In 2010, "Likes", Views, and Followers were the rage in the online world. As the consumer use of social media spiked, enter the Big 3 (Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter) with retooled advertising features to satisfy the newfound demand from brands. In addition, niche and location-based social networks have increased in appeal. As a result, the social web, which some call Web 2.0, are providing more consumer touch points to improve the targeting and relevance of online advertising.

In a recent online issue of Mashable, the following predictions for Digital Advertising in 2011 were published. I supplemented each prediction with some tools and techniques based on my daily method of operation as I promote various goods and services online. Here are the six predictions for Digital Advertising in 2011.

Local Advertising Will Be Relevant Again with Location

Location-based advertising will continue to grow in 2011 as Facebook expands the technology with its location platform called Places. In addition to Facebook, many other players in the checkin space, including Foursquare, Yelp, Shopkick, and last but not least, Google, will condition shoppers to expect a deal or coupon for alerting friends of their whereabouts.

Relevance will distinguish these services from each other as the two biggest players, Facebook and Google, have the most powerful social graph data to customize deals for consumers. However, do not count Groupon out. It more than makes up for its comparative lack of technology with brand equity and scale as its massive sales force will remain dominant in 2011 by further monetizing local commerce beyond the recently launched self-service platform.

Since Location will be relevant again be sure to perform the following 3 steps for your business:

• Complete the profile fields about your business and submit to Google Places.

• Go to Getlisted dot org and determine your standings in the local directories.

• Use Universal Business Listing dot org as a way to upload a profile of your business and submit to 140 online directories which include several mobile directories.

Silicon Valley Will Be the Next Madison Avenue

The coolest job in advertising used to be working for an agency in New York City or Chicago, but these days the dream jobs are at Facebook and Twitter initially attracting top bankers from Goldman Sachs. As Facebook and Twitter start generating more revenue, advertising and marketing talent will start heading West to cash in.

In addition, most CEOs and Business Leaders are aware that the world of traditional branding and marketing is changing. One element of this change is the fast emerging field of social media technology. The new role of Social Media Consultant will be the most sought after skill in the corporate world for many years. While we will always have the "good old boy network" and key conversations at the "water cooler", over the past few years we are seeing human business networks, social media networks, and crowd sourcing emerging as viable alternatives. Social Media Consultants will understand, implement, and leverage the various online technologies and social media networks, to empower workers within companies and meet the needs of the global marketplace independent of whether customers are just around the corner and on the other side of the planet.

Influencers Will Be the Celebrities of the Social Web

Consumers are constantly scouring the social web to decide where to eat, shop, and stay. It comes as no surprise that brands are desperately analyzing Twitter, blog posts, and reviews to understand not only who has the largest audience, but how much influence individuals have. YouTube’s Partner Program is being joined by new services such as Klout to create an official layer of social credibility.

Klout scores are being used by The Palms Hotel in Vegas to gauge discounts for hotel guests, including through the "Klout Klub," which "will allow high-ranking influencers to experience Palms’ impressive set of amenities in hopes that these influencers will want to communicate their positive experience to their followers."

As illustrated above with Klout scores, understanding the Twitter activity of both your business, and your customers, is important to success over the next 3 to 5 years.

Having access to Twitter tools to assist you with this understanding is very important. Several of these tools and metrics on their dashboards include:

• TweetStats that show your (or anyone you chose) average number of tweets and retweets per day, when tweets are published throughout the day, and who you retweeted and who retweeted you. Understanding these statistics and the profile they display illustrate how you have a chance to influence your followers.

• Twitalyzer provides a grade based on factors such as generosity, clout, velocity, and influence. These statistics and graphs change over time and provide a way to view your (or your influencers) overall brand health out in the Twitterverse.

• Retweetrank shows where you rank in terms of the number of retweets you receive versus everyone else on Twitter and is a powerful measurement of your value within the Twitter community. It means your tweets are interesting, valuable, or useful in some way and is an indication of influence.

Creating thoughtful ways to leverage your influencers is the thing to focus on. People have always said it’s cheaper to keep and please the customers you have, than acquire new ones.

Small Will Be the New Big for Social Networks

Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s unwavering belief that an open and connected social web is best for society, early adopters are starting to experiment with new platforms designed to communicate and share media with smaller audiences. Path has shown us the potential of limiting our social networks to 50 people. Fast Society is a new iPhone communication service that allows the user to create small groups to text with on the fly, and the groups last for three days. Facebook also realizes some of us may prefer communicating with smaller networks. Facebook’s new Groups feature allows us to segment our friends into personal, professional and interest-based communities, and openly engage in conversations not meant for our mother or colleagues to hear. Watch for more of these smaller, closed networks to launch in 2011 as people seek deeper connections online.

Using Twitter as an example, another way to implement the smaller network concept is to create a subset of your streaming Twitter timeline and a great tool to use for this is Hootsuite. One of its features is to setup columns in your Hootsuite dashboard for each special interest group. Each column can have several streams. You then assign your important tweet followers to a favorite stream. This is another way to implement the smaller network concept and just focus on the topic or theme of the stream at the time you are interested in interacting with your followers that are like-minded since they have been linked to your stream.

Brands Will Become More Like Media Companies

Social media has empowered brands to break their own news instead of relying on advertising or PR to disseminate their message. As brands become increasingly comfortable with social media on the whole, more budget and attention will be focused on high quality content created specifically for the social web. We will see more Facebook Pages like Skittles that appear to employ comedy writers to keep the content fresh. It would seem that "a brand’s best bet in social media is randomness."

You should use technologies like Monster Promotion and Follow-Up to get the news out. A social publishing tool is essential to write once and publish to many locations. A tool like ping fm enables you to author your message and post it to many social networks such as social media sites, micro-blogging sites, article directories, and video sites, all at the same time. This way you can get your message out to where your customers are hanging out online. By offering an item of value, perhaps a white paper, a video, or even a gift card loaded with a small $$ amount, you can obtain their name, email address, and mobile phone number. By having this contact info, you can engage your leads and customers on their terms and continue to engage them and follow-up. New versions of the traditional auto responders are emerging that enable you to continue to engage them and follow-up with an email, a text, and a voice mail message all from one broadcast … this is indeed Monster Promotion and Follow-up!

Facebook "Likes" Will Be Important for Your Brand

While it’s still unclear exactly how much a Facebook "Like" is worth to a brand, a "Like" is like a vote and this tells the search engines that a Facebook "Like" is important. It is similar to a "word of mouth" recommendation.

Brands will be spending 3X more than they have previously on Facebook advertising in 2011 and the process for acquiring Facebook "Likes" has evolved to accommodate this increase in demand. Instead of doing A/B testing between two photos to see which generates more Facebook "Likes," the brands and agencies that are more savvy are leveraging technology that can simultaneously deploy 10,000+ ad variations to yield the lowest CPA (cost per acquisition) of those "Likes."

Another technology that is emerging to assist obtaining "Likes" is a powerful software application that is driven by real people (both prospects and customers) that form a content syndication network. Most Internet Marketers know nothing about content syndication however they should as people in the content syndication network come together to vote for, share, distribute, and propagate the content.

This revelation will be the key to success for digitial marketing, advertising, and promotion as the content syndication activities will create multiple search engine references, increase page rankings, and provide up to more than 200% visibility in the search engines.

By using automated tools for our marketing chores, we can dedicate 90% of our time for the creative part of marketing and advertising as well as the relationship part of engaging with leads and customers.

I Hope You Enjoy the Posts and I Trust You Will Find Them Insightful! Let me Know What You Think.

This blog, and related posts, will provide a blueprint to the entrepreneur and Small Business owner on Main Street for making money online with Internet Marketing. And, you will find step-by-step road maps for various phases of the Internet Marketing process.

Happy Reading and Here's to Your Success! Mike Farrell, founder, owner, and operator of the aspenIbiz group of online businesses.

Finally, I would like to provide Best Wishes for a Happy Holiday Season and a Prosperous New Year!