Please join us on March 23rd at 1:00 pm for a free webinar on the topic of how government agencies and nonprofit organizations are using social media to reach and engage Latinos online.
For more information and to sign up, please visit Bixal's Blog.
Our colleagues over at Social Media Spanish reached out to get our take on why Spanish-preferring Latinos in the U.S. might be saying more positive things about Toyota than English speakers in the U.S.
Is your company, agency or organization paying attention to what this audience is saying about your brand?
The results of the "2010 Latin America Social Media Study" carried out by Burson Marsteller show that less than half (49%) of Latin American companies are taking advantage of social media.
Mexico (80%) and Venezuela (75%) are in the lead, but Argetina (25%) and Puerto Rico (5%) are way behind the global average of 79%.
The study found that more Latin American companies are using Facebook (39%) than any other tool, and, of those who did, 55% had comments, indicating a strong interest amongst Latin American users in engaging with companies via social media channels.
In an interview conducted by Laura Martinez, Peter Blacker, executive vice president of digital media and emerging business, explains how Telemundo is using social media to leverage the power of social media to engage, as the article states "the throngs of Hispanics who are active on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms.
Peter explains that this effort is part of Telemundo's five-year digital plan centered around "super serving" their audiences. Telemundo currently has over 180,000 followers across 17 different platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.
One component of its five year plan is to help its clients, who tend to be a bit uncertain about how to get involved in social media, begin to experiment. To do this, Telemundo is using actors and writers from its studios to develop additional storylines that Telemundo clients can sponsor to promote their brands in the social media space.
Importantly, Blacker and Telemundo recognize that it is important to provide interesting and engaging content with the goal of creating a "digital water cooler," and not just spam their social media audience with sales pitches.
A few of the more interesting findings on teens and young adults in general include:
Blogging and commenting on blogs by teens and young adults has decreased since 2006 while it has increased among older adults (from 28% to 14%),
Both teen and adult use of social networking sites has increased significantly, but the sites where teens and young adults maintain their profiles are different, with 66% using MySpace compared to 36% of those 30 and over, and most interesting....
Only 8% of Internet users age 12-17 use Twitter.
With respect to Latino teens and young adults, the results of Pew's research show that:
Although not as often as White teens and young adults, Hispanic teens and young adults report going online once a day or three to five times a week.
Although laptops have overtaken desktops as the computer of choice, Hispanic adults are less likely than White adults to own a desktop or laptop computer.
Along with young adults, Hispanics and African‐Americans are
more likely to
go online wirelessly. According to the report "Half of all African‐American adults (48%) have used their
cell phone to access the internet, compared with 40% of Hispanic adults and
just 31% of white adults."
I ran across an interesting tweet by Luis Pagan that referenced a Pew Report on Twitter and Status updates. In addition to showing an increase in making status updates on Twitter or another service - from 11% to 19% since April 2009, the report shows that 18% of online Hispanic adults use Twitter.
The Kaiser Family Foundation recently released a report that shows that the amount of time young people are spending with entertainment media has increased signifcantly over the past five years, rising from 6.21 hours to 7.38. When taking into account "media multitasking," the number actually adds up to 10:45 minutes per day.
Among other interesting findings, the results of the study show that mobile media and social networking are driving this increased consumption, and that Black and Hispanic children spend much more time with media than White children do - 13:00 hours of of total media exposure for Hispanics, 12:59 for Blacks, and 8:36 for Whites.
The news release says that "top online activities include social networking (:22 a day), playing
games (:17), and visiting video sites such as YouTube (:15).
Three-quarters (74%) of all 7th - 12th graders say they have a profile
on a social networking site."
Excited to be attending the LATISM DC event this Friday and Saturday, in particular to connect with others that are interested in using the power of social media to make a difference.
LATISM DC is a Latinos in Social Media community building event in DC. It will bring together organizations focused on reaching Latinos and the seasoned social media veterans that can help them. From Blogs, My Space, Twitter, YouTube to Facebook, hear about what’s worked or not worked so far in the Latino community.
The conference tracks include:
Brand Building - Build brand awareness and affinity among Latinos
Social Good - Reach Latinos to improve opportunities and quality of life
The Mobile Opportunity - Use mobile to reach more Latinos
Gov 2.0 - Empower and inform Latinos through the gov't, work of grassroots and CBOs
Univision Interactive Media recently launched Flock, a highly customized web browser for the online Hispanic community.
Responding to Latinos' social nature and use of both social networking sites and email to communicate with friends and family, the browser offers entry points to these key online destinations. Easy entry points to these popular destinations has been astutely positioned with Univision's web content to create a uniquely branded experience for the online Hispanic market, both in English and Spanish, with the goal of keeping this important market close to home.