Since we launched the Neotists website a month ago we’ve had over 2,600 page views. We’ve also had lots of new members sign up to the group – so we now number 110 creatives, with 24 of them featured on the added new categories for creative profiles, including motion graphics, product design and sculpture, showing that Neotists have a huge range of skills to offer.” People section. We’ve also added some new profile categories, including motion graphics, product design and sculpture, showing that Neotists have a huge range of skills to offer.

So the creative community is growing – but what about the visibility of that community?

It’s vital that the designers, illustrators, photographers, coders, writers and the whole range of creative people who either live or work in St Neots and have not come across Neotists can find our community. So we’ve been working hard in the background, using the right keywords, using a variety of popular online platforms, meeting people face-to-face and using existing community networks to help raise the profile. Here are some of our tips, trade secrets and general common sense that’s helping us get on the first page of searches.

In terms of the internet holy grail, (search engine optimisation or SEO) we’ve done a great deal in the background to ensure that the website, its posts, pages and profiles are all labelled correctly so that those omnipotent search engines don’t mark us down. Take this post for instance – the word Neotists is mentioned the most so it makes sense to use the keyword Neotist St Neots. So as it appears in the title, URL and text it means we get the thumbs up and better ranking from search engines.

Sharing posts across a variety of channels is also important as it’s a great way to reach the creatives out there who don’t already follow our Facebook or Twitter pages. So we’ve been sharing our articles on other community Facebook groups and we’ve had great feedback already with new members signing up who’ve spotted the articles or responded to questions posted in those groups.

I mentioned in a previous article how creating a visible creative community is important now as the new Winteringham estate in the west of St Neots is in the planning stages. When the development begins and properties begin to go up for sale, people will be looking to move to the area and, just as with Love’s Farm, residents will bring a whole range of creative skills to the town and these creative people will need a community to service their interests. One of the ways we’re helping those people find Neotists is by adding a culture section to the St Neots page on Wikipedia. Previously no culture section existed and we felt this didn’t reflect the diverse physical and technical creativity going on in the arts in St Neots.

Finally, and crucially we’ve submitted the URL www.wneotists.co.uk to all the major search engines. What this means is that the likes of Google and Bing will then be aware of the website and regularly check for updated pages and posts.

We’ve focussed our attention to visibility online in the last month, and although we know this is not the only way to help people find us, with the launch of the website, it was key to make all those connections first before getting on with other stuff.