RGD Hosting

About

StickyGeneral

Welcome to RGD Hosting, this is a site that has free resources aimed at small traders around all things digital. Please be aware this advice is based on over 20 years experience working within the IT industry, however I also cannot be held accountbale for the advice anybody who uses this does so at their own choice.

I have been going to many fairs, events, shows, etc and am amazed by the range and quality of work that trader put in. I however have no such skills, but am aware of a lot of people out there who get scammed or conned by so called experts who charge for people to get a web or social presence. This really annoys me as for traders their business is their life in most cases and every penny is precious.

Thus RGD Hosting, here i will post guides and information available to all. There is also a contact section if you require any specific advice or guidance.

Lastly I do offer cheap web hosting. This is not a pitch but anyone who is interested please do contact me. To put it into context I run a hosting service as I host websites for friends and family including my own websites and other services such as email.

Please can I also ask you to check out my other site The RGD Event List https://thergdeventlist.com. This is another free service I run in relation to promoting unique and different events. I have found over the last 10 years that it can be quite hard to find out about these events, even with google, and as such created a website specifically with this in mind.

12Sep/21

Social Media

Branding, Social Media

This is one of the hardest parts of a business. Especially if you are a small business.

So where to start? Well as per my previous article the Brand / Name. This needs to be common across the platforms.

So if you are just starting out and have an idea for a brand it is worth checking out the platforms to see if that name has already been taken.

If you already have a brand then you can be limited however you can always work out a variation that is close enough.

Do not choose something completely different as this could confuse people. (Yes i have done that in the past myself)

So platforms.

There are main ones and then lots of other little ones:

Facebook – https://facebook.com

Instagram – https://instagram.com

Twittter – https://twitter.com

Google Business – https://business.google.com/

tumblr – https://tumblr.com

Pinterest – https://pinterest.com

Facebook and Instagram are owned by the same company and can be linked.

Short of spending money getting followers and gaining business is old fashioned patience and hard work.

I will do follow up posts about each platform and what you can do.

12Sep/21

Branding and Physical Advertising

Branding

The first thing to start with is that I am no where near an expert at this, however there are some key themes that I would sign post you to.

The first being brand consistency. Have a clear idea of what your brand is. When you are trading at various events you are potentially competing with many other vendors. As such you need to stand out and be memorable. The two things that many people reference is the name of your business and then a tag line. For example mine is The RGD Event List and the tag line is The place to find out about unique and different events across the UK. I also have an easy to identify logo which I use across everything.

When planning a brand you need to note down things such as colours and fonts you use. then when producing marketing materials you can reference.

Now to physical branding. This can be expensive and as such make sure you plan what you want and the design before purchasing.

I once again iterate I am not affiliated with the following but from personal experience have found the following to be really good.

Awesome Merchandise
For £5 including delivery you can get double sided business cards. This is great if starting out and don’t want to invest in lots of cards. Also if you have a theme but want to do subtle changes this means you can do so at an affordable rate. An example which I personally use, is where i take photos at different types of events. Thus I have sets of business cards with different photos but same logo and contact details.

https://www.awesomemerchandise.com/100-Awesome-Business-Cards-Deal

Vistaprint
This is a big company but the key part is they are forever doing offers. I have bought hats, T-Shirts, originally business cards, cups, etc. However each time I have managed to get between 10-40% the items. At one stage I got custom T-Shirts for about £4 a shirt. You can also sign up for their mailing list and they email the offers to you and give you access early sometimes. I would say though is check prices when offers are on to ensure they are good value. My next purchase I am planning is a flag for outdoor events.

https://www.vistaprint.co.uk/offers

04Jul/21

Website Hosting

General

So you want a website? There are many options out there ranging from services that do it all for you through to those that allow you to fully customise. The latter being what I use.

There are many sites out there telling you about these services, how good they are, etc.

The thing I will say is reviews. Whatever you choose to use look up what people say about it.

For example wix is supposed to be a market leader for this purpose, however lets take a look at what people think:

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.wix.com

I am not saying wix is bad, however reading trustpilot, I wouldn’t personally use them.
The other key part is read the reviews to make sure they are legitimate. This goes both ways. People do pay others for good reviews.
A good example of fake reviews is a company who I have used who are good.
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.awesomemerchandise.com
When you read the bad reviews it is clearly the same person doing many bad reviews to bring their rating down. If you really want the detail read their post around the whole incident.

The next part is features. Does the website host / builder offer the options you need? e.g does it support a shop? does it have modules you can use to do different things.

Personally I use WordPress as you can add what are known as plugins to pretty much do anything. However it can be quite daunting to set up and maintain. I will do some more articles around WordPress and try and make it easy for people.

02Jul/21

SEO

SEO

What is SEO I hear you ask?

Here is a link to an article about it,

https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-is-seo/?kw=&cmp=UK_SRCH_DSA_Blog_Core_BU_EN&label=dsa_pagefeed&Network=g&Device=c&utm_content=484278208025&kwid=dsa-1053501802787&cmpid=11776881484&agpid=113846074545&BU=Core&extid=167346300070&adpos=&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8vqGBhC_ARIsADMSd1B3A0x1xch_25Od-akjAfa5oV7J4YYjMQJSgyaaeFC8uTW5NnORRoQaAkRBEALw_wcB

Basically it is how your website is referenced by search engines like google. If you do not get this right when people are searching for you will not appear in the results and as such you will never get listed.

Companies such as the link above of course will do all this for you…..but at a cost. However a lot of the website hosts / builders, such as wordpress, wix, etc will have tools built in to allow you to fix this yourself.

A great FREE tool to check how your site works with SEO is:

https://www.seobility.net/en/seocheck/

Enter your website address and click Analyse Website

The next link is an example of one of my website pages:

https://freetools.seobility.net/en/seocheck/check?url=https%3A%2F%2Fraidogebodagaz.com%2Fevents%2Ffantasy-forest&crawltype=1

As you can see it is green meaning it is ok. 82% is not the best score but it isn’t a bad score.
You can read down and it gives advice about what works and what doesn’t.
My issue is about too many files, unfortunately this is out of my control as I use WordPress and this is just how it works.
The two key bits is to ensure you have a decent heading that has the right code (H1) and you have a meta description. This is usually a small part from the text of your website or something you enter specifically for search engines explaining what the page it.

Without decent SEO on your website you will never get listed on search engines.