Creativity Found: finding creativity later in life
Real-life stories of finding or returning to creativity in adulthood. I'm Claire, and I re-found my creativity after a time of almost crippling anxiety. Now I want to share the stories of other people who have found or re-found their creativity as adults, and hopefully inspire many more grown-ups to get creative. I chat with my guests about their childhood experiences of creativity and the arts, how they came to the creative practices they now love, the barriers they had to overcome to start their creative re-awakening, and how what they do now benefits their whole lives.
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Creativity Found: finding creativity later in life
Meet the Collective: SEO and websites with Kelly Drewett
•Claire Waite Brown/Kelly Drewett•Episode 105
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Making websites empathetic can improve your search engine rankings and discoverability. In this episode I chat with Creativity Found Collective member and expert in search engine optimisation (SEO) Kelly Drewett, about the ways that business owners can improve the usability and accessibility of their websites, which in turn will enhance that site's performance on search engines such as Google. We consider the different aspects of website work, from illustration, to design to development, as well as how outsourcing business tasks and leveraging the expertise of professionals can save you time and doesn't have to cost the earth. Kelly touches on the mental health benefits she has experienced through recently re-finding her creativity, and we discuss the value of community and support networks for all small businesses.
So I think that the creativity within all of us, especially the Creativity Found group, that creativity can bring out that uniqueness which Google looks for in a website. After 20 years of being a business owner, I wish I had outsourced more earlier. I really do. I re-found my creativity just before I met you, Claire, so it must have been two years or something like that. and I think just knowing that there's other people in the world that are just a little bit under confident about their art or their projects or whatever and then talking to the other members in our group it's just amazing to be able to compare notes and share books and knowledge and stuff like that that we can just Hi, Claire here. Creating this show inspired me to take the Creativity Found mission further. As well as sharing inspirational stories of people who have embraced their creativity in adulthood, I wanted to actually help people do this for themselves and to support artists and crafters who share their creative knowledge with adults through their classes, kits and supplies. Creativityfound.co.uk and the Creativity Found Collective were born. You can visit creativityfound.co.uk to find ways to learn printmaking, try embroidery, get touchy-feely with clay, make your own kilt, start weaving, learn to paint and so much more. And the wonderful teachers and makers featured on the website are members of the Creativity Found Collective. We also have business support enterprises as members who help others grow their businesses. In this episode of the Creativity Found podcast, adapted from a live video posted on the Creativity Found YouTube channel and in the Creativity Found Facebook group, I chat with one of our members about what they do and how they can help you. And if you would like to join our merry band, simply visit creativityfound.co.uk join us and I'll see you soon. So we're already on YouTube. I'm going to go live on Facebook. We'll just have a little bit of a chatter while that sends the word out. How's your day Good work. Really good. I've been having physio on my shoulder, so I've actually been physio this morning. Lovely. But yeah, it's beautiful here. Tell us where you are. In the Alps in France. So it is sunny and I can see snow as well, which people Some of us here in the UK had a little flurry of snow. We This happened during a Mastermind group that I was in and it was very funny because everyone got very excited Typical, yeah. Brilliant, right. We're all live everywhere so just before I get started with Kelly, I just wanted to explain that I'm going to be going live on Facebook and YouTube with one of the Creativity Found Collective members. So you can find out what they do, how they can help you. Either they might be able to help you find a creative outlet or they can help you to sustain and grow your own small business. Kelly Drewett was the first business support member to join when I opened this membership option up last year. I wanted our creative activity businesses and others, of course, to be able to find reliable and affordable people to outsource work to and free them up to do more of the stuff they're good at, or maybe more of the stuff that they want to be doing. And that's why they set up their small business in the first place. Kelly, start by telling me how you can help creative and other small business owners to Yeah, I think just to comment on what you just said there as well, we open our own businesses up because we're so passionate about something and then we end up just stuck in this admin marketing nightmare, don't we? So yeah, it is a problem for many small businesses. I originally was a freelancer in website design and have been doing that for 26 years. Sounds quite scary now. And for the last sort of six years or so, I've been more of a business and agency, that kind of thing. So during that time, not only have I got a lot of experience in website design itself, I've also got lots of experience in search engine optimization, which is SEO. So I know why some websites will fail online and why some businesses will thrive through their website and I learned it's got a lot to do with the content that's within a website but it's also got a lot to do, I think, with the business owner being empathetic. So for a strong website, the business owner needs to look after the website user, that's like the visitor. So it's things like, can they see where they're going, where to go quickly, is the content really explanatory and is it kind of easy to connect with. So these are things that would help your website. So I'm quite passionate about easy-to-use websites, basically, making sure that they rank highly and they will rank better when they're easy to use and speedy and all of that stuff. So that's where I think we can bring creativity into websites, instead of just, you know, kind of like throwing one up online and not doing anything with them. So I think that the creativity within all of us, and especially the creativity found group, that creativity can bring out that uniqueness which So it's not just a matter of putting in these words that you think people are going to be looking for. We used to hear about keywords and that was what it needed, but and a personal thing? It's a site-wide thing, definitely. We still need these keywords. They're more like key phrases these days, so they're longer actual sort of sentences. Some of them don't make sense, but that's what we're targeting. But not only that, in our content, also making the site easy to use and visually, not so much visually pleasing as in kind of, oh, that's pretty, but I can read the text easily. The contrast of the colors, like the text is easy to read on the background that it's on. You see a lot these days where people put text over the top of a picture and you can't actually see what it says. And search engines recognize that. I know search engines don't have eyes, but they can understand the programming in the background of a website. So they figure out whether or not a person that is visually impaired, for example, can actually read that text. And they reward websites that will be much more helpful and usable, basically. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah it's a side of SEO I love because it's actually like it's inclusive As a person logistically actually doing a job if somebody wants you to do what you do SEO is quite, yeah, so SEO is complicated as in it could be, and we're going to talk about this actually, what kind of technical and designy type people do. But from, where would I start? So, I can design the website as well, but if you've got a website designed already, I would look at that website and on the SEO perspective, I would look to see, do the images download quickly? Have they got the right text? on the file name and on the alt tag, which we talk about a lot in SEO. Are those key phrases actually targeted to things people will actually search for online? I would look at the fonts. Is it easy to read the colors? Are they bright enough? Are they contrasting enough? I would look at the blog posts. Are they targeted to search terms? I would make that content much more interesting and unique and powerful. I get it. I saw you recently posting actually about the file names, the picture file names. I was like, oh, wow. So I have consciously started actually naming my files. So they say what they are, they say the name of the person or, you know, whatever it is that somebody might be looking for. printmaking or I'm so glad that's helped. That's on my Instagram, isn't it? Yeah. I did a reel about it. Yeah, I'm really glad. I'm rolling out more tips like that for you. And actually you're the perfect person for me to think of that I would like to help because I know you fiddle around with your website a lot. And so actually the things that you need, let me know if you have any more questions on stuff Yeah, because like you say, I do my own website. I have to update it a lot based on our members and stuff, but then you can start bringing in those little things. And I think that's, and this comes with outsourcing I think as well, people kind of go, oh my God, this is such a big job. A, it's going to cost the earth or B, I don't even know where to start. But when you're given those, just those little things that you Definitely feel like you're actually improving, you're making a bit of a difference. So let's go on to what we talked about. So before Christmas, I was speaking to Kelly and it became clear that I didn't know what I was talking about. No surprise there. No, but I think everybody has the same, maybe a bit of a block about this. There are different roles within website design, within keeping a website up to date with regards to making updates. So, if a person is looking to do a particular job on their website, whatever that may be, maybe build it from scratch, do some updates, whatever, you can explain that. What person are they looking for? What is the role they would be searching for to find someone who can do that for them Okay, so I wrote down or I've been thinking about these different roles and there is kind of this umbrella term that is website designer and I think, I even think that's a really bad name for a website designer because a lot of the time a designer doesn't actually design. They will be the technical person that's actually building a website. So it gets very confusing. So, here are all the kind of, you know, designer, technical people that might be involved in your website journey, I guess. And one might be an illustrator that can draw something for you and actually put a drawing into a digital image for your website. They might draw it by hand and then digitalize it. A graphic designer is someone that would do a logo and they do shapes and patterns and stuff like that. So they could do graphics for your website. Now don't get me wrong, some website designers also do graphics and vice versa. So this is where it crosses over and it gets really confusing. You've also got photo editors, and some people specialise in photos, but they could also build a website. And we've got videographers, which are people that edit videos. Then we've got going up into sort of website designers, website builders, and a person that you can lean on the more technical side of a website design, and you would be less designy. So you would be more sort of about usability, I guess, and user experience. So you could have that kind of website designer or you could have a sort of more graphic design website designer. Then you get website developers and a website developer could be a person, you could ask them for a system that did, I don't know, anything from booking out chalet rooms or something like that and they would build the whole system for you. So that's a web developer. So you've got all these different sort of stages of website designers. And then you've got an SEO like me, for example, who can also build websites. And then we've also got, in that realm, kind of content writers and marketers and things like that. So we've got so Yes, you're going to be looking for a web developer and that's what we call a coder. They can literally code anything that you have in your mind. My husband does that actually. It's incredible what they do. You can just say, I want it to work this way and then a couple So if someone isn't sure of what they need, would you mind if they dropped you an email and said this is what I'm looking for Kelly, I've got so many, I've got a pool of like website designers and their strengths and then some people will be sort of website updaters because they're more like VAs or something like that and they've got really good experience in websites but they don't actually build the website so I've got people like that on my list. Yeah, Yeah, that's really helpful. There is a link in the description to Kelly's page at Creativity Found. I'll talk about that at the end. There's some other links there too. This is why I opened the business support side of Creativity Found Collective, because speaking with people on the podcast, there was a lot of talk about, like, people felt that they had to do everything. They started their own business. They have to do everything. Why do you think that that necessarily shouldn't be the case? And is it affordable for small businesses to be outsourcing some of these jobs? And how should someone decide what they might outsource? Why do you think it's What I would say is it does depend on if you want to grow your business or not really, or if you want to take a back step, or if you, for example, want to maybe do your potting instead of all your admin, stuff like that. But I would say, in my experience, after 20 years of being a business owner, I wish I had outsourced more earlier. I really do. If you think about how long you would take to do your own website changes or maybe even a website build, if that's what you want to put your mind to, a professional will actually do it in probably half the time, if not even faster than you would. And remember, they bring all that experience with them as well. So it's not only speed that you're getting, that you're paying for, it's all that experience. So, say if there's a problem when I build a website and I've got something to do with Elementor and it's picky, Elementor is. This is a website page builder. And because of my experience, I can fix that really, really quickly, whereas someone else would spend, what, three hours trying to figure it out. So there's things like that. And I just feel like a freelancer or an agency, graphic designer, website builder would bring this knowledge to your business, which you can't necessarily do. We were actually talking, weren't we, in Create Connect the other day about someone who had gone off to Fiverr or something, got a logo done, and then they took their lovely shiny new logo off into an event and someone else had the same logo. It's different colours. And I've written down, a single conversation with a wise person is worth 10 years of study, which I really liked as I was thinking about Yeah. So speaking about Create Connect, tell me about Create Connect as part of this answer, but also why do you think it's important to have these kind of communities within growing Thank you for letting me mention Create Connect because that is my sort of networking group where Claire comes along and we do our creative project whilst we're networking and whilst we're chatting to each other. But yeah, I mean, Creativity Found has been such a good community for me. And there's three things I find so important about any kind of community like this. And the business connections is one of the first ones. So I believe it's a little bit like our relationship where it's not just business anymore. You start moving into this support, you know, and it is personal support because we have such a hard time running businesses. It's tough and it's really nice to know that we've got that business support between us. I think talking to friends that are not in business, it's not the same because they don't know the challenges that we go through day to day. So I think that is a huge one for members of something like Creativity Found. And that like their network connections, I don't believe you can build a business as easily without putting yourself out there and building connections like we do in something like Creativity Found. And then the second one was confidence. So with my creativity, I've been sort of, I refound my creativity just before I met you, Claire. So it must have been two years or something like that. And I think just knowing that there's other people in the world that are just a little bit underconfident about their art or their projects or whatever, And then talking to the other members in our group, it's just amazing to be able to compare notes and share books and knowledge and stuff like that, that we can just get that kind of confidence. And with Creativity Found, because you can go around looking for the kind of things that interest you, you can go and see what other mediums there are out there and maybe try this or try that. And we went to see Debbie Page, didn't we? The Yellow Shed pottery. And it was just so much fun because I had no knowledge about pottery at all before. And then we went off and just spent a couple of hours with her. It was really cool to see her studio and I wouldn't have done that Yeah, it was lovely, wasn't it? We were just like chatting and playing Yeah, creativity came out of it. It was brilliant. And then the last one I wanted to mention about how creativity found helps me is mental health because it's something that's worrying me quite a lot at the moment. We see so many people like taking their own lives and just something that really worries me and I wanted to just mention to anyone out there that art can help and it's definitely helped me get out of a hole that I've been in. I think instead of thinking about your problems all of the time you can start to think about your creative projects and your art and start sort of immersing yourself in that and the sort of smaller things in life because you're perhaps painting a flower or a leaf or something like that. And it just brings all of those horrible thoughts, those negative thoughts, back into something that's so positive. And even music can help you in that way, or acting or something like that. And it doesn't have to be expensive. And I think Creativity Found can help you in that way as well, where you can just discover some more positive ways to spend your time instead of you know, sitting in front of Netflix or scrolling on that phone, which I just believe it just doesn't help us at all. So I wanted to add that because I want to help people if they're not feeling right Yeah. Thank you for that. I mean, it is where it all came from for me as well, because I started the drama and singing classes. For that exact reason, I was looking, I was really, really anxious and I was looking for a focus that made you not think about anything else and just have that bit of escapism. And it was through Open Stage Arts that I was able to do that and have the most lovely time berking around with drama games and singing and stuff. And then it was when that stopped that I started Creativity Found. So it's all come from that, weirdly, and developed into So many other things and it's great on the podcast to be able to chat with people who have had those experiences as well and how they use their creativity now is benefiting them in very many holistic ways. So thank you for sharing that. It's really, really important. What's coming up for you and Oh, it's so exciting. I've got the most amazing employee called Debs and she is helping me all the time with what's coming up in my business. So continuing on with the Create Connect sessions and come along for five pounds and that five pounds will go to charity. And then in the second part of the year, I'm opening up some sort of cohorts to help people with their SEO website engineering, I'm calling it, because it's not about designing websites. It is about teaching people how to sort of tinker around with their websites, make them stronger, get these people a little bit more passionate and creative and unique in their websites. So there'll be accountability sessions. There will be sharing of tips and, you know, things like plugins and themes and, and Of course I will be continuing my creativity and very badly playing Brilliant. That sounds like a really, really good idea, Kelly. I love that. Yeah. I felt like you would be just the perfect candidate because you are the kind of person that wants to learn. Because it is horrible when, you know, you're sort of giving that whole baby away. You know, your website is your baby and you're giving it away to someone else to do the updates, but actually you want to understand it yourself and you want to help it yourself. So quite nice to be able to learn together. I think that's a really, really good idea. Thank you so much, Kelly. And I will be putting about that cohort when you're ready to go. That can go on your page at Creativity Found. The links are all in the descriptions, but you can go to creativityfound.co.uk slash kellydrewit and that links to all of Kelly's socials, to her website, so you can contact her directly. Before we go, this live stream was brought to you using Riverside. First time doing a live stream, it seems we've gone pretty well. It's really cool. It's good. You can find links to Riverside and also Buzzsprout, which is my hosting company for the podcast. If you're interested in podcasting, Ask Me Anything, have a look at those links. If you actually do use those links and you purchase a paid subscription, some pennies will go back to Creativity Found, which will go towards putting the podcast on. And that was all I wanted to say. Thank you very I need to find my mouse now. Where's my mouse? There it is. Thanks so much for listening to Creativity Found. I hope you enjoyed this episode and gained some value from it. If you did, perhaps you'd like to contribute a small monetary sign of appreciation, either by becoming a regular supporter from as little as$3 per month using the link in the show notes, or if you're listening on a value for value enabled app, such as Fountain, Trufans or Podverse, feel free to send a few sats my way. I also occasionally promote products that I personally use, so please use the affiliate link where relevant if you are buying from those fine companies. Thanks so much, I really appreciate it.
