Is Your Profile Ready for the Spotlight?

Tips and Tricks for a Robust Profile

CreativeGround community, seize the opportunity, 
How does your profile score grow? 
With pretty pics and recent updates, 
And relationships all in a row 

Each month, thousands of users  are searching the over 30,000 CreativeGround profiles to find New England-based artists/creatives, creative businesses, presenters, teachers, support services and more. CreativeGround is a big place to explore, but you can help searchers looking to connect with profiles like yours by tending to your Profile Score. By accurately filling in key fields on your public profile, you will not only help your profile float to the top of search results, but will make your profile shine to audiences, collaborators, and more.

Any profile can shine - check out the yellow Grow Tips section below for a checklist of profile content must-haves.

How does a Profile Score benefit my profile?

• The profile score helps profile managers know which information on their profiles to regularly maintain. We’ve taken out the guesswork about what information site users are looking for on profiles.  Use your profile score as a guide to where you spend the most time and energy on updates
• It helps people searching the site to easily sift through search results to find active profiles that contain the information they need to inspire connection.
• It creates the opportunity for every profile to boost their visibility with audiences they most want to reach.
• It can help your profile stand out to be nominated for a CreativeGround spotlight.

The profile score is not a ranking system comparing the work of one profile to another.

CreativeGround profiles cover a wide range of disciplines, business types, and activities that would be impossible to compare side by side. Rather, it’s a measure of how completely each profile has represented itself on CreativeGround, and a tool to help profile owners understand how to connect with searchers and boost their sitewide presence. 

Grow Tips: Your Checklist to go from Seed to Full Bloom 

Any and every profile on CreativeGround can grow their profile score. All it takes is a little tending! Follow this checklist for a flourishing profile that shines a spotlight on all the amazing work you do:

Profile Picture: For your profile image, use an image of you at work, a picture of your work, or an image that shows what your organization or business does. This is your first impression, so help searchers pick your profile from the bunch!

Grow-Tip: Avoid using logos or headshots for your profile image; searchers are more likely to click through to profiles with pictures of creative activity as their main image

Description: Give us the dirt: Use the Description of Work and Background to summarize who you are and what you do in your own words. Plant the seeds you want to come to fruition! Use keywords that you think someone might use to search for an individual, organization, or business that does what you do.

Grow Tip: Make your keywords consistent with the items you select from the picklists on your profile. Avoid lists of awards or pasting in a resume or abstract artistic statements.

Media: Add representations of your work to the Image and Video Gallery (at least three – even more to further boost your score).

Grow Tip: Use the Additional Content section to supplement with links for non-visual examples of your work and links to fundraising platforms.

Bonus tip: Need visual documentation of your work? Search CreativeGround for people and organizations that offer photography and videography services.

Contact Information: Help people connect with you or your organization by ensuring that the contact information is current and correct. Include official websites and social media if you have them.

Community/Audience Services: Send out the call to your communities by including the people you engage and how you specifically work with them. For example, are you an organization that works with immigrant communities, or do you offer services in ASL (American Sign Language)?

Activities and Services: Tell your audiences about the menu of services or activities you offer. Does your group offer workshops, or perform? Are you an artist who teaches lessons or offers professional development? Can your organization provide support services, like consulting? Choose as many options in this category as you need to fully express what you do.

Geographic Reach: What ground do you cover? Indicate the reach of your or your organization’s activities from the town/city to international level. 

I Have Worked With: List at least three recent collaborators in your I Have Worked With section to demonstrate your working relationships with creative businesses, groups, organizations, individual artists, and any other collaborators on the types of projects you’d like to repeat!

Grow Tip: Connect a collaborator's CreativeGround profile to yours - search by name in the related profile name field. If they're not based in New England, manually add their name.

Bonus Tip: Add three or more entries in this section to boost your score!

Get nerdy: CreativeGround is also a research database. Select the Institution/Business type that best represents your enterprise, and you will see the intuitive options for selecting the correct Legal Status for your profile.

Venue for Rent/Use: Finding space for creative activities can be a common challenge in our region. If you have a studio, stage, rehearsal space, conference room, etc. available to rent, include it on your profile! Having a venue does not affect profile score but can apply to a diverse range of profiles. CreativeGround users are frequently looking for space, so offer it if you wish.

Keep it Current: Update all these fields regularly to provide accurate information and showcase your work at its best to the range of users searching CreativeGround.

Other Designations

If you have met the following external-to-CreativeGround vetting processes, consider submitting your profile to display the tags for these special designations. These fields do not affect profile score but are highly encouraged to be completed if they apply to you, as they will help your profile get discovered by the audiences you most want to connect with (such as schools, funders, local arts organizations and more) in Search results!

• Artists Only - State Arts Agency Roster: 
  • Indicate you are on a New England State Arts Agency roster, and then select the applicable roster(s).
• Affiliations and Accomplishments: 
  • NEFA grant recipient
  • Creative Community Exchange (CCX) presenter
  • Part of a Designated Arts Community

Not sure what score to aim for?

While you can always nurture your profile, use these ranges as a guide for what stage of growth it's in: 

• 0-8 Seed – You’ve created your profile; you’re off to a great start! 
• 8-12 Sprout – Use the grow tips to shine some light on your profile
• 12-16 Seedling – Your work is paying off – continue to follow the grow tips!
• 16-20 Blossom – This profile is rich with information that expresses who you are and what you do. 
• 20+ Full Bloom! – Your profile is looking fantastic – but will always need regular pruning. Remember to update it frequently to keep it healthy and current! 

Of course, not every profile could or should look the same on CreativeGround -- this is a creative community, after all! To live up to our community values of transparency and equity, it is possible for any and every profile to have a high profile score. This means that the diverse and broad spectrum of creative entities in the region can update profiles with the information specific to their work; that specificity is what will make you most discoverable to potential collaborators, funders, and resources, etc., and vice versa. Whether you are an individual creative or part of an organization, professionally trained or community taught, your work matters, and CreativeGround endeavors to demonstrate just that.

Happy growing -- we can’t wait to see your profiles flourish! And perhaps even shine a light on your Full Bloom profile.

P.S. - Looking for more guidance? Book a 1-1 session with a CreativeGround team member to get personalized guidance on growing your profile score!