good Design?
• 16 Bad Ass Band Posters

CSS Globe

While CSS Globe is not a social media site, the community news section is an excellent resource for finding information that other community members have submitted. CSS Globe also features some original articles written by Alen Grakalic, who participated in our group interview last week.

The CSS Globe community is pretty active, and typically there are a few new submissions each day. Personally, I subscribe to the combined RSS feed that includes both original articles and community news. If you’re interested in staying on top of design-related news and finding plenty of great articles, I suggest you subscribe to the feed or at least visit the site on a regular basis.

Here are some of the recent submissions to the community news section:

• CSS Compatibility and Internet Explorer
• Views from a Screen Reader User
• 10 CSS Navigation Menus
• Designer’s Toolbox: Blank CSS Template
• Subversion for Designers
• List of Google Analytics Alternatives
• 6 Web Design Tips from Leonardo da Vinci
• 24 Great Niche Galleries

CSS Drive

CSS Drive is a community site that includes a gallery, navigation menus, forums, and a news section that is similar to the community news at CSS Globe. The news at CSS Drive is also submitted by users, although it’s a smaller group of select members that can submit news.

The news items that are submitted can be voted up or down by visitors, although the votes don’t affect the positioning on the page like it would with a social media site. The content at CSS Drive is very targeted to designers and you’re certain to find something of interest (and of course there is an RSS feed ).

Recent news items include:

• Grid-Based Design: Six Creative Column Techniques
• Free Glass Style RSS Feed IconsEvaluating the WordPress 2.5 Interface
• ScrnShots – Share Your Inspiration
• The Evolution of Websites: How 10 Popular Websites Have (And Have Not) Changed
• 25 Ways to Improve Your Site in 5 Minutes

Noupe

Noupe is a design blog that is growing pretty quickly, with over 1,500 subscribers. Nora has recently added a design news section similar to those at CSS Globe and CSS Drive. Anyone can submit a link for inclusion, and submissions are moderated before being posted.

So far there are about 1 or 2 items added each day, and it’s worth checking out at least occasionally. Some of the recent submissions include:

• How to Get Paid Freelance Work While You’re Still a Design Student
• Grid-Based Design 101
• 12 Fantastically Free Graffiti Fonts
• 22 Most Creative Web Portfolios

Delicious

The most popular bookmarking site has a very high percentage of technical users, which means that although it is a general site as opposed to a niche site, there is plenty of web design-related content that gets promoted to the front page. Delicious consistently showcases excellent content, resources, and tools for designers.

Because the items on the front page are there because of gaining bookmarks from users, you’ll find a lot of really useful resources that can save you time and make your life a bit easier. After all, that’s one of the main reasons someone will bookmark a page for future use. If you’re looking for articles and discussions, some of the other social networks are probably a bit better.

I visit delicious several times throughout each day to see what is currently on the front page, because I can quickly see what’s there, and because I usually find something of interest. In addition to just visiting the front page, check out the pages for specific tags, like design, web design, WordPress, Web 2.0, and WebDev.

If you’ve been visiting the Delicious front page recently, you may have seen:

• 9 Best Practices for Email Design
• Adobe Photoshop Video Tutorials – Best Of
• 63 Essential WordPress Hacks, Tutorials, Help Files and Cheats
• 960 Grid System
• Top 10 WordPress CMS Plugins
• Planning Your Stylesheet – The Definitive Guide

Digg

Digg is of course the most popular social news site, and fortunately it has categories for design and programming within the technology category. However, there aren’t as many submissions that get promoted to the front page from these categories as there are from some of the others. In this case, you may also want to visit the upcoming pages in these categories to find more content of interest.

Personally, I use Digg, but not on a daily basis. I feel like I find better content at many of the niche sites or at Delicious. My opinion is that the stories in these categories that make it to the front page are not usually the best available information, but rather they come from bloggers who target Digg or have connections to power users. I have no problem with this, I’ve targeted Digg in the past, but I think it doesn’t always result in the high-quality content making it to the front page.

Here are three submission that have recently been popular on Digg:

• 10 JavaScript Effects to Boost Your Website’s Fanciness Factor
• 101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Website
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StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is probably the hottest social media network, and also the most unique. As a general site, StumbleUpon can be a source for any type of content, including web design.

On the toolbar, see where it says “All” with a down arrow. Click on the arrow and select computers and then web development. Or, select arts and then graphic design. Or, you can view hot links in design .

Recently popular links include:

• Design a Smooth Web 2.0 Navigation
• Learning Web Design from Movie Posters
• 55+ Color Tools

Which Networks Do You Rely On to Find Design Related Content?

Personally, the ones I use most actively are Design Float, DZone, del.icio.us, and CSS Globe. But I’m interested to hear about your favorites.

popurls

The most popular submissions on major social media sites including Digg, Reddit, and del.icio.us are displayed on popurls.com , which has a significant amount of traffic itself. So, if you are fortunate enough to get thousands of visitors from a particular social media site, you may also get hundreds or more from popurls. In a few cases I have received almost as much traffic from popurls as I have from del.icio.us on the day that a particular blog post made it to the del.icio.us front page.

Inbound Links

Aside from huge amounts of traffic, inbound links are the most sought after result of SMM. In fact, for many marketers links are the ultimate goal and traffic is just a means of achieving that goal. A successful social media campaign will bring plenty of links from other websites and blogs. Some social media websites are better at leading to links than others. Personally, I’ve had good results drawing links through hitting the front page of Digg and del.icio.us more so than any other social media sites.

Links from del.icio.us Bookmarks

One of the reasons that del.icio.us produces such strong results for link building is that some del.icio.us users publish their bookmarks to their blogs. Del.icio.us provides a simple option that allows any user to automatically have their bookmarks published to their blog at the end of each day. Pages that make it to the del.icio.us front page will typically draw a number of these links. To see some in action, pick out a few popular items from the del.icio.us front page, and tomorrow do a Technorati search to check for their recent links.

Higher PageRank

While it’s certainly not a guaranteed result, pages that are successful with social media and draw a significant number of inbound links are likely to receive a higher PageRank from Google. On this blog several of the posts that have had great success with social media have a higher PR than the blog front page. These are the only posts that have managed to reach this level of PR.

Copy Cats

Pages that become popular with social media are much more likely to be copied or stolen by others than the typical blog post would be. These pages obviously get tons of exposure, which means more opportunity to be copied, plus they have proven to be well-liked, which is a big plus for copy cats and scrapers. Stopping this can be very difficult, and from my opinion isn’t usually worth the time. The best way that I have found to combat it is to include internal links to other pages on your website/blog whenever possible. Most of the time when your content is stolen or scraped the links will be left in tact and at least it will be pointing back to your site. For WordPress users, the RSS Footer plugin can help with this too.

Comments

Blog posts that do well with social media are almost guaranteed to get more comments than your average post. This isn’t always positive. Social media success will sometimes lead people to your blog that are just looking to find something wrong. It’s not really a big deal if someone posts a negative comment, you can always delete it if it’s in poor taste or inappropriate. You will have less control over the comments left directly at social media sites themselves. Digg is notorious for negative comments even on the most popular and high quality submissions. If you’re marketing with Digg you’ll quickly learn to not even read the comments or you’ll grow some thick skin.

Knowing the Quality of Your Hosting Provider

If you’re unsure about the quality of your web host, get to the front page of Digg and see how it holds up. Most low-cost shared hosting plans aren’t sufficient for withstanding mobs of traffic in a short period of time, and as a result the site will likely go down.

Search Engine Traffic

The inbound links that result from social media success are likely to help you achieve strong search engine rankings for that particular page. Your pages that are popular with social media are likely to be your most productive in terms of search engine traffic as well.

Foreign Links and Traffic

Depending on the subject and format of the page, you may also see a boost in traffic and links from foreign websites. On my primary blog I have had success promoting resource lists for web designers. These posts typically include a bunch of links to resources that will help designers with a specific aspect of web development. Typically, these posts will each draw several links from foreign websites and blogs, and some have even become popular on foreign social media sites. A resource list can still be useful to those with limited English skills, whereas the typical blog post would have no relevance to them. One time I even had a resource list become popular on a foreign Digg clone that sent over 5,000 visitors in one day.

What Did I Miss?

From your experience with SMM what are some other secondary results?