Aliya Zaidi's Blog

E-consultancy’s latest addition to its research, the Online Reputation and Buzz Monitoring Buyer’s Guide, reveals that this sector will grow by 30% in 2008, to an estimated value of £60 million.

The addition of this guide not only demonstrates the accelarated growth of this rapidly developing market, but also shows how the industry has moved on, from a rather fluffy approach to online PR, to quantitative measurement that incorporates analytics, monitoring tools and tangible metrics.

At E-consultancy’s Future of Digital Marketing conference last week, leading industry experts took a pragmatic approach to predicting future trends.

Rather than gazing mistily into the crystal ball 20 years into the future, the conference focused on “right here, right now,” talking about how marketers can leverage existing technologies to be more innovative.

As more brands look to invest in the minefield that is social media marketing, it’s clear that standards are needed to define and measure success. However, marketers need to establish industry-wide best practices first and understand what they want to achieve, before tying down the metrics.

At E-consultancy’s recent Social Media roundtable, it was apparent that measurement is an issue that many marketers are still wrestling with.

Over the last few months more companies have started to experiment with a whole host of new media channels, including social networking sites and microblogs.

When planned adequately, social media can provide an effective means of reaching new customer segments, forming closer relationships, and building online reputation.

However, it was clear from E-consultancy's Social Media: Measurement, Managing Reputation and Monetisation event last week that marketers face a range of different challenges as the social media landscape continues to evolve and grow. 

New research published by E-consultancy this week reveals that the comparison engines sector continues to flourish despite challenges presented by the economic downturn and the increased cost of buying search engine traffic.

We caught up with Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, ex-Apple evangelist and most recently, co-founder of Truemors.com, to talk about venture capital, startups and his latest project, Alltop.com.

Many online retailers must work harder to create a more personalised and interactive experience which does a better job of reflecting their brand, writes Aliya Zaidi.

A new year wouldn’t be a new year without a vast number of websites making predictions about the future of the web, and 2008 proves to be no different. From a number of different sources, we have rounded up 10 key trends that we think are the ones to watch out for in 2008.