Now that our feet are firmly planted in the new year, it’s a good time to look back, reflect on lessons learned in 2010, and make resolutions to improve in 2011.

So what can we learn from this past roller coaster of a year?

Internet Beats Print

Internet advertising reached a significant milestone last year when it beat out print advertising for the first time in history. Ad spend is generally on an upswing for 2011, which bodes well for marketing budgets.

Resolution:  Follow this trend.  It’s only going to become more pronounced going forward.

Take an honest look at your ideal client base: Where are they?  Where do they spend most of their time?  What media outlet enables them to easily learn more about your product and engage it once they are interested?  You guessed it.  Don’t just say you’re going to invest more in digital- plan and budget for it.

2011 is the year of action and follow through.  Spending money in the right places is essential if you want to attract and engage potential clients.  If you find that your desired demographic is digitally savvy and spends most of their time online,  then make it easy for them. Concentrate on marketing strategies that are digitally-biased. Besides, what’s going to get you more trackable results? A $25K full page ad in the New York Times or a $25K digital outreach campaign?

Social Goes from “Static” to “Real Time”

According to research done by GlobalWebIndex, 2010 marked the beginning of a paradigm shift in the realm of social media. User contributions are now focused less on static text (blogging) and more on real-time interaction and commentary.  Twitter as well as micro-blogs like Tumblr are becoming increasingly popular.  The result is a social media evironment that compliments professional, curated content by creating discourse and distribution, as opposed to user generated content.

With these technological shifts also comes a social shift- As technology increasingly facilitates real time information and dialog, Attention spans of many demographics shift as well.  users have shorter attention spans, both in terms of digesting content and creating it. Brands need to be cognizant of their demographics’ attention spans and adjust their content accordingly.

Resolution: Join the conversation and spur dialog. Content is still king.  Create engaging, creative content that users will want to share, and you’ll be part of the real-time conversation.  Be wary of creating content that is too long winded, or you risk boring the users.