How to Get More Followers on Dribbble

I’ve been on Dribbble for awhile now, but I’ve found myself using it more often recently. Dribbble is a great place to share work you’re doing and see what other people have been working on. It’s also a great place to search for ideas when starting a new project. I’ve also been reached out to a few times with job opportunities because of my Dribbble profile. Since I’ve been using it more often I’ve also been looking into how to get more followers on Dribbble and improve my experience. Here are some tips to get more followers on Dribbble:

popular dribbble shots

Do Good Work

Doing good work is critical if you want to have people follow you. If you’re not doing interesting work at your day job, start some side projects designing things you enjoy or do some design concepts for your favorite brand or application. Get some work on Dribbble so that people will have a sense of your style before trying to build a following.

Plan Your Shots

Dribbble is all about the details and you should be just as detail oriented in your shot as you were creating the original design.

  • When is the best time of day to post to Dribbble? Morgan Allan Knutson suggests on Quora that you post Monday – Thursday from 11pm to 2am PT based on when Dribbble resets and to gain a global audience to see your shot. I haven’t found this to be 100% true, but it’s worth testing to see if you think it makes a difference.
  • Take a look at the shots that are making it to the popular page and see if there is a common style or theme you might be able to use in your shots. People make fun of Dribbble users for always tilting their designs to an angle, having a giant drop-shadow, or weird texture but what is really important is making your shot stand out.
  • Check how your shot will look before you post it by dropping it into a template like this one from Paul Flavius Nechita.

unique dribbble shots

Show Up Everywhere

So now you’ve got some excellent looking shots, it’s time to get your profile out there and get in front of as many people as possible.

  • It’s great to find a niche that you can be one of the best designers in, but it’s also worth putting up a variety of work. That way you’ve got a shot at getting a broader base of fans. I’ve found some of my shots that aren’t my typical work have done very well (like a sketch or some transparencies for screen printing).
  • It’s not a bad idea to share your shot on social networks, but you might want to hold off sharing it right away unless you know that a lot of your followers also have Dribbble accounts. It seems that hitting the popular page may have something to do with the ratio of views and likes.
  • Link up your profile in a lot of places. Put it in your signature on forums, in your blog, on your portfolio, and ask your followers on other social media to follow you on Dribbble.
  • Make sure your posts use appropriate tags so that people find you when searching. If your shot matches what they’re looking for you just might get a follow. Check the tags page for a list of tags that may work for you.
  • Keep up the posting, every quality shot is a new chance to get a follower

kyle dribbble shots

Follow Other Players

Getting Dribbble followers seems to have a snowball effect: the more followers you get, the more your work will float to the top, thereby increasing your followers. Start building your community by following other players:

  • Follow people who’s designs you like.
  • Search for designers with similar interests to you. Check out the tags page and follow some people with work in a similar area.
  • If you have a pro account try searching for people who live in your city on dribbble on follow them
  • Follow people who are still active players. Look either for recent posts to any of the sections on Dribbble (suggestions, popular, everyone, debuts, etc) or check a user’s page to see when they last posted a shot. People who haven’t been active for a year or more aren’t likely to follow you back.
  • Also check for people’s followers/following ratio, if they’re not following many people it’s unlikely that they’ll follow you
  • Even if you won’t get a follow back, if they’re doing good work you should follow them anyway. By doing that you’ll not only see great work, but you can participate with them and their community when they post

dribbble user

Interact with the Community

Now that you’ve got a bunch of people you’re following (hopefully some of them will return the follow), it’s time to start interacting with them:

dribbble comments

  • If you see a good shot give them a like. Some people will check out the list of users who liked their shot.
  • Also try adding comments to the shots you like. If you can go beyond just saying ‘cool’ or ‘nice’ and provide some feedback or at least let them know what you like about their design that’ll be more useful and effective.
  • When you post a new design try soliciting for feedback in the comments or share a ‘freebie’ like a psd template that people can download and use.
  • Use the rebound feature to add to an existing playoff or add your own spin to someone’s design
follow me on dribbble

Have any other tips, suggestions, or ideas? Share them below!

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52 Comments

    • Kyle Larson

      Yeah, I agree… sometimes it seems to help if you explicitly ask for feedback, but it doesn’t seem like you get too much otherwise. I think its more useful as a place to look around and get good ideas for a project. Followed you!

  1. Subash Dharel

    Couldn’t agree more with Travis, interaction comes rarely in case of less followers like myself 😉 Maybe help me with my projects from next time onwards? dribbble.com/nepdud

  2. Jacob

    I’ve never been a fan of “Gaming the System.” If your main objective is gaining as many followers as possible in the shortest amount of time, you’ve entirely missed the objective of dribbble, which is simply to share your work with the design community. Be authentic. If you post work that has inherent value, you will see organic growth (over time) and actually get something out of the experience in the long run.

  3. turischev

    Hi friends, I have 2 invites for you ?#?dribbble? ?#?invite? ?#?gift? ?#?free?
    Get them easier than it seems:
    – Send your best work 400x300px on my e-mail: [email protected]
    – Press the “Follow” button at the top right on my profile -https://dribbble.com/turischev
    – Results will put in my profile, as a new shot 30/12/2014 at 20-00 (in UTC + 02: 00).
    Waiting for your work to select worthy. Fight!

  4. Roman

    Great article. I’m pretty sure that best posting hours are good statistic idea. But I still think that it’s more important to post in the same daytime — as long you already have some community how can see your posts it’s better to run with them.

    And in case anyone wants to follow me : https://dribbble.com/w2lker

  5. Gio

    According to my personal experience I share the idea of “valuable”, “High Quality” shots. There was a time in my career when I got huge web designing projects. Those projects gave me great experience that affected on my dribble shots too…. Shot likes grew from “5” to “300-400″… that is a huge difference brought by experience that became noticeable by Dribbble community ….. you can check it yourself …. https://dribbble.com/giorgimatsukatovi

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