If there’s something that we can be sure about regarding Web 3.0 is that social media will occupy a huge role in business and companies will need to pay more attention to sites like Twitter and Facebook because that’s where the money is.
On this article we have chosen Twitter, the world-famous microblogging website that since the Ashton Kutcher days has attracted millions of followers. We fixed our attention in the design community (which is also our main focus group) considering both independent bloggers and big design blogs that have a good amount of followers and make a constant use of the social network. We made a series of tests that helped us determine the most relevant aspects such as average daily tweets, retweets, use of hashtags and more, all of this with the only purpose of identify how designers relate with their clients and followers via Twitter and subsequently obtain enough information that helped us to write some tips on how to improve your Twitter life and establish the main tweeters you should follow for finding quality design information.
Disclaimer
The Twitter users that are mentioned on this article were not taken from any list or article written in other blogs, the selection was made based in our own experience and quoting all those blogs that have had a good relationship with WebDesignShock and that also make a major contribution to the design community with their tweets. The idea of this post is determine the major Twitter users inside the design community that always deliver great news, articles and links about web design and then study their behavior inside this social network.
Regarding the list, we have to say that there’s not an specific order in the upcoming list, we consider every single one of these blogs as important as the rest and the list has been ordered randomly. We know that there are many other great design blogs out there that are definitely worthy of being followed in Twitter, we did our best to gather the biggest amount of design tweeters possible, if you know about any other design tweeter that should be featured on this list, please leave us a comment.
Retweets, replies and hashtags
In order to understand Twitter and how to properly use it, we must begin by explaining three of the main properties that surround the tweeting activity: Retweets, replies and hashtags, let’s see how they work and when can you use them.
Retweets
Retweets are the best way of showing that you liked something tweeted by somebody and help that person spread the word. There are different ways of making a retweet, though all of them do exactly the same thing, so the only thing that changes is the structure, let’s see how this works.
If you liked it, then retweet it
Once you find a tweet that you like, you can simply hit the retweet button and after confirming your decision clicking on the OK button, you will be sharing it with your followers.
If you want to make a more professional retweet, you can copy the tweet that you liked, then insert a RT at the first part to state that you’re making a retweet, after this you have to quote the author by placing his Twitter username preceded by an @, this will transform the username into a link pointing to that person’s Twitter page.
Finally, you can create a Click to Tweet link, which is a great way to compress a preformatted tweet into a link and send it to all your friends, all they have to do is paste the link and hit Tweet :).
Replies
When someone tweets a question or something that can generate a response from other tweeters, we’re talking about a reply, which is the most common way to begin a public discussion in Twitter that can be joined by everyone, adding more flavor to the chat. Making a reply is really easy, just click on the Reply button and the name of the username will appear at the beginning of the tweet where you will type your reply.
Let the discussion begin!
Hashtags
Another element that you can utilize in your tweets is hashtags. These are useful when you want your tweets to be found by anyone who looks for that specific tag. Hashtags can determine the trending tweets every day by summing how many people decide to use an specific one, you should always use hashtags within your tweets to expand your reach.
Therefore, these are the must-follow tweeters in the design globe
Now we will proceed with the analysis of the major tweeters in the web and graphic design community, considering all the major aspects that we mentioned before, including daily tweets, retweets, hashtags and more. We created a huge spreadsheet where we gathered a lot of data from all the tweeters featured on this article, as we said on the disclaimer, all the info was manually obtained by our staff, so you won’t find anything equal in other websites (unless someone copies it without our consent). After we finished reuniting all the info, we proceeded with the analysis of each parameter in order to infer the characteristics of each tweeter, let’s see the final results obtained after the research.
And the battle begins
Followers vs Following
Regarding the followers / following relation, we can observe that some blogs use Twitter specifically for sharing contents but not too much for obtain information, which turns out in a large number of followers in front of a small number of tweeters followed by that specific user.
On the other hand we have those blogs that actually use Twitter to obtain tons of information and build relations, which is another way of take advantage of this social network. Usually this users are more active and gather many followers and followings that interact with the user every day.
Interactive chart, click over the bars to see the values.
The graphic is showing us a clear example of the two cases we quoted before. First we have Smashing Magazine, a top quality design blog that is followed by thousands of people who want to stay updated with their latest releases and discoveries; secondly we find WebDesignerDepot, which is another humongous design blog that also has thousands of followers but unlike Smashing Magazine, this blog also follows tons of tweeters, which denotes the fact that they utilize Twitter as one of their main information sources.
Total tweets
This parameter shows from the most followed tweeter to the less, the amount of tweets that have been sent through that account. By doing this we can see if a larger number of tweets actually influences in the number of followers of an specific account.
Interactive chart, click over the bars to see the values.
By watching the chart, we can see that though Smashing Magazine is the one with the largest number of followers, this blog doesn’t have the first place in number in tweets, ImJustCreative takes home the golden medal by far though regarding the number of followers, it’s the ninth most followed tweeter.
Based on the number of total tweets and after taking a sample of sent tweets during a week, we have been able to see that the average amount of daily sent tweets goes around 9 (61 weekly), we’re going to check this and other parameters in a deeper level while we evaluate each one of the featured blogs in this article.
Average daily tweets: 14
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Web development.
- Inspiration.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Tutorials.
Webdesigner Depot is an important design blog where you can find awesome articles and tutorials about graphic design, web development and more. The site also works as a showcase where designers can display their work and knowledge with the rest of the community; the site is being permanently updated to bring you the latest news in graphic and web design.
On their Twitter page you can usually find great offers from another project of this team named Mighty Deals, an awesome website for designers and similar where you can find the best daily deals for creative professionals. There’s something else we want to say about WDD, and that’s that when someone tweets something really great, no matter if that person’s Twitter power isn’t high, because the greater your tweets are, the bigger chances you’ll have of being featured by these guys.
Webdesigner Depot has a strong tendency to only use an established way of tweeting. All their tweets contain useful information and their channel is not used as an exchange channel but as a news place where they all publish many great tips and resources.
They also make no use of hashtags, probably due the fact that they already possess an extended amount of followers that guarantees that all their tweets will reach thousands of people. Regarding their average tweets, they post a number of tweets above the average and concentrate more than 150K followers.
Final thoughts
Except for an approximate 7 hours break, Webdesigner Depot tweets permanently awesome design-related things that makes this blog worthy to be followed, which is something very important due time zone factor (while we’re sleeping in Europe they’re starting a new day). Our advice is to program your tweets in a way that they reach audience from all the over the world.
Their Twitter channel already gathers an humongous quantity of followers, which indicates that they’re definitely doing things right. We can suggest a more natural utilization of their profile by having more interaction with their followers, also an occasional hashtag in their tweets can work really well.
Average daily tweets: 18
- Blogging.
- Social networking.
- Personal life.
- Branding.
- Twitter tips.
Darren Rowse is the mastermind behind ProBlogger, a titanic website about blogging and branding yourself on the internet that for many years has been the Holy Bible for bloggers and copywriters. Darren also manages another couple of useful blogs for designers and twitterholics, Digital Photography School and Twitip. On his Twitter page you can find several tips that will help you become a better blogger and take advantage of the internet to promote your brand. Following this tweeter will help you find little tricks to leverage all the potential of Twitter; another thing to say about Darren’s Twitter is that he uses it naturally, talking about his personal life once in a while, turning his site in almost a little personal log.
His Twitter homepage is rarely used to retweet things from other users, as he focuses on releasing his own contents and talk about his personal life. Darren is often very polite with his followers and is always trying to respond their messages and questions without turning his Twitter into a forum.
Replies consist in all the tweets that contain in their structure a name of one or more tweeters preceded by a @ symbol that transforms the name into a link pointing to the user’s profile. Replies are usually made for give an opinion regarding a question formulated by another user, give thanks for a mention in a tweet or a suggestion and finally, you can also use replies to generate a conversation via Twitter with an user.
Despite the fact that he sends more average tweets than replies, our study determined that Darren makes a very natural use of his Twitter evidenced in the fact that he’s always trying to send good inspirational quotes, answer questions from their followers and simply make his Twitter an extension of himself.
Darren is not a big fan of hashtags, though you can find a little bit of them once in a while, usually where he’s making off-topic conversations or making a recommendation.
Final thoughts
From all the Twitter profiles that we saw, this one is definitely one of the best Twitter pages ever. Darren makes a really nice use of his page by establishing a permanent communication with his followers, answering their questions, replying their messages, sending motivational quotes, posting truly helpful tips and more, all of this while he uses Twitter as his little personal log.
Average daily tweets: 16
- Web design.
- Web development.
- Tutorials.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Personal life.
- Off-topic.
Managed by Marco Kuiper, his creator, Marcofolio is one of the nicest web design blogs around for any web design fan. In his blog you will find astounding web development exercises that can give you a hand while programming your website along with useful tips and reviews that are constantly published on his Twitter profile.
There’s something really touching of Marco’s Twitter, he has learned to use Twitter as an extension of himself rather than an advertising spot. You can contact him at anytime you want and he will be happy to reach you back, you can send your articles and tutorials so he can give you some feedback and why not, even retweet them.
Marcofolio sends almost twice the amount of tweets that are sent according to the media.
He also dedicates a considerable part of his Twitter space to reply their followers questions and interact with his friends.
When we talk about informative and non-informative tweets it’s not like we’re saying that non-informative tweets are garbage. Informative tweets are those that inform about new articles, resources and often have links within them, non-informative tweets consist in personal tweets, quotes, customer service issues, replies and similar stuff, so these are not useless tweets but messages that give a more natural vibe to the tweeting experience or are directed to someone specifically.
A perfect balance between personal and informative tweets makes Marcofolio a fun tweeter to follow, his design and development tips are some of the most helpful on the internet.
He usually don’t recur to hashtags, though you can find some occasionally in some of his tweets.
Final thoughts
Marko has definitely one of the most friendly Twitter pages and it’s really fun to follow his tweets. Our only advice is concerning hashtags, which is a Twitter feature that truly enhances the power of tweets by making them easier to find through the search bar, though many people actually abuse of them.
Average daily tweets: 10
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Tutorials.
- Web development.
- Personal life.
- Videogames.
Hosted by Chris Spooner, this blog works as his personal portfolio and also as an amazing design blog where you can find tutorials, design articles, web development references and more. The blog is currently more focused in graphic design since Chris released another blog named Line25 where he talks a little more about web development.
In his Twitter page Chris talks about his major passions, which include graphic design, development and more recently Black Ops. His Twitter page is a reliable source of helpful design material that you can enjoy reading at any time.
Chris usually sends an average daily tweets above the standard, which indicates that he’s a real Twitter fan. He doesn’t make much retweets as he prefers to keep his Twitter in a personal level, which is great because guarantees the originality of all his contents regarding graphic and web design.
He’s very considered with his followers and friends in Twitter, as he always tries to answer their questions and thoughts about his designs and tutorials. Even so, he knows how to handle a perfect balance between replies and average tweets.
Most of his tweets talk about his passions, specially videogames and personal thoughts. Although the major part of his tweets are off-topic, the quality of every design and development tip that he sends makes his Twitter a must-follow page.
Final thoughts
Chris knows exactly how to use his Twitter page, and so far things have been doing well for him. If we can suggest something, we can say that he should probably start using hashtags and retweet once in a while good articles from people that he follows and that other persons may not know about.
Average daily tweets: 6
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Blogging.
- Logo design.
- Tutorials.
- Web development.
- Personal life.
Currently attended by his creator Jacob Cass, a well-known graphic designer and creative, this blog talks about graphic design in general and some personal things about the author. You can find many great graphic and web design articles, tips and many great articles that can help you become a better designer.
Jacob is truly a logo design bugger, currently managing two different sites about this subject: Logo Designer Blog and Logo of The Day, two great websites to find inspiration for all your blog needs. In his Twitter page you can find all the latest news from his blogs and also stay in touch with him for exchange links, make suggestions or simply say hello.
Jacob Cass has a great Twitter page that definitely shows his experience in social networking. He usually sends around 6 tweets where he talks about his life as graphic designer, shares great design tips and discuss important aspects for graphic and web designers.
Jacob focuses more in tweeting his own discoveries and articles than in other people’s tweets. If you saw a retweet in his Twitter page, it’s because that’s definitely a must-read topic.
Jacob is very considered with his followers and reserves a small room in his daily tweets to answer questions and messages from his fans around the world.
Final thoughts
Well what can we say?, Jacob knows Twitter and how to optimize his potential. We can only say good things about his Twitter page except for the fact that he doesn’t use hashtags which as we said are very helpful to increase the reach of tweets, though he probably have a reason for not using them.
Average daily tweets: 21
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Web development.
- Inspiration.
- Personal life.
Mike Lane is an UX designer and developer with a passion for everything about design. In his Twitter page you will find a few jokes along with helpful design links and tips for every web and graphic designer. His blog is currently under maintenance so you’ll have to reach him via Twitter.
A good karma tweeter, Mike is always open to suggestions and observations, which means that if you have a good article and you tweet about it he will be happy to give you a hand by retweeting it.
Less than 1 % of Mike’s tweets are retweets, which means that he only shares something when it’s actually really helpful.
Regarding reply tweets, the fourth part of his tweets are dedicated to this purpose, while the rest are average tweets discussing design trends and similar themes.
Mike makes a good balance between off-topic tweets and informative tweets, using the first ones to interact with his followers and talk a little bit about himself, while the rest of his publications are awesome tips and resources about design.
He uses hashtags occasionally when the tweet needs them, which on this case is during 10 % of the occasions and the 90 % being average tweets.
Final thoughts
Probably the only thing we can say is that a bigger use of retweets can work very well for him and his mates by creating a better design niche and attracting more people to read about graphic and web design. All the other charts show that he’s making a good job with his Twitter page.
Average daily tweets: 6
- Graphic design.
- Blogging.
- Inspiration.
- Freebies.
- Personal life.
- Off-topic.
Sneh Roy is an Australian designer and the mastermind behind Little Box of Ideas, a blog where people can find exclusive interviews, articles and useful resources for designers. Her Twitter page is more focused on her personal life though she often tweets some pretty cool things about graphic design.
By visiting their blog you can find great articles, tutorials and freebies, like the free Dribble invitation contest that was released a few months ago. If you want to reach Sneh just send her a message and she will be glad to contact you.
There’s a good proportion between average tweets and retweets, making this profile into a good place to find good tweets from other people and all the original releases of her author.
She usually replies to all the messages and questions sent by their fans without occupying much space from the actual tweets.
In terms of informative and uninformative tweets, the second ones take a bigger part. These uninformative tweets usually talk about her personal life as well as her design projects.
She makes a decent use of hashtags, with more than a 30 % of her tweets having them, which indicates that she definitely knows when to use them.
Final thoughts
Sneh has a very honest Twitter page where she talks about her personal life, freelance projects and more, while sharing many useful design tips. The only thing we have to say is that probably more design tips will make her fans even happier and will also make an ever greater complement to LBOI.
Average daily tweets: 2
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Web development.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Social networking.
- Freebies.
- Offers.
Speckyboy is a design magazine where you can find tons of quality resources, including articles, tutorials, freebies and more. In the blog’s Twitter page you can find all the latest updates, offers and design resources that many times they discover before the rest.
The site was originally created as Paul Andrew’s personal design website but with the pass of time it evolved into one of the most popular design weblogs around. You can find helpful tutorials, inspirational showcases, articles and more. If you show good karma towards them you can earn a truly valuable group of friends.
Speckyboy has reunited an enormous sum of followers until this date, which indicates that the quality of their contents is good enough to be followed by more than 10K people.
The site focuses on sending good design tips across the day, without giving space to replies or things like that. This means that you will always find great design tips and discoveries from their staff.
Although they don’t usually send replies and use hashtags in their tweets, you can see that a small portion of their publications are retweets from other awesome design pages.
Final thoughts
Speckyboy makes a good use of Twitter as a complementary element to their website. Although they always send useful tweets a bigger amount will probably give to them an even bigger exposure. We consider that by sending more replies and using hashtags, they can cross many frontiers with their tweets while keeping things natural.
Average daily tweets: 15
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Web development.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Social networking.
- Freebies.
- Offers.
Now we have Smashing Magazine, probably the most important design blog nowadays. On their website you can find tons of articles regarding web design, social networks, job offers, good graphic design practices and more articles that make this blog one of the favorite reading sources of many web and graphic designers. In their Twitter page you will find dozens of useful design and web development tips, their latest updates and special offers.
If you want to know a little bit more about SM, you can visit their website or one of the Smashing Network sites which among others include the popular web design blog Noupe. It’s important to state that any tweet has the chance of being featured as long as it’s original and quality content.
When we began the preparation of this article, we decided that one of the aspects that we were going to talk about was the kind of tweets that are sent every day, dividing them into retweets, replies, informative tweets and non-informative tweets (not useless tweets but tweets that involve personal tweets, polls, replies and more). Smashing Magazine sends an average of 15 daily tweets every day with only one of them being a retweet and usually not even that (none), which indicates that they basically utilize Twitter to publish their contents and discoveries.
In the case of Smashing Magazine we have found that they don’t send many replies, which means that when they do is because it’s something truly important for them.
Smashing Magazine sends more informative tweets because after all their key to success is hot of the press contents and resources, while the non-informative tweets are basically replies, answers to costumers and occasionally polls.
As we explained at the beginning of this article, employing hashtags you can expand the reach to your tweets because their main purpose is to make them easier to find, usually hashtags are attached to keywords to leverage all their power. Smashing Magazine does not depend much of hashtags due their huge amount of followers, even so, once in a while you can find hashtags in their tweets when they want to talk about something punctual.
Final thoughts
Smashing Magazine has been making a really good work with their Twitter, worthy of a team full of professionals. Their contents are always helpful and they do their best to never leave a question unanswered, you can usually find awesome tweets informing about offers and freebies to spoil the community, which is something really awesome. We consider that there are basically 2 facts that they can work on: They should probably employ more hashtags in their tweets to help people reach them easily and secondly, their average tweets descend during Saturday, which is a very important day when many bloggers and designers dedicate their time to read and find new things.
Average daily tweets: 7
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Web development.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Social networking.
- Freebies.
- Offers.
Created by graphic designer / web developer Jacob Gube and currently one of the most popular design blogs around, Six Revisions publishes many great articles regarding web and graphic design. On its Twitter page you will find its latest updates, freebies and some useful design tips and resources.
Despite of having a bunch of responsibilities as Chief Editor of Six Revisions, collaborate with another blog named DesignInstruct, write articles for Mashable and Smashing Magazine and even having published his own book about MooTools, Jacob is always a great partner that will be happy to help everyone as long as he’s able to.
Six Revisions uses Twitter the most part of the day to send their own discoveries and share his latest articles, though when they find something that might help the community, they have no problem in sending a retweet.
As other Twitter profiles that we’ve already evaluated, Six Revisions is very considered with the community and is always looking how to solve people’s questions and hear their suggestions on how to improve their website.
Sometimes they publish off-topic tweets and offers that are not necessary informative tweets for all their followers. In any case you can always find a helpful tweet whilst visiting their profile.
Hashtags is something that they don’t use often, only when they have something really specific that they want to share with the entire Twitter community.
Final thoughts
The site works great in general terms, they interact with the community and tweet links from other websites that can aid the design community. Their average daily tweets is also great and guarantees that you will always find something great, maybe the only thing we saw is that they make a little use of hashtags, so that’s our advice.
Average daily tweets: 2
- Web design.
- Web development.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Tutorials.
Cats Who Code is a huge authority in the web development world. In his site you can find amazing tutorials and articles for web developers. In his daily tweets you can find many great scripts, plugins and hacks that can help you with that project that you’re currently working on.
But the Cats family is wider that just one site, You can visit all the other web development sites of the network: WebDevCat, WPRecipes and CatsWhoBlog. All this websites are supported by Jean-Baptiste Young, a professional web developer and blogger, you can reach him via Twitter or from any of the Cats Family websites.
Not too many tweets are sent every day, but almost all of them are helpful tweets for web designers and developers.
Jean-Baptiste has no problem in retweeting things that he like, as you can see on the previous chart.
The same thing happens with replies, they occupy 23 % of their average daily tweets, showing a real concern from the author for solving people’s doubts.
Finally we can observe a perfect balance between informative and uninformative tweets. For each jQuery tip that you find, there will be a little advice or quote from the author.
Final thoughts
Cats Who Code makes a good appropriation of Twitter thanks to the author’s expertise, the only suggestion we can think of is the same one that we have said to other blogs, and that’s that they might want to start using hashtags in their tweets to increase their range instantly.
Average daily tweets: 3
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Social networking.
- Personal life.
Dan Cederholm is the guy in charge of Simple Bits, a personal blog where the author talks about his experience in web and graphic design and occasionally releases really helpful design articles. His Twitter page concentrates more in his social life, with many personal and off-topic tweets, though you can find once in a while really useful tweets about design.
In Simple Bits you can find insightful design articles, read about their current projects and visit the shop to buy some pretty cool articles. Dan is an excellent pal for every young tweeter that wants to begin a career and make partners during the process.
Simple Bits has succeeded in gathering a big amount of followers in a very natural way, which makes it one of the most important Twitter pages about design. Their average daily tweets is below the standard, which could probably be because they don’t make retweets very often.
As we said before, you won’t find many retweets on their page, which definitely affects the amount of tweets that are sent daily in his profile.
On the other hand, we can see that their small quote of retweets is compensated by a good interaction with their community, represented in a 40 % of reply tweets every day.
And by staring at the final chart, we can see that the major part of their tweets are actually dedicated to the community and personal life of the owner, though he stills reserves a considerable part to send graphic and web design tweets.
Final thoughts
We consider that in order to attract more followers, Simple Bits team could send more retweets to increase their average daily tweets and also make more constant appearances in the network. We also recommend them to use hashtags in their tweets to increment their reach.
Average daily tweets: 27
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Tutorials.
- Inspiration
- Blogging.
Our friend Colaja is the chief editor of Webexpedition18, a web design blog where the discussion is on for all graphic and web design. The main goal of this blog is provide high shots of inspiration either by launching big showcases or writing awesome reviews. You can follow his tweets to find more useful resources and articles.
Colaja’s Twitter is one of Webexpedition18 social channels where you can find more helpful resources, articles and retweets from other well-known blogs. If you want your links to be featured you just need to send a direct message (of course it has to bee a worthy tweet) and show a good karma in return.
One of the most active tweeters of the list, Colaja sends around 27 tweets every day, a complete shelling of good graphic design.
He retweets a lot of things from the major design blogs, similar to what Creativeoverflow does.
As for replies, he spends 10 % of his tweeting activity to attend his followers and partners.
This graphic indicates that Colaja is definitely one of the most helpful design sources, sending more than 92 % informative tweets from their 27 average.
He uses hashtags regularly, specially when sending tweets that contain very specific keywords such as Photoshop, Tutorial and more.
Final thoughts
Even though the huge amount of informative tweets is awesome, it’s probable that people won’t be able to read every one of them, so it will be probably a good idea to distribute all tweets in wider time periods. For all the rest we have to say that this is one of the resourceful tweeters in the design land.
Average daily tweets: 34
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Logo design.
- Off-topic.
- Personal life.
In Graham Smith’s Twitter you can find many information about his personal life and hobbies. He also releases some really good design tips and resources that can help you become a better designer. You will have to see through all his personal tweets and we ensure that you’re going to find super high quality design contents.
Every day, Graham sends a couple of retweets of things that he really liked, but still the main part of his storyline shows a preference for his own tweets.
Although we saw that there are not many retweets in his page, when we talk about replies things are different, showing that Graham is a very polite person that always answers people’s suggestions and questions about his page and himself.
And moving on the next graphic, we can see that more than 75 % of his tweets are dedicated to interact with the community, send inspirational quotes and talk about his personal life.
There is a little amount of hashtags in his tweets, which indicates that he’s not a big fan of using them but knows when to implement them.
Final thoughts
This Twitter page works well in general, though we saw that he’s probably taking things a little more to personal life than design, which can give a natural appearance but also drives away many of the people that are following him to find out new design tips and articles.
Average daily tweets: 7
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Resources.
- Freebies.
- Tutorials.
Vandelay is all about design, his website offers professional assistance in web development and graphic design and you can check their portfolio to see what they’re currently working on. In their Twitter page you can reach them for costumer service and also to find good design resources and tips.
But Vandelay Design is not alone, it’s actually a whole design network aiming to help designers across the world, among the sites that are part of this network we can list Folio Focus, CartFrenzy, Minimal Exhibit, Blog Design Heroes, Typeinspire, Icon Fever and Gallery Rush.
Vandelay dedicates around 30 % of its daily tweets to retweets, which indicates that they understand the importance of sharing other people’s tweets that can make a good complement to their tweets.
The site concentrates a big amount of design and development tweets, but you can occasionally find friendly tweets where they answer questions and suggestions from their fans.
Around the same proportion is displayed between informative and non-informative tweets, leaving enough room for friendly and community tweets without leaving abandoned the design topics.
It’s not normal to find hashtags in Vandelay’s tweets because they prefer to send simpler and informative tweets that people can read anytime.
Final thoughts
We can say that Vandelay Design has a good Twitter page where they publish dozens of great design tips while making a natural interaction with the community. Our only suggestion is that they should start using more hashtags in their tweets to increase their reach.
Average daily tweets: 1
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Resources.
- Freebies.
- Inspiration.
Hosted by graphic designer and blogging enthusiast Eric Shafer, Creative Fan is a graphic / web design blog where you can inhale huge amounts of inspiration thanks to the awesome roundups and resources published constantly. You can follow his updates in Twitter to share your links with him and find more amazing design resources.
To complement the contents released on the website, a sister page was released under the name Design.Creative Fan where you can find tutorials, design interviews and more.
Creative Fan makes a good balance between followers and followings, which makes this blog an essential part of the graphic design community.
All their tweets have an informative character, dedicated to provide high quality design tips and articles for all the community.
They use hashtags in the major part of their tweets, which as we said on the intro, helps people find their tweets easier from the search bar.
Final thoughts
It seems like Eric’s been working hard to post all the time high quality articles and resources, though it will be probably a good idea to use some daily tweets to interact with the community, send replies and retweet things that he consider helpful.
Average daily tweets: 7
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Tutorials.
- Freebies.
- Personal life.
- Off-topic
Echoenduring is a design blog created by Matt Ward that releases awesome design articles, resources and more while promoting the design work of his author, who is currently available for hire.
Part of the Smashing Network, Matt and his team are always releasing very complete articles based on their daily experience as graphic and web designers. You can find in his Twitter complementary links that enlighten what’s already being made at the page, we highly recommend you to follow Matt’s tweets.
You won’t find many retweets on this page, but it seems that they can handle things without retweeting things.
One thing that they actually do is send replies, if you contact them using a mention the possibility of getting a response is really high.
Most of Matt’s tweets talk about his personal life and current projects, making this an absolutely honest Twitter pages. You can also find great tips for designers with certain frequency.
But when we talk about hashtags, there are not many tweets using them, with only 2 % of the total.
Final thoughts
There are two things that we can suggest to this Twitter user: Send more retweets to share your love with the community and try to use more hashtags to give more presence to all your tweets.
Average daily tweets: 2
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Resources.
- Tutorial.
- Freebies.
- Inspiration.
Hosted by Max Stanworth, Design Shard is a design blog specially made for graphic and web designers where they can find pretty cool freebies, resources and great design articles. Follow them in Twitter to find all the latest news about their blog and design in general.
Besides the previously mentioned, the site also releases useful design tips, Photoshop brushes and general resources for both graphic and web designers. As a tweeter you can find an honest friend in Max and his team, always ready to contribute to your cause.
Design Shard is a good source to find design articles, tips and tutorials and on its Twitter page there’s new information coming up every day, though you have to stay aware as they send very few tweets every day.
A considerable part of their tweets are retweets taken from other websites, which shows a nice spirit towards making community.
They also pay attention to their followers and that’s why they’re always replying to their questions and suggestions about their site.
A perfect balance is shown regarding informative and uninformative tweets, as they send one informative tweet per each non-informative post.
Final thoughts
There are two things that may improve their tweeting activity: The first one is absence of hashtags and the second a low amount of daily tweets. Working on these two aspects would be a good improvement to their profile. For all the rest, they’ve been doing a terrific job.
Average daily tweets: 2
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Web development.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Freebies.
- Offers.
An amazing design magazine where people can find design and development tutorials, articles, freebies, inspiration and high quality resources. Their Twitter page is an excellent complement where you can find many little design and development treasures every day.
The site was created by two enthusiastic Singapore developers and designers, Charlotte Lam and Terrance Huang, that decided to share their knowledge with the rest of the world releasing good web tutorials, articles and reviews
In Onextrapixel information is the key, with a 100 % of tweets being sent with informative purpose considering themes such as graphic design, development and more. They have currently more than 9K followers on their Twitter account.
Final thoughts
As you have seen, we didn’t display any pie charts on this case, which means that this tweeter does not use replies, retweets and/or hashtags. Our advice as logical is that it will be an improvement to start leveraging these elements once in a while to develop a more natural tweeting activity.
Average daily tweets: 3
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Web development.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Freebies.
- Offers.
Another great design blog, InstantShift is the source for many web developers and designers to find the latest news and trends in design, you can follow them in Twitter to find many more great design links and tricks.
Besides the regular design articles and showcases, you can find occasionally helpful social networking and web development articles, which includes reviews, tutorials, showcases and more. This tweeter represents a constant flow of inspiration and insightful tweets that you definitely don’t want to miss.
Instant Shift is being currently followed by more than 8K tweeters, making it one of the more visited design Twitter pages around.
You won’t find any hashtags, replies or retweets on their profile, because their main concern is to deliver original and valuable design articles and resources to the community.
Final thoughts
As seen on the previous item, we didn’t show any pie charts on this case, which means that they don’t use replies, retweets and hashtags. So our only advice is to use these elements once in a while to generate a more natural tweeting activity, for all the rest this Twitter is an essential bookmark for any dedicated designer and / or developer.
Average daily tweets: 2
- Web design.
- Web development.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Freebies.
- Blogging.
Umut Muhaddisoglu is a fanatic of everything about web that on his blog speaks about web development and useful tips for programmers and developers, specially JavaScript and jQuery. You can follow his tweets to find many more great scripts and tips to make your web developing experience easier.
This site is an humongous drawer of web developing resources, including scripts, plugins, icon sets, web tools and more, all of them with the one and only purpose of help people establish higher web standards. Although the site is acclaimed by hundreds, you can still reach them at anytime either to say hello or share something, the same happens in Twitter, where they’re really good mates.
This website focuses on providing high quality web design and development tips without using hashtags, so it’s probably that you know what our suggestion is going to be.
Around the fourth part of their daily tweets are destined to retweet things from other design tweeters.
And the same happens with replies, these occupy the fourth part of their average daily tweets.
In terms of informative and uninformative tweets, the balance seems ideal, delivering one personal tweet for each design and development post.
Final thoughts
In this case we have the same advice that we’ve given to many tweeters and that’s hashtags. Using hashtags guarantees an optimization of tweets by making them easier to find using the search bar.
Average daily tweets: 3
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Web development.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Freebies.
- Blogging.
Unmatchedstyle is an awesome design blog / CSS gallery that teaches good practices regarding graphic / web design and usability by publishing design articles and showcasing great examples of well designed webpages. You can follow this blog’s tweets and find out what’s going to be the next hit in web design before it gets trendy.
If you have a website that consider fulfills most of the web design standards both in diagramming and usability, you can send a request and get the chance of being featured on their site. Their Twitter page is also a good source to discover what good design is about these days.
The site manages a very corporative style, leaving no room for replies and tweets like that.
Concerning retweets, you can find a few ones every once in a while, usually talking about design trends and new web design tips.
The 33 % of their tweets discuss off-topic things, ask random questions and make a little community activity.
Less than 5 % of their tweets contain hashtags, which indicates that they’re not too much of a hashtags fans and prefer simpler tweets.
Final thoughts
It’s difficult to judge an website of this caliber that has the only purpose of make the web a better place, the only thing we can say is that their message must reach more people and one way to spread the word is by utilizing more frequently hashtags and replying to people’s comments.
Average daily tweets: 2
- Web design.
- Graphic design.
- Tutorials.
- Web development.
- Freebies.
- Offers.
Naldz Graphics is a design blog where you can find many helpful design resources and articles. His Twitter page informs about their latest publications, promotions, useful tutorials for designers and developers, giveaways and inspiration for graphic designers.
The website was founded by Ronald Bien, a young graphic designer with passion for everything about design. The same thing that happened in other blogs took place here, Ronald begun this website as his personal portfolio but ended as one of the major design weblogs around and member of the Smashing Network. In his Twitter page you can find all the latest Naldz Graphics news as well as little tips that can always make your day.
In Naldz Graphics Twitter page you will find only good design tips. Although their average goes around 2 daily tweets, you can be sure that each one of them will bring you something really helpful to help you grow as a designer. All their tweets inform about new things regarding graphic and web design, so it will be hard to find any replies or tweets like that.
The major part of their sent tweets are taken from their own sources, which means that the total of daily retweets is less than 7 %. You can be sure that if something is retweeted on their page is because it’s something really great.
Hashtags is something that Naldz knows well, as they know how to properly use them in the right occasions. This clever use of hashtags gives to their tweets a more natural appearance.
Final thoughts
To improve their Twitter experience, a good practice will probably be start sending occasional friendly tweets and interact with their followers to make their stay more pleasant. They’ve been doing a pretty good job so far, so these suggestions were considered to help them improve their Twitter work which has always been good.
Average daily tweets: 1
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Web development.
- Resources.
- Freebies.
- Inspiration.
Hongkiat is a Malaysian web design blog where you can find information about graphic design, development, WordPress, freebies and more. In their Twitter page you can follow their updates regarding their latest articles and promotions as well as some additional design tips that are always handy.
If you visit their blog, you will find yourself in the middle of an actual titan, this site covers from Photoshop tutorials to WordPress resources, being an excellent blog for the craziest graphic designers to the most dedicated web developers.
Thanks to the quality of their tweets, Hongkiat has succeeded in gathering more than 10K fans from all over the world, which is something not so easy to accomplish.
The average daily tweets of this Twitter page is below the average, so in this case we can say that give more importance to quality than quantity.
Around 12 % of their daily tweets are retweets from other design blogs that can make a really nice complement to their page.
Hongkiat is one of the few blogs on the list that uses hashtags a lot, which means that they like to mark the keywords in their tweets and expand their reach in the process.
Final thoughts
There’s not to much to say about Hongkiat’s Twitter except for the fact that they could probably establish a better interaction with their fans by posting friendly tweets once in a while and answering their questions using replies or direct messages, for all the rest this is another great tweeter to follow.
Average daily tweets: 12
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Web development.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Freebies.
Creative Overflow is a design blog that constantly provides high doses of design inspiration. Most all their tweets talk about design and give clever tips that can really help any graphic and /or web designer. In their Twitter page you can find actualizations from bloggers and design blogs (many of those have been listed in here) making this tweeter an useful news source for designers.
Almost half of their tweets are retweets, which makes Creativeoverflow an awesome channel to find design news and articles.
A small proportion of their daily tweets is dedicated to sent replies to their followers.
And same happens with uninformative tweets, which only occupy the 8 % of their storyline.
Hashtags also cover a a small piece of their average daily tweets, this indicates that they use them only occasionally.
Final thoughts
Creative Overflow is a very friendly tweeter that is always open to suggestion and doesn’t bother in helping other people’s blogs. they often tweet during mornings and afternoons (USA time) which are high traffic time periods. We consider that a little more replies and retweets will help them support the relation with their followers.
Average daily tweets: 6
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Web development.
- Tutorials.
- Gadgets, scripts, plugins.
- Off-topic
Rich Works is a website where graphic and web design grab all the attention, launching really nice articles, tutorials, reviews, guides and references that can be handy for any web or graphic designer.
Transmitting from the beautiful city of Bangalore in India, Richie Thimmaiah has accomplished in less than a year the positioning of this blog, having his articles featured in important places like Smashing Magazine, Webdesigner Depot, Six Revisions, Speckyboy and more. Following this blog in Twitter gives you access to all their latest news and also lets you contact Richie at anytime.
Not too many retweets are sent on their stream, only good quality contents can be featured on their Twitter profile.
Something similar happens with replies, they’re used in a very small proportion but enough to stay in touch with the community.
16 % of their daily tweets consist in off-topic tweets and replies, the rest of them are great design tips and articles.
66 % of their daily tweets don’t employ hashtags, with a considerable 33 % making use of them.
Average daily tweets: 7
- Graphic design
- Web design.
- Tutorials.
- Inspiration.
Tweet my Design is basically a big design showcase where everyone can share and stare at other people’s work. You can submit your own designs and if they pass the cut they will be featured in one of the approximately 7 daily tweets that are sent on their page.
This is definitely the ultimate design tweeter, being Twitter itself its main channel. What Tweet my Design does is to connect designers from all over the world that probably don’t know each other but have heard about Tweet my Design, this tweeter is at least among the top 10 of must-follow Twitter pages of this countdown.
Tweet my design has established an standard of 7 tweets per day, all of them promoting the greatest design resources sent by their followers.
You won’t find any replies or retweets on their page, as the main purpose of Tweet my Design is to share quality articles sent by designers via Twitter.
Hashtags are utilized appropriately in tweets that mention keywords such as WordPress, Photoshop and words that have a huge demand in the network.
Final thoughts
There’s not a single bad thing about Tweet my Design, because what they’re doing is a really important contribution for the entire design community. We consider that they should facilitate or open more communication channels for people to reach them and share their designs. A good use of retweets and replies can also be quite helpful for the success of this Twitter page.
Average daily tweets: 4
- Design tutorials
- Programming tutorials
- Freebies
- Guides
- Quick tips
TutorialShock is a website where you can find useful design and programming tutorials. The site is often publishing new tips on its Twitter account that can be very helpful for designers and developers. Browsing on its latest tweets you can find information about jQuery, CSS, Photoshop and similar themes.
Its Twitter profile has been managed as a supplement to the already awesome tips and tutorials released on the site, you can follow its tweets to find all the latest updates plus awesome design links and discoveries.
Almost half of the daily tweets send on its Twitter page consist in retweets pointing to awesome links and resources from other design sources.
When someone makes a mention or tweets a suggestion to TutorialShock, you can usually find a reply to that matter, though the low percentage indicates that there’s probably not enough interaction with the community.
Approximately 3/4 of the daily tweets are informative and contain useful design links and resources, the remaining tweets are usually replies and friendly tweets.
Most of TutorialShock’s tweets contain hashtags referring to the main topics and keywords utilized on every tweet.
Final thoughts
TutorialShock is still a young blog that even so has managed to find its way in among the heavyweights with quality contents and resources. Regarding its Twitter, we can suggest an increase on the amount of daily tweets as well as establishing a closer relationship with all their fans to strengthen the community.
Average daily tweets: 6
- Graphic design.
- Web design.
- Blogging.
- Social networking.
- Freebies.
- Inspiration.
And finally we have our beloved WebDesignShock. This blog was released almost a year ago and since then has become a powerful source of original design articles and resources. By following the Twitter profile you can find a lot of great resources and references that complement the articles released in the blog itself, everything discussing themes related to web and graphic design, development, blogging and social networking.
Regarding Twitter, the channel has been managed as a complement to the different articles released every week, which means that you will find many thorough articles about web design and all the other topics that we mentioned before. You can contact WebDesignShock at any moment if you have something to tweet that you know will look really well on the stream.
10 % of the daily tweets sent by WebDesignShock feature retweets from other big design blogs.
The interaction with the community is constant, publishing replies every time someone contacts the blog through a mention or direct message.
More than 80 % of WDS tweets are dedicated to provided high quality graphic and web design tips for developers and designers. The remaining tweets are usually friendly tweets and replies.
Regarding hashtags, every time it’s possible to use them you will find a hashtag in WDS tweets, which has turned out in a considerable increment in the number of followers.
Final thoughts
Probably a bigger amount of tweets will be a good idea, specially retweet and replies that can create a more natural tweeting activity. The other aspects have been well managed, which can be noticed by the success of the blog in a short time period, getting closer to the first 1000 followers and a very cheerful group of friends in the community.
Final conclusions
We have reached the end of this article, a complete study around the most important design blogs that every graphic / web designer should always follow. We have to state that all the graphics were made based on a 7 days sample, which means that the data may change if the timeline is expanded, though we consider that this is a good approach to understand how designers interact with Twitter, please leave us a comment with your opinions on how to improve the quality of our articles and also let us know which articles do you want to be featured in our website, thanks for visiting WebDesignShock and don’t forget to follow our latest updates via Twitter and Facebook.
