U.S. Hispanics – idaconcpts.com

The Rise Of Hispanics On Social Media

Image Credit: Latism.org

Businesses have been turning to social media to connect with their consumers in a new and exciting way. More than ever before, companies can interact with their loyal followers and attract new ones by striking up conversations, tapping into their wants and needs, and portraying their products and services through social channels that can reach millions. While the Hispanic community has been included in those marketing campaigns, few have been directed right at them. However, businesses are starting to take notice that Latinos are no longer a minority consumer group. Their $1.2 trillion market is nothing to be sneezed at. In fact, it should be catered to.

Furthermore, Latinos are taking over social media in a big way. They predominantly use platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and they often do so from their smartphones. The Hispanic community is already a marketing force to be dealt with. But many businesses are unsure of how. But the question shouldn’t be, “What can we give the Hispanic community that they don’t already have?” Businesses and marketers should be asking, “What does the Hispanic community already have that we can build on?” And the answer is in the question: community.

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HootSuite Talks to Spanish Speaking Community

On April 21, 2011 there are several websites down. Among the affected are HootSuite, Reddit, Foursquare and Quora. The problems appear to be caused by an issue affecting the Amazon Web Services. The company claims that are working to resolve the problem. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Relational Database Service and Amazon Elastic Beanstalk also appear to be experiencing problems. The issues were all visible on 4/21/2011 at Amazon’s AWS Service Health Dashboard.

While critics may be quick to point the drawbacks of cloud computing, it is important to keep a cool head and keep a full picture of cloud computing: benefits and drawbacks. Organizations that really heavily on cloud computing need to have an appropriate plan of action to tackle downtime problems.

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Los Links Son Malos

According to Dr. Korzenny from the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at the Florida State University, when compared to other ethnicities, U.S. Latinos appear to consume more digital content.

Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that U.S. Latinos is part of the recovery in advertising spending worldwide.

Hispanics make up 12.3% of the total US Internet population in 2009, and that number will increase to 13.9% in 2013. The U.S. Latino presence in the Internet is not only going to increase in quantity but also in quality as U.S. Latino Internet users are poised to have the highest purchasing power.

A company that is truly aware of this trend is Microsoft with its current Bing TV ads called ‘Los Links’.

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Latin America leads the recovery in advertising spending worldwide

In June 30, 2009, we reviewed at idaconcpts that talking about Latinos as a group is difficult because this group has so many commonalities with various ethnic groups, that trying to seggregate websites between Latino and non-Latino is a strategy that spells disaster.

According to Dr. Korzenny from the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at the Florida State University, when compared to other ethnicities, U.S. Hispanics appear to consume more digital content. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Latin America is part of the recovery in advertising spending worldwide.

Even though the total advertising spending in Latin America is much smaller than that in North America, (ranging from 18% to 21 from 2009 to projections for 2010 and 2011 by eMarketer) savvy marketers, Internet startups, and companies in general, should be aware of 3 obvious trends:

1. Latin America holds the key for a better understanding of the Hispanic market in the U.S.

According to the Immigration Informaiton Source website, in 2006, 47.2 percent of immigrants reported Hispanic or Latino origins. Therefore, it is not a suprise that Business Week’s Douglas MacMillan reported that of marketers that target minority groups, 95% tailor messages to Latin Americans. However there is still much to be learned about the field. Click here for an insight into how to approach the U.S. Hispanic market.

2. According to eMarketer, Hispanics make up 12.3% of the total US Internet population in 2009, and that number will increase to 13.9% in 2013.

3. The U.S. Hispanic presence in the Internet is not only going to increase in quantity but also in quality as Hispanic U.S. Internet users are poised to have the highest purchasing power.

Talking about Hispanics as a whole group is difficult

I’m a big fan of The e-Marketer Daily newsletter and on 06/26/09 I received two very interesting articles on the presence of U.S. Latinos on the web. The first one is titled Hispanics Online: No Mas E-Barrios and the second one is Looking at Hispanic Behavior Online.

The first article provides some interesting stats on Internet use in the U.S. by race/ethnicity.

Hispanics make up 12.3% of the total US Internet population in 2009, and that number will increase to 13.9% in 2013. The U.S. Hispanic presence in the Internet is not only going to increase in quantity but also in quality as Hispanic U.S. Internet users are poised to have the highest purchasing power.

Among marketing organizations, the competition to grab the U.S. Hispanic buck is intense. Business Week’s Douglas MacMillan reported that of marketers that target minority groups, 95% tailor messages to Latin Americans, 76% target African Americans, and 38% focus on Asian Americans, according to a survey released in November by the trade group Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and marketing agency Mkgt. That’s up from 86%, 60%, and 35%, respectively, in 2003, according to the research.

This has a lot of implications for online marketers who want to be culturally sensitive, while being cost-efficient at the same time. The main problem, as Dr. Felipe Korzenny, Director of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at the Florida State University, states, is that:

Hispanics have a lot of commonalities, and it’s OK to talk about a group that has these sorts of common roots and interests. It doesn’t work well to try to segregate people. I don’t think it works to say, “This is a site for Hispanics and this is a site for others.”

Forcing Hispanic U.S. Internet users into Hi5 (the most popular social network in Latin America and no, it’s not Google’s Orkut, that’s in Brazil) and Myspace versions in Spanish is not the correct strategy. It’s all about personal choice, let the user decide what’s best for him or her.

That is the reason why MySpace has both—I mean having people having two sites, one in Spanish and one in English—but that doesn’t mean that the Spanish-language site is for Hispanics only, or that the English-language site is for non-Hispanics only. There’s a lot of overlap.

Mixed context in English and Spanish that is triggered by contextual cues appears to be savvy strategy, according to Dr. Korzenny. The good news: when compared to other ethnicities, U.S. Hispanics do appear to consume more digital content.

However, making any generalizations about U.S. Hispanics is always a mistake. The easiest example: location, location, location.

If you use the same strategy in Miami, FL, that you used in Dallas, TX, you shouldn’t be surprised to get mixed results. While U.S. Hispanics do share some commonalities, consider that Texas has a more predominant Mexican presence, while Florida has a more predominant Cuban and South American presence. Put it this way: imagine if you were to use Canadian slang to target a British and Australian audience, would it make sense? After all, they all speak English, right? That’s the most common mistake of companies that purchase one-size-fits-all, prepackaged marketing solutions.

Marketers should never throw out the window marketing fundamentals when dealing with U.S. Hispanics. There is no easy answer. Only one thing is certain: do your homework, research, research, research.