A look at the most popular project categories on freelancing sites is a great indicator of the kinds of products and services we can expect companies to come out with in the near future. It also lets freelance professionals know what skills are in high demand.

As such, both Internet marketers and freelance professionals will be interested in Freelancer.com’s list of the 50 fastest-growing job categories.

Here are three (3) nifty tools for giving you statistics on how many social media fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter you – and others – have.

1. Wildfire Social Media Monitor

Wildfire Social Media Monitor lets you see how many Twitter and Facebook followers someone has, and how quickly their follower and fan base has grown over time. Just enter the Twitter or Facebook accounts you want to compare, and the tool will display the total number of follower/fans they have, and how these have grown or declined over time.

Intellimon’s recent Traffic Survey 2010 (affiliate link) reveals some fascinating statistics about the Internet marketing community. The vast majority are male (82 percent) and just under half (49.7 percent) are aged 50 to 64 years old.

Produced in conjunction with the University of Bradford, The Traffic Survey 2010 is based on the responses of a few thousand subscribers to various Internet marketing lists. Since those who participated in the survey were invited to do so by individuals and companies in the how-to Internet marketing niche, the respondents are reasonably representative of the ‘Internet marketing niche’ as a whole.

Here are two quick tips for monitoring the ‘online conversation’ occurring about you, your company, your brand or your products or services.

In each case, by identifying a conversation that is taking place, you can join in that conversation, thereby giving you the chance to respond to a particular issue, recommend your products or services, and/or generally raise your profile.

Want to know what keywords your competitors are targeting for their pay-per-click (PPC) a.k.a. paid search campaigns? Or which keywords they’re targeting for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes? Here are 6 free keyword tracking tools that should help you towards getting the data you need.

As you’ll see, each of these keyword tracking tools is the free version of a paid product that offers more features and more extensive data. As you might imagine, the paid versions deliver much more complete keyword data. That said, some of the free tools provide such an impressive array of keyword data for free that you may well find yourself using both the keyword spy tools and the data before you need to hand over any hard-earned dollars.

If you needed any more proof that Google Adwords is becoming as attractive to major brands as it has been to small and mid-sized businesses, look no further than Google’s breakdown of its top advertisers, recently leaked to Advertising Age.

According to Ad Age, the leaked document – which has been verified by “multiple sources with direct knowledge of spending levels” – shows that in June 2010 the top Google Adwords advertisers and their spending levels were as follows:

If you’re eager for competitive intelligence on your competitors’ web traffic, backlinks, targeted keywords, paid search budgets and other key web analytics, check out this list of 16 free tools.

For now at least these are the Kikabink News Internet marketing blog‘s top free tools for getting data on your competitors’ (or any site’s) traffic, backlinks, keywords, paid search activity and other online marketing activities.

Want to know how much venture capital your competitors have raised? Check out Stealth Mode Watch, which enables you to find out about the latest funding rounds made by companies including privately-held firms and startups.

Stealth Mode Watch lets you find details of the Regulation D filings that companies must file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) whenever they raise capital from outside investors. These details include the names of the investors, and the amount and date of funding.

An analysis of AdGooroo’s ‘Search Engine Advertising Update – Q409′ reveals some interesting data about which companies are advertising on which of the major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing.

In its report, AdGooroo listed the top 25 advertisers in alphabetical order, based on the total number of first-page ad impressions over a 30-day period, so the results don’t necessarily reflect total ad spend.

In total, 44 advertisers spread their search engine advertising spend across Google, Yahoo and Bing. Here is a list of those advertisers who advertised in all three search engines, two of the search engines or just one of the engines.

A global survey of business intelligence (BI) practitioners by Kognitio and Baseline Consulting indicates that many BI professionals question the value of analyzing data obtained from social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Based on the survey of more than 125 business intelligence practitioners: