Rufus Evison: Cross posts

Looking for an agent.

2011-02-02T05:39:00.001-08:00

I am playing around with Virtual Assistants and so have set them the task of trying to find potential agents for me. No idea if anything will come of it…
Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Get a book published

Start up company advice blog

2010-10-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

Rufus Evison is now posting business advice for start up companies at the start up blog!

Rufus Evison

A common culture gap in business

2010-07-18T08:23:00.001-07:00

This week I wrote about the culture gap between technical people and non-technical people. I have seen things in my business life that show what not understanding the differences in these cultures can do to business success and here I have written about them.

My blog for small businesses is doing well and I am writing it reliably.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

Getting funding and growing a company

2010-06-26T07:34:00.001-07:00

So far everything points to success. A blog post is going out each week, regular as clockwork. I have started a topic on the sizes of companies. The series will contain (but not be limited to):
+ Is yours a small company or a large business?
+ Scalable businesses versus lifestyle companies.
+ Specializations versus doing it all.
+ My personal definition of a big company and a couple of thoughts on how to avoid the traps some large companies fall into.

I have also done a quick piece on getting funding and one of the many pitfalls to avoid.

The process around getting blog posts out the door seems to be working!

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

Mission statements, company culture and automation of process

2010-06-08T23:12:00.001-07:00

So far every blog article has gone out right on schedule.

Article one set a schedule for the month of June and we appear to be going to hit it dead centre.

Article two talked about how to stop a mission statement being the usual irrelevant rubbish and turn it into a useful tool to help align the beliefs of the company with the actions it takes. There is so much fuzzy meaningless stuff written on company culture that I was tempted to avoid the area all together. Instead I have written the bits that i have found to be actually useful over the many many startups i have been involved in and have actually managed to get incorporated into some of the ten to twenty where I have been involved in the execution.

Article three was all about the automation of process to save resources.

So what next? According to the schedule it will be something about the reletive merits of big and small companies. Watch this space…

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

Build a website

2010-05-27T14:50:00.001-07:00

I guess that the website I am building for new businesses could be considered part of my experiment in online branding. It is not as it is really much more about promoting innovation by helping entrepreneurs and investors but it could be. The reason I say that is that it contains a blog for start up companies that I am putting articles on. As each article is likely to contain a signature (so as to differentiate the authors when other start up experts are invited to contribute) it will impact my personal branding. As such I am trying out making the link on the word Rufus and making it on my whole name of Rufus Evison.

Given the number of people called Rufus in the world and the number who are superstars like Rufus Wainright and Rufus Sewell I think the former is unlikely to have much effect. That said as there is only one Rufus Evison, as far as I am aware, it should not be hard to move rufus.evison.com up the ranks for a search on “Rufus Evison”, so it is not so much of a challenge.

I will be interested to see if it ever makes it up the ranks for Rufus as a word on its own. That would be gratifying in a beautifully pointless sort of way.

Rufus Evison (and this one is not a link at all!)

See more progress on: Experiment with on-line branding

Time to get started.

2010-05-27T14:37:00.001-07:00

I have bought the domain for start up companies (evison.com) that I am I am going to start writing this under. I have set up an installation of Wordpress to use for writing the blog. I have commited myself by publishing an initial schedule of the first four start up articles that I shall publish. Now all that remains ot be seen is whether I shall keep to my commitment.

I am pretty confident as I have always done what I say I will do and keeping my word is important to me. So why have i not written more before? Because I have shied away from committing without a real purpose to commit to. Now I feel I have a purpose I suspect this should be fairly straight forward. The only real question is when I will feel I have fulfilled the purpose and am so free to lapse. I am thinking that having written for a year would count as success. I am also thinking that having created enough to try and get a book published would do.

Are there any mroe likely end points?

Who knows, we shall see…
Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

Punting one handed

2010-01-26T03:17:00.001-08:00

I am probably the only person I know of who can not only punt one handed but can read a book using the other hand whilst managing a glass of champagne without spilling it. It is a useful skill if you are picking people up by punt but do not wish to be bored on the way.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: build a list of my more unusual skills

800

2009-01-29T07:29:00.001-08:00

I have now catalogued upwards of 800 of my books. I am still on the easy half of the books, but even then default values creep in so that the categorisation amy not be accurate. I do not feel this matters as long as the correct book is listed. If it comes to an insurance claim that is what matters and anything else is icing on the cake.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: catalogue my books

Have barcode scanner but...

2009-01-15T04:26:00.001-08:00

When I moved to London last year I lost a large amount of books in the move. I do not know which ones. I am aware of the loss because when I go to read an old favourite it is missing, series of books have holes in the middle, and large areas of books I used to have are practically empty. I do not know how many books have gone. I keep revising my estimate upwards, so it is certainly in the hundreds, but may be in the thousands. Some of the books that are missing are actually worth something. Something needs to be done to make sure this does not happen again.

Cataloguing will not necessarily solve the problem but would make an insurance claim easier. It may also help me to re-buy the ones I want of those that are missing. If things go in the future it might mean it is easier to spot a gap in time to get the books back. Over all it seems a good idea.

I have somewhere between 2000 and 4000 books left at a very rough estimate. I have a barcode scanner and some book cataloguing software (www.collectorz.com). I have all my books arranged roughly by category (General fiction, science fiction, cartoons, biography, reference, foreign language,) and alphabetically by author within their categories. I started to catalogue books in the study in a frenzy of activity over Christmas after I was given the scanner.

Now I am back at work I do not really have time to do this, but it needs to be done. More than half my books do not scan in successfully, so there is going to be a large amount of manual work in cataloguing, which is why this is worth having as a 43t goal. Once I have a goal on here I work towards it without losing track, so here it is.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: catalogue my books

Start up companies

2008-12-18T10:10:00.001-08:00

With encouragement from Emma Drew I am pushing ahead with writing a set of handbooks for start up entrepreneurs. This would consist of four or five small handbooks which could later be bundled together into one compendium volume.

The expected titles will be along the following lines:

Seeds of an idea

A seed contains the full definition of a plant even though the environment determines exactly how it grows. A company without a similar depth of vision will wither and die.

Growing pains

Companies grow away from the values that made them successful in the first place. Why does this happen and how can you stop it? There are issues around size, culture and communications. Each level of delegation has its own effects. If you understand potential problems you are better placed to avoid them.

Getting funding

You need to decide whether you really need money and if so what is the best way to get it. For example if a VC gives you funding they will want a third of your company, but they will never admit that is the way it works. If you are going for VC money you need to know how to maximise the money in and minimise the equity out. I will talk about how to decide if you need money and what options are available.

Cutting loose

The difference between a lifestyle company and a scalable business is whether it can think for itself. If you want business success you need to learn to make yourself redundant.

Marketing Measurement

The CMO is said to have the shortest life expectancy on the board. This is because they generally do not have the figures to back up their decisions. There are a variety of hidden problems when measuring marketing. Generally a scientific approach is not taken and huge amounts of money are spent without full justification. If you want to market efficiently then measurement is key.

Currently I have only written around 15,000 words but I will try to have a crack at spending at least some time on this over the holiday.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Get a book published

Another two pages of Written in Crayon

2008-08-13T08:11:00.001-07:00

The images on my written in crayon blog stopped working through the blog storage so I have transferred them to our own disks. http://writtenincrayon.evison.co.uk is now working. I am going from the back towards the front so you will see the end of the book if you look now. That isn’t really a problem given it was qwritten to be dipped into at random pages anyway.

If you fancy a light bit of humorous writing then follow the link to Written in Crayon and let me know what you think. I am going to start monitoring it using Google Analytics soon, so I would be interested to see if anyone does actually come form here {grin}.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

Perhaps a business book? (+ more on humour)

2008-08-03T10:00:00.001-07:00

I have now posted a few more double page spreads from Written in Crayon which is my humorous collections of excerpts from fictional books. I have also altered the image sizes to make them more readable. It kind of messes up the whole blog layout, but makes the book legible, which mattes more. I would welcome comments on the book bits you can see there as more will follow.

I am also debating writing a book on the pitfalls you can encounter within start up companies as they grow. It is the sort of topic where I have a fair degree of expertise, so I would want to see if a publisher might be interested before I started.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Get a book published

Beyond measurement

2008-07-27T11:44:00.001-07:00

I have had a way that will work for a long while and am beginning to get it deplyed. A lot of the delay has been because I do not want this privacy friendly method confused with the Phorm method which is rather more direct.

The step that comes next is to try to segment and target based on proper evaluation in privacy friendly way. The step after that is to see if we can move from buying and selling online display advertising in terms of the media and move it to selling solely in terms of its effectiveness. That is to say if I am measuring the effect, in store and online, of the adv ertising, then that should be what is used to charge. If you are creating a 5% uplift in sales then you get a percentage of that. If the unplift is zero you get a percentage of nothing and so are paid nothing. If the uplift is larger you get more money.

Clearly there will be exceptions to this. If I have a bad product that no one will ever want to buy I am not going to be able to buy advertising on thos basis. Also not eveything is about sales.

Perhaps I am advertising the disadvantages of smoking because I am a government or a charity. That is not going to create additional sales and cannot be charged in this way. Still I am moving towards this goal and will see if there are related goals that arise for different industries.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Create a real way of measuring the usefulness of online advertising

Do picture blogs count?

2008-07-12T06:18:00.001-07:00

I have started publishing one of my books as a blog (Written In Crayon), but for various convoluted reasons I am only doing the entries as pictures of the written word rather than as text. I feel very slightly guilty as this means they are not accessible to the partially sighted or the blind, but as I do not expect anyone reads my blogs anyway (Rufus profile with a list of blogs at the bottom) I doubt it matters too much. That said, if anyone out there would like to help me make them accessible, or even just feels the content is good enough to be worth my making the effort just let me know and w will see what we can do.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

Smoking: weakness, foolishness or something else?

2008-07-04T04:29:00.001-07:00

Having spoken to quite a lot of people I have come to the conclusion that those who smoke now are either weak or foolish. It kills a person, makes them smell bad and makes their skin bad and unatractive. I can think of no utility or reason why it is good except that it feels good to get rid of the cravings for nicotine. Stopping smoking gets rid of those cravings permenanetly, so overall feels even better.

I have a poll running on my (rarely frequented) frivolous blog.

So far every explanation of why someone smokes I have been given falls into one or both of these categories. If you can think of another reason let me know and I will add it to my poll on the frivolous blog.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

Carbon footprint and the purpose of the frivolous blog

2008-05-22T03:52:00.001-07:00

It seems the purpose of my frivolous blog is being undermined. i am using it as a garbage dump for anything and everything I want to experiment with online as well as for the more relevant things.

I am currently using it as a test for the term Carbon footprint. I am interested in how carbon footprint is used generally and how the search engines see it. I have seen links to more than a doxen carbon footprint calculators and to discussions of the definitions of carbon footprint. the thing that surprises me is that companies talking about their green credentials do not come up at all. are they all ashamed of their carbon footprint? Are they just not interested in it?

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

retail media

2008-04-16T04:00:00.001-07:00

The retail media blog has now gained its own domain www.retailmedia.org at last!

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: define retail media

retail media

2008-04-16T03:59:00.001-07:00

The retail media blog has now gained its own domain www.retailmedia.org at last!

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: define retail media

The story so far

2008-04-03T06:35:00.001-07:00

I have now published 6 chapters of my Becoming a Father book in a blog.

Chapter one is the introduction.

Chapter 2 is about the level of commitment involved. This bit involves some information about the costs of having a baby.

Chapter 3 is some explanation of the differences a man can make and how.

Chapter 4 is about Nutrition and its effects on fatherhood and babies.

Chapter 5 is about Sex, it’s timing and effectiveness and how these affect conception and possible gender.

I have also published the reference section which covers a large area. This includes a glossary, a pregnancy timeline and a whole section of things to watch for.

More will be put up as I get the time.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Get a book published

Domain transfer failed

2008-04-01T09:24:00.001-07:00

Because the domain retailmedia.org was not properly transfered from uk2 the retail media blog went down for three days. According to feedburner this took the subscribers from 73 down to zero. While I am not sure I believe the feedburner stats it has certainly been a significant setback that is going to take some work to recover from. The blog credibility seems to have been quite high as I had heard several positive references to it in conversation. I just hope we can get back on track. Still if a goal were all plain sailing there would be no point…

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: define retail media

Retail media can be fun

2008-03-20T09:18:00.001-07:00

I am due to change this blog to become retailmedia.org any minute now. In the meantime I have put up a page of retail media terms that can be used in the game bs bingo. Anyone with any interest in either retail media or games should have a look.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: define retail media

The Reference section

2008-03-19T08:20:00.001-07:00

The reference section seems to stand alone quite well and the next chapter needs a fair bit of editing before it can be usefully published. So instead of telling people “it is in the book” I have put the reference section of my book about becoming a father on line out of order.

See more progress on: Get a book published

Becoming a father chapter 4 : Nutrition

2008-03-07T11:47:00.001-08:00

A you might expect from the title, chapter 4 of Becoming a Father is all about how a man’s nutrition in the 100 days before conception can affect the chances of becoming the father of a happy healthy baby. Did you know that it is not just the ladies who should make sure they get enough folic acid? Did you know that Zinc really matters? Did you know that some sperm swim in zig-zags? Find out all this an more in the latest thrilling chapter of Becoming a father by Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Get a book published

Becoming a Father Chapter 3, Towards conception

2008-03-07T10:40:00.001-08:00

Almost called “From here to Paternity” this chapter of Becoming a Father talks about things a man can do to make a difference.

Did you know that things a man does before conception can:
a) Increase the chances of conception,
b) Improve the chances of a healthy baby
c) Lower the odds of a miscarriage.

There are so many books out there that assume a man cannot make a difference, or even more commonly assume that conception has already taken place. This book explains the reality, based on the real medical research.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Get a book published

I have published Becoming a Father Chapter 2

2008-03-07T10:33:00.001-08:00

In this chapter I talked about the commitment that having a baby requires from both partners, the kind of costs that can be expected in terms of lifestyle and your relationship as well as the financial costs. Have a look at Becoming a Father chapter two and tell me what you think.

RufusEvison

See more progress on: Get a book published

Chapter1 of Becoming a father published

2008-03-07T10:26:00.001-08:00

I have published Becoming a father chapter 1 and left it to stew. I will be putting up an entry for each of these, or at least the first four as I feel they deserve celebrating. It is a book about becoming a father from a man’s point of view. It is not about what it feels like to become a father. It is about the practical considerations of Becoming a father. Chapter one is basically about who should read the book, how it should be used and the contents. It also shows a nice scan of my son while he was in the womb, which I am including here.

So there it is, copyright on everything from the image to the text is maintained, but feel free to have a read if you are considering having children.

Becoming a father by Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Get a book published

While I am waiting

2008-02-27T09:08:00.001-08:00

While I am waiting for some of that copious free time stuff to come along I thought I would start to put a few bits on-line while maintaining copyright. I am going to put my book about becoming a father up because people are using it, so it must be useful and if it is, then it should be made available. Feel free to tell your friends who are considering having children about it.

If I am doing that it makes sense that I should consider putting some of my other books or draft manuscipts up too. I will think about which will work in this format, but welcome comments on what would be worth doing.

In the meantime, as well as hoping for comments on the book about having a baby from a man’s point of view I have a thought about maybe branching out. I am considering havning a go at some literary fiction in my spare moments whilst traveling. I will try lying down somewhere quiet and see if I get over the idea.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Get a book published

Define Retail Media

2007-12-13T03:32:00.001-08:00

I have been tasked with various things around retail media but have yet to find a complete, consistent and widely accepted definition of what the retail media are. That being the case I would like to create such a definition. I have made an attempt at doing a generic definition here: Retail Media. The problem with this is that while it is not contentious it is not complete. So I have also started to try and create a list of retail media. My goal is that this evolve to the point where it contains all media considered to be part of the retail media space and none that are generally considered outside of that area. Whether it will do this by picking up on what is already thought of as retail media or refining and creating the public perception is neither here nor there. In either case we will have a full definition of what the retail media are and this goal will be fulfilled.

What I need is some sort of measure to see when this is complete. I have a few formative thought but suggestions are welcome.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: define retail media

The Retail Media Group

2007-12-12T03:40:00.001-08:00

As if I didn’t already have enough to do I have accepted a request to add to my blogging. I am now working for the experts in Retail Media and have therefore acquired a certain small level of knowledge in the space. I have therefore been asked to add retail media to my off line networking interests (TEN, etc.).
I am starting a group for networking about Electronic and Retail Media (ERM) and so am beginning a blog to help me gather expertise before I start looking towards invitations.

Any suggestions for relevant people to highlight on the blog or to invite to the offline group will be gratefully received.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

The honeymoon is over

2007-11-27T13:58:00.001-08:00

The honeymoon may be over but the marriage seems to be a good one. Sure it is a large company and there are a few places where that shows, but less than there might be. Sure not absolutely everyone there is perfect, but there are more intelligent people per square foot than you might believe. I am getting to do interesting things with good people to good purpose. I am helping build customer loyalty without trying anything black hat. More to the point I am helping define customer loyalty in a privacy friendly way. I cannot ask for more.

I asked for integrity, intelligence and interest. I have found them. I am content.

Rufus Evison

P.S. to aid my attempt to understand the search engine optimisation space I am going to include a link about a key concept for my new company: Customer loyalty.

See more progress on: Get a new and interesting job

Ten the Techie Entrepreneurial Networking event and the birth of ERM.

2007-11-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

Many of you will already be aware of TEN, but for those who are not here is a brief summary:

A broad spectrum of entrepreneurs with a technical bias are invited to come and meet informally. The hope is that out of these talks will come ideas that might develop into something good. A few relevant people from other areas (finance, recruitment, start-up consultancy and so forth are also intived. Typically it is a fairly technical crowd with only around 5% non-technical entrepreneurs. It is generally sponsored so that food and drink are provided free. So far no charge has been made for attending (which has come as a surprise to those who have tried to pay me).

We (well I really) are (am) starting to investigate having pre-networking talks. The first of these was Simon Wardley presenting on the commoditisation of the internet. his talk was amusing, compelling and hugely well presented. This has made the selection of the next talk much harder.

The whole thing started as a joint good idea between myself and John Woods (of Site Intelligence and Synature fame). It now works with me sending out invitations until the weekend before and then opening the event to the public on upcoming.org. Each session I try to dragoon someone new into being responsible for some of the invites so that we get some new blood in without diluting the atmosphere. I am determined that this should not turn into a business card exchange fest with no real thought.

I am now looking at expanding the networking event theme. I have been asked, on the back of the success of the relationships promoted through TEN to look at the Retail Media space. I am therefore considering an event for Electronic and Retail Media (ERM).

Does anyone reading this either:

A) Want to volunteer to arrange some invites for TEN

or

B) want to suggest some famous people in the Media Space to help innaugarate ERM?

On (A) I am hoping that we might at some point get some techie entrepreneurs who are still affiliated with one or more universities as so far we mainly have old hands with lots of experience. For (B) it is more a list of people who are well known in the space whom I mightapproach as a first step.

The Next TEN will probably be a Wednesday in January, so suggestions for convenient dates will be gratefully accepted.

Rufus Evison

P.S. While I am on here I am going to plug my 43 things entry on Customer Loyalty at least in part to see if I can push it up the search engine ratings.

Customer Loyalty

2007-11-26T15:09:00.001-08:00

I seem to have more loyal customers on my blog than it deserves. I am going to strat another group, begining with another blog. The new blog will be about the people who try to create customer loyalty. The stars of retail and electronic media.

The reason? Simple. TEN has proved to be a great success and so I have been asked to create another such group for Retail Media. I do not know enough about retail media to automatically be able to bring in big names. What I need to do is understand who is whom in retail media and who the experts on customer loyalty are.

Once I begine to understand the landscape I can start to invite the people. I do know a lot of people who are experts in electronic media. Combining the two will bring advantages to both and allow me to ensure a good and interesting mix.

On a comletely different subject relating to customer loyalty I have just had it pointed out to me that the company for whom I am now working, are experts in customer loyalty and yet do not show up on the search engines. I wonder whether it is worth me doing another attempt at SEO to push them up the ladder for the term. Or at least to get a Blog entry of mine up and link to them from there.

I am still debating this, but may well try to put something of mine up as a page on customer loyalty with a link to their site while I am over here in Cincinnati.

More on this later.
Rufus “customer loyalty” Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

Reasoned rants

2007-11-09T07:45:00.001-08:00

I do not maintain my blog in the way that I should. I have a backlog of things people have asked me to write and yet I let weeks go by without anything going up. Part of my problem is that I do not get many comments. To be fair that is in part because I do not have many regular readers. That in turn is at least in part because I do not blog regularly. Catch 22 for the reasoning blogger. The answer is simple. Blog more. Does anyone out there have anything in particular they would like me to write reasoned articles about? I go back to the original research, find out the truth and write from a fairly solid perspective. Where something is just my opinion I generally say so. I have posted a list of likely things to blog about so let me know if there is something you think I should write…

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Write my blog more regularly

Link Bait

2007-11-01T07:48:00.003-07:00

My blog is now being scraped and used as link bait. I do not know if this is a compliment or not, but it shows the difference in visibility on myt blog since I started looking at this. My reputation monitor (on naymz.com) showed up a couple of blogs mentioning me. They were both named after celebrities. On closer inspection they were blogs being automatically created by scraping sites and they both automatically forwarded to a dating site. they had come accross my site, stolen the content and were using it to trap unwary people doing searches unrelated to dating. They then get paid per click for the useless traffic they are sending on to the dating site.

See more progress on: Experiment with on-line branding

To relieve the pressure?

2007-10-22T01:13:00.001-07:00

There is little question that while you are breast feeding (if you decide to breast feed) then some of your immunity to sniffles and so forth is passed on to the child. So there is a benefit in terms of the parent not having to deal with and worry about sniffles.

The question is whether, in countries with good hygiene and decent food, there is a significant difference to the child, whether in terms of survival or in terms of freedom from disabilities and serious disease.

A huge amount of pressure is put on educated and well off people to breast feed. The NCT classes imply that doing anything else is not normal. The breast feeding counsellors imply it is close to negligence. There is a government directive to support breast feeding and even the milk formula companies have to carry notices recommending it.

My observations suggest that those with less money or less education are not exposed to nearly as much of this propaganda. This may not be true, and the pressure may be on everyone. Certainly some or all women are made to feel as if not breast feeding is a failure to be a good mother.

Given my anecdotal experience it looks as if this pressure is unjustified. I have been asked to find out by one mother whether this is the case.

A preliminary search has turned up an epidemiological study from 2004 which suggests there is a relationship between SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) and bottle feeding. After my previous experience with the SIDS research this will need a lot of careful examination.

Almost all SIDS related behaviours are tied to lower socio-economic or socio-demographic status. Where this is the case an epidemiological study must by its nature pick up a lot of potentially false signs. At least one government/FSIDs recommendation is not supported by their research, but seems like a good recommendation to make anyway. So the question comes down to is this pressure unjustified, and if so should we take the pressure off the mums?

See more progress on: Check what difference, if any, genuine research says breastfeeding makes to babies

Untitled

2007-10-08T02:22:00.001-07:00

This is another frivolous entry caused by the search optimisation goal I have on 43 things (http://www.43things.com/things/view/1688159). This one is caused originally by me mentioning that I came up quite a bit if you searched for rufus web analytics on google. I said this was in part because Rufus was an unusual name and so it skewed the probabilities with respect to search. This was followed by Andy G saying that he would search on rufus sexgod and see if I came up. I said I doubted I would but didn’t think it was a hugely popular term so it might be possible to change that with a lot of work. I should never have said that. He has taken is as saying I might try to do the work to move “rufus sexgod” up in the rankings. I will clearly not do that level of work, but I feel the least I can do is put a page with the term “rufus sexgod” in on the web somewhere. My frivolous blog seems the sensible and safe place to put the term Rufus Sexgod, so here it is.

Rufus Rufus Sexgod Evison ReasonedRants.blogspot.com

See more progress on: Experiment with on-line branding

Is the industry beginning to notice this is missing?

2007-10-02T09:16:00.001-07:00

Online ad spend grew 26.8 percent, during the first half of 2007 over the same in 2006 according to Randall Rothenberg at the IAB conference in New York on the 24th. Apparently this takes spending over $10 Billion for the half year. This compares with the 37% growth that led to the figure of 7.9 billion the year before. Effectively what this is saying is that online ad-spend is growing fast, but not as fast as it has been. The advantages are still as clear, Internet use is growing, TV and newspaper use is shrinking.

What is missing, it seems to me, is the evaluation piece. We have not yet reached saturation for the market without evidence, but this could be the first sign that it is in sight. What this means is that I need to create the possibility of proper evaluation of online advertising in time to be useful in countering this slow down.

Rufus Evison

See more progress on: Create a real way of measuring the usefulness of online advertising

The Test Article About Rufus Wainwright, Rufus Sewell, Etc...

2007-10-01T13:55:00.001-07:00

This is the article I posted in the frivolous blog, cross posted here to test the effect.

What’s in a name?

I decided, for fairly frivolous reasons, to google Rufus and see what I got. I was expecting to see more of Rufus and Chaka Khan than I did. Clearly I am out of date. It was all Rufus Wainwright this, and Rufus Wainwright that. If I were after Rufus Wainwright MP3s I would have found them in an instant (or more likely an enticement to sign up for spam disguised as an offer of free MP3 tracks).

Rufus Sewell got a look in, as did Rufus King, Rufus Thomas, Rufus W Johnson, Rufus Stokes, Rufus Zyrtec (with a cool name like that you will get found on the web) and finally Rufus Shinra. Sadly no Rufus Evison (well not in the pages I bothered to go through. I guess in a way this is good news. I am not famous. I do not want to be famous. Even as a child I wanted to be rich and respected not rich and famous. I like to think that in my field, (web guru/web analytics/Internet stuff) I am fairly well respected, so I am happy.

Finally, hallelujah, something about Rufus the name. A link called Definition of Rufus. It was not actually a real page, just a broken link, but it was not about Rufus Wainwright! This gave me more satisfaction than I care to admit.

Interestingly enough I did see that a web design house in Sunderland owns rufus.co.uk which I had considered buying years ago before going for my surname instead. If they felt like selling it I would actually be interested, but I cannot see a company called Rufus selling a domwin name like that, even if they do not seem very good at Search Engine Optimisation (page 9?!?).

So, this article is perhaps of interest to anyone called Rufus themselves, but why would I bother putting it in a blog? Even a frivolous blog does not need so many examples from a google search. The answer is that I am doing an experiment in online branding (see ReasonedRants.Blogspot.com). This is part of why I am interested, but not the whole story. The rest is I am interested to see what affect putting all these Rufus references have on a page. It might even turn up on the search engines…

Rufus Evison
JustTheRants.BlogSpot.Com

See more progress on: Experiment with on-line branding

Rufus Evison, Not Rufus Wainwright!

2007-09-30T12:27:00.001-07:00

As an Experiment I have added a page to my Frivolous Blog about googling Rufus. Putting it in here and cross posting will make Google notice it faster, so I will see what happens…

Rufus Evison
ReasonedRants.BlogSpot.Com

See more progress on: Experiment with on-line branding

Search Engine Optimisation

2007-09-30T08:06:00.001-07:00

Even though I have left out all the tricks of the trade that involve work my blog has crept up to entries 13 and 14 if you google Rufus Evison (no quotes required). This surprises me as there is so much I could do to make the page search engine friendly and to get it more noticed.

Before I started this I could not find the blog even when I googled “Rufus Evison” together with unusual words that were in the blog. It has moved from being invisible to being on my first page with very little work. Admittedly I have a distinctive name so I am not competing against anything, but even so it should have taken at least a little more work.

If things progress this well in future I will find a harder search term (still relevant to me as I believe that good rankings require content that deserve them and try taking the blog up on that.

Suggestions for a term that described me in terms of my work or how I should be viewed on the web would be most welcome. Tell me how I would benefit from being viewed and if I agree I may try to arrange the web to fit {Grin}.

Rufus Evison
JustTheRants.BlogSpot.Com

See more progress on: Experiment with on-line branding

What does it take to make people see a blog?

2007-09-17T04:01:00.001-07:00

When I posted this goal I had exactly one person who looked at my (previously pratically untouched) blog. Since then, just by keeping the blog at the front of my mind it has gained a few views. Next I will be restructuring my ‘blog space’ to take into account the few comments I have had. This will involve separating my rants from my reasoning as the posts as they are seem a bit too long and rambling. Also, though not through suggestions, I will link a blog from the goals on 43 things as well as dividing off a few blogs by theme. This will mean that posts to the whole will be at whatever rate but some blogs will be fairly neglected. That said it should mean that they are more targetted and that measurement of what people like is easier.

Suggestions welcome.

Rufus Evison
ReasonedRants.BlogSpot.Com

See more progress on: Experiment with on-line branding

Online is easy

2007-09-17T03:50:00.001-07:00

Anyone should be able to measure the utility of online advertising in terms of whether it provides sales online. This should be fairly easy whether we are talking about immediate sales uplift or life time value.

Real measuring is harder. A real method has to include short term uplift and logterm loyalty and lifetime value. It should also include online shopping, and off line purchases.

All of the above seem do-able and are what I mean by this goal. What would be even better, but I am not including (as it would be a bit big brother as well as likely not possible) would be to track how the online branding has affected purchase uplift through recommendations and the like. Purchases that would not have taken place without the banners/virals/whatever but are not made by the peraon who saw the creative.

See more progress on: Create a real way of measuring the usefulness of online advertising