Online Hispanic Trends

How the CDC and the March of Dimes are Effectively Engaging the Online Hispanic Community

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.

 

Are you Listening to Latinos Online?

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?

Read the full article.

 

Only About Half of Latin American Companies Have a Presence in Social Networks

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.

Read the full article on Portada.

How Telemundo is Creating a "Hispanic Digital Water Cooler"

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.

Read the full interview at:  Multichannel News

Social Media and Mobile Internet Use of Hispanic Teens and Young Adults

The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently published a report entitled Social Media & Mobile Internet Use of Teens and Young Adults. 

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."

Correction: Pew Research indicates that 18% of Online Hispanic Adults Use Twitter

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. 

Thanks to Tomas of http://www.hispanictips.com for pointing this out.

View the full report

NASA Astronaut Starts Agency's First Bilingual Twitter

NASA, one of the government agencies that has been doing some interesting work in the use of social media for the general market, has figured out a way to promote its mission with the Hispanic community. 

Jose Hernandez, who is set to fly aboard space shuttle Discovery in August, will be twittering about his training experience in English and Spanish.

Read the Nasa press release to learn more about this initiative and Jose's interesting background and sign up to follow Jose at http://www.twitter.com/astro_jose.