us hispanic social media

U.S. Hispanic Social Media Guide2010-2011 Edition

Table of Contents

Publisher’s Note 1

Social Media and Word of Mouth Becoming Pivotal Channel to Engage and Drive Advocacy Among Hispanic Audiences Paul M. Rand

3

Hispanic Social Media Leadership Roundtable 5

Who’s Best Suited to Lead Hispanic Social Media Marketing? Manny Ruiz

12

How to Build and Manage a Hispanic Online Community Jose Villa

19

Social Media is a Fact of Life and the Key to SuccessGaby Alban

22

Hispanics and Social Media: A 23 Million Person ConversationArmando Azarloza

23

How to Effectively Work with Hispanic BloggersManny Ruiz

24

How to Reach U.S. Hispanics with Spanish-Languages SEM StrategiesSilvia Prado

27

Hispanics Beyond Broadband: Leveraging Video and Web 2.0 to Facilitate Online ConversationsCristy Clavijo-Kish

29

Measuring Multicultural & Multilingual Social MediaStephanie Noble and Midy Aponte

32

Meet The Latino King of FacebookKatherine Johnson

34

A Directory of Hispanic Social MediaMarketing ResourcesYeniret Prokesch

37

Hispanic PR Census Results Show Marketing ProsFeel PR Best Suited to Lead Social Media

39

U.S. Hispanic Social Media Facts: A 2010 Snapshot 40

The WOMMA Guide to Disclosure in SocialMedia Marketing

52

It’s never a small feat to say you will create the marketing industry’s premiere guide on how to reach Latinos through social media but that’s exactly what I think we’ve delivered here in this first annual 2010-2011 U.S. Hispanic Social Media Guide.

Earlier this year we gathered some of the nation’s top Hispanic marketing talents at the inaugural Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference in Dallas and we asked them to share their top tips on Latino social media marketing. Many of those terrific “how to” insights and most of those gifted marketers are spotlighted here in this guide, a terrific companion to the historic national conference that made this guide possible.

If you are a marketer in the corporate, government or non-profit field, please know that like the conference that gave birth to it, this guide has been produced with you in mind. We hope you will find this guide to be as useful and practical as anything you have ever seen about this topic.

In closing I wish to thank our two partner organizations that also helped make this guide possible, the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA) and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). Both organizations are working together with the Hispanic PR Blog this summer and through the balance of the year to coordinate roundtable discussions across the country for what we call the 2010 U.S. Hispanic Social Media Insights Tour. If you are interested in learning more about this tour in your city, connect with us by e-mail at [email protected] or by monitoring our news at HispanicPRBlog.com.

It’s my sincere wish that you enjoy the fruit of our labor with this guide. We’ve made an earnest effort to explore the issues impacting Hispanic social media in a way that is refreshing and complete.

In the spirit of social media, may you enjoy it and discuss it!

Sincerely,

Manny Ruiz

Publisher

2010-2011 U.S Hispanic Social Media Guide

Publisher’s Note

2010-2011 U.S. Hispanic Social Media Guide

www.HispanicPRBlog.com

32010 U.S. Hispanic Social Media Guide

Social Media and Word of Mouth Becoming Pivotal Channel to Engage and Drive Advocacy Among Hispanic Audiences

By Paul M. Rand

More than 90% of all consumers report that the recommendation of a friend, family member or expert is the leading influence on their purchase behavior. And with 77% of Hispanic-Americans engaging in some kind of online socializing (as noted by the Hispanic Ad Agency, Dieste, in their recent report titled “10 Things You Should Know About U.S. Hispanics”), social media is quickly becoming the battleground in which brand allegiances are won or lost.

As brands seek to become more talked about and recommended than their competitors, word of mouth and social media marketing are no longer ancillary marketing efforts. Instead, defining and pursuing how you want your brand to be talked about and recommended is helping marketers shape, focus and drive the overall marketing mix.

Knowing that U.S. Hispanic buying power will exceed $1.3 trillion by 2013, many brands may be tempted to simply extend their general market efforts — as advanced or nascent as they may be — to Hispanics without understanding cultural and media consumption differences.

Take your time. Do it right. Understand what goes and what doesn’t go. Apply best practices and the discipline of the marketing process that sometimes is lacking in this environment. Many of the mistakes have already been made in the traditional media environment. Learn from them.

This jointly-produced (between Hispanic PR Blog, HPRA and WOMMA) 2010-2011 U.S Hispanic Social Media Guide highlights best practices in social media and word of mouth marketing – with a specific spotlight on how marketers can successfully leverage social media to reach and engage the Hispanic audience.

This integrated approach puts word of mouth at the core of the marketing mix. In many ways, it mirrors the insights reported in a recently McKinsey & Company report, titled “A New Way to Measure Word of Mouth Marketing.”

While the findings of the McKinsey study were not specific to the Hispanic audience, the key takeaways couldn’t be more applicable to a group that so deeply relies on “transparency” and “trust” between friends, family members and community leaders:

As consumers overwhelmed by product choices tune out 1. the ever-growing barrage of traditional marketing, Word of Mouth cuts through the noise quickly and effectively.

Consumers have become increasingly skeptical about 2. traditional company-driven advertising and marketing… [and] this tectonic power shift toward consumers reflects the way people now make purchasing decisions.

Word of Mouth can prompt a consumer to consider a brand 3.

or product in a way that incremental advertising spending simply cannot. It’s also not a one-hit wonder. The right messages resonate and expand within interested networks, affecting brand perceptions, purchase rates, and market share.

The rewards of pursuing excellence in word-of-mouth 4. marketing are huge, and it can deliver a sustainable and significant competitive edge few other marketing approaches can match.

The reach and impact of social media and word of mouth marketing for the Hispanic market is significant – and just being fully realized. Through this Guide, and follow on editions, we look forward to bringing you the most current and useful information on how to best understand and meaningfully engage this important audience.

2010-2011 U.S. HiSpanic Social Media GUide

PublishersManny Ruiz and Angela Sustaita-Ruiz

Managing editorKatherine Johnson

graPhic designZócalo Group

Mónica Marulanda

ad designCindy Lopez

contributing WritersYeniret Prokesch

Paul M. RandJose Villa

Gaby AlbanArmando Azarloza

Silvia PradoCristy Clavijo-KishStephanie Noble

Midy Aponte

2010-2011 U.S. Hispanic Social Media Guide © copy riight 2010, Hispanic Media Trainers, LLC 2010 All rights reserved.

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or of all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:

You may print or download for your personal and non-commercial use only

You may copy the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge us as the source of the material


About the author: Paul M. Rand is President/CEO of Zócalo Group, a full-service Word of Mouth and Social Media Marketing Agency and President of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. His e-mail is [email protected]. His Twitter is @paulmrand


2010 U.S. Hispanic Social Media Leadership Roundtable

Gavin Twigger executive director of interception

dieste, inc.

Aymee Zubizarreta Manager of Public relations

state Farm

Paul Rand President

Zócalo group and WoMMa

José Villa President

sensis

Sonia Sroka senior Vice President, u.s. hispanic Practice leader,

Porter novelli

Deborah Charnes Vice President of Public relations

bromley communications

Monica Raugitinane director of communications

hispanic college Fund

David Henry President

telenoticias and hPra new York chapter

Ariel Coro Publisher

tu tecnologia

Marisa Treviño President

latinalista blog

Manny Ruiz - Moderator Publisher

hispanic Pr blog and Papiblogger

The Players

Our Diverse Roundtable Discussion

Reveals Where Hispanic Marketing

Leaders Think Hispanic Social

Media is Headed

Communications; Marisa Treviño, President, Latina Lista blog; Paul Rand, President of the Zócalo Group and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA); José Villa, President, Sensis; Monica Raugitinane, Director of Communications, Hispanic College Fund; David Henry, President of TeleNoticias and the New York chapter of the Hispanic Public Relations Association; and Manny Ruiz, Publisher of Hispanic PR Blog and PapiBlogger and organizer of the Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference. The discussion was moderated by Ruiz.

On Whether Hispanic Social Media Marketing May Just Be a Fad

David Henry: I don’t think it’s a fad. I think that social media is a communications platform just like mobile and other platforms and it may change in regards to the Hispanic market but I definitely don’t think that it’s a fad.

Sonia Sroka: I think social media is definitely going to evolve and is only going to help consumers have more intimate and more intense relationships with brands and with

Hours before the start of this year’s Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference in Dallas the Hispanic PR Blog and the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA) hosted a roundtable featuring top representatives from the corporate, non profit, blogger, advertising, PR and digital agency worlds. In launching into this inaugural “how to” issue on Hispanic social media marketing we can’t think of a better conversation starter than the roundtable we held in Dallas.

The full one hour and 30 minute recording of this terrific, informal conversation is available for download through the Hispanic PR Blog. We hope you find these excerpts helpful as you, our dear readers, take the same journey of discovery that we are all taking into Hispanic social media.

The Hispanic social media leaders roundtable consisted of: Gavin Twigger, Executive Director of Interception, Dieste, Inc.; Aymee Zubizarreta, Manager of Public Relations, State Farm; Sonia Sroka, Senior Vice President, U.S. Hispanic practice leader, Porter Novelli: Deborah Charnes, Vice President of Public Relations, Bromley


continued on page 7


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Start talking with them today by digitizing culture.

conversations

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themselves. Right now we are only seeing the beginning of what we are yet to see.

Deborah Charnes: I agree completely that we are just on the starting block and everything’s going to just go up, up, up. If anything social media is going to be eating away at other arenas and the reason for that is because the consumer is going to be demanding (more) interactivity.

Aymee Zubizarreta: From the corporate perspective, working at State Farm we started in the social media space in 2007…I’m starting to see Fortune 500’s that are willing to be bold and take that first step into the unknown. They (usually start by launching) an initiative with English in mind with the general market because that’s what they know best. Working at a corporation I got to tell you, there are a lot of legal hurdles that we have to overcome since State Farm is in the insurance and financial services industry…that are heavily regulated.

..We had to overcome all of those issues first and also determine what’s our protocol. Last year we started a Hispanic social media initiative called State Farm Es Para Mi. It’s a voting component that interacts with Latinos across the country and (lets them) vote for a specific video that helped address the Hispanic drop-out dilemma. There was money tied to it for non profits and high school students were encouraged to participate in this. It was highly successful.

Paul Rand: …If there’s anything that could be a fad it may be some of the tools. Whether or not we still will see foursquare around with Facebook location popping out and many other programs, is questionable. Across all ethnicities what consumers and customers are saying is ‘We want to have a different relationship with the companies we do business with’…. Now the question is: How do companies, brands in particular, begin operating?...People under 25 years old don’t call customer service lines anymore. They expect interaction through Twitter, so there’s a fundamental shift in how business is being done…

Aymee Zubizarreta: you hit the nail right on the head… I was just checking our Twitter account just a moment ago and there was a dialogue back and forth with our social media team in Bloomington and a person who was having a difficult time with an issue they had with State Farm…Some companies may see this as ‘oh no, we may be exposing ourselves to negative media, negative PR’ but on the contrary we look at it as an opportunity; an opportunity to engage with consumers in an area that they are familiar with and want to engage with.

Gavin Twigger: I joined (Deiste) recently and one of the primary reasons I joined was,because of the Hispanic audience and the opportunity that marketers have to talk to a group of people that sort of exist in a collective level, not in an individual level…You mentioned

foursquare and but what’s fascinating to me is that because the Hispanic audience relies heavily on dialogue amongst themselves…their social media networks are much stronger than the general market’s.

On How Hispanics Use Social Media Different than Other Ethnic Groups

Gavin Twigger: Well again, the barriers to entry are less than general market. I’ve been in the industry for so many years and, you know, we all remember double opt ins with email campaigns and the detail you had to go through to get somebody to communicate with you or to communicate with them. These days the barriers are gone. The transparency, at the Latino level, is just phenomenal. They pretty much want to say whatever they want to say and everyone is ready to listen..

Sonia Sroka: I tell my clients at Porter Novelli, ’People are going to

be talking about your brand or your services regardless of whether you are paying attention or not, so the least amount of activity that you can have, when it comes to social media is to listen, because listening is also engaging and at the end of the day, that leads you to follow up with engagement….

Jose Villa: I question the whole idea of Hispanic Social Media. It kind of bothers me to even hear that term because I think that it’s still built around that old paradigm of advertising that really started…(with) the creation of Spanish-language TV and it has basically existed, until this day, based on that demarcation, that there is Spanish language TV and radio and other media grew out from there….We are not talking about social media. I mean, social media has the term ‘media” in it, but it’s not media in the way that most advertisers think of media. You don’t control it, it isn’t consumed in a two-way manner. When most people think of media, especially professionals like us, you think of something that you plan and you buy, something you control…

Sonia Sroka: In the general market, you go to social media sites to relax, Hispanics go to have more intense relationships. So even though it’s similar, there’s a slight difference as to the psychological (reason) behind the action even though the action might be very similar at the end of the day. You may see photos in a general market Facebook and you may see photos in a Hispanic person’s Facebook, but though it may look similar, the reasoning and the actions behind it, the reason why they are acting that way psychologically…it’s very different.

Jose Villa: I think obviously the Hispanic market is different. You used the term collectivistic, I get a little bothered when this is used to describe Hispanics because I think it should be used to describe all immigrant groups, it’s the

2010 US Hispanic Social Media Roundtable, cont.

“Across all ethnicities what consumers and customers are saying is ‘We want to have a different relationship with the companies we do business with’” Paul Rand, The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)


continued on page 9


Proud supporter of and contributor to the Hispanic Social Media Guide.

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MAKING OUR CLIENTS THE MOST TALKED ABOUT AND RECOMMENDEDBRANDS IN THEIR CATEGORY — BOTH ONLINE AND OFFLINE

Paul M. Rand President/[email protected]@paulmrand

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nature of what happens when you leave a country and you come to another country especially if you don’t speak the language, I would argue that most immigrant groups that don’t speak English are very collectivistic, you come from another country and you move to a place where…

Manny Ruiz: Even Americans that move to Germany are collectivistic

Jose Villa: right, exactly. You live near the military base when you’re there and you go to the hamburger place and who knows, but the idea is that most Hispanics for the most part are socio-economically on the lower-end; they go into neighborhoods where they know people at the village level, like there’s people from this little village in El Salvador, they all moved to Maryland and there’s a factory where one guy is working and everybody shows up there and all of a sudden you have an enclave; you have a village basically that has moved from El Salvador to this little town in Maryland and so what do people do when they arrive to a place where they don’t anything about? They ask people like them, where do I get food?...

Sonia Sroka: and that’s why Facebook is so successful because even amongst Hispanics that prefer Spanish, 10 million are online on Facebook. Right now Facebook would be the number one way to connect with Hispanics at the social media level.

On Which of the Social Media Platforms are Strongest with Hispanics: Facebook or MySpace

Sonia Sroka: Facebook

Jose Villa: Facebook but I run ads for clients on both platforms and I can tell you that for one client, I would never run ads on Facebook. And for that same client I put them on MySpace and they kill and they’ve been killing it for two years. Because it targets a younger,

more urban audience...I do recruiting for the US Army, and the US Army finds its recruits on MySpace.

Paul Rand: I think what has changed fundamentally with all these things is that the brand has to understand itself better, and then it has to be reflected through all the different mediums that it is using.

Monica Raugitinane: The best campaign I’ve seen, through social media, that had no paid media, was the breast cancer awareness campaign on Facebook.

Jose Villa: It’s usually the nonprofits that are doing the cool stuff in that area because they have no choice; they don’t have money…

Monica Raugitinane: Ha, yeah…they had girls post on their status update what the color of the bra they were wearing at the moment was and everyone was looking at the colors saying, what is that?

Jose Villa: that was a brilliant campaign

Sonia Sroka: that was a general market campaign...

Monica: It was for everyone.

Deborah Charnes: A lot of times the content and relevancy are very important. We did something that was targeting tweens, and it was for Day of the Dead. What we did was we had them create - if you are Mexican-American you are familiar with how you create alters for Day of the Dead - an online, altar-making contest, which was very fun. What we did was use other online media to direct people to the site, so it wasn’t necessarily banner ads but it was to direct them to get more traffic. So it was very fun, very relevant, and it also reached parents.

On whether Hispanic portals are staying relevant in the midst of Hispanics turning to mainstream social media platforms

Deborah Charnes: I’ve worked for Terra many years, so of course, I have a loyalty to them, even though I don’t represent them now, but I think what Terra did, early on, they developed original video content, very smart, better than written whether it’s for events or even original interviews, like Daddy Yankee in their office in Miami.

Ariel Corro: They have a little problem, which is the same problem Google has: once you are connected socially your sources of news are your friends. You no longer have to go anywhere else but there. I go to Facebook and I have a group of friends that feed me everything I want to know about the world according to me.

Everyone: ((laughter))

Manny Ruiz: So the Hispanic portals have to be a little nervous about what’s happening?

Jose Villa: I disagree to a certain extent because I don’t think bloggers or all this user-generated content is going to replace

professional content.

Ariel Corro: it’s not replacing it…

Jose Villa: But that’s the thing. If someone is sharing content on Facebook, its being created somewhere…

Ariel Corro: I understand, but my friends are creating the content…

Jose Villa: Yes but for the most part, if you create good content, your friends will repost it…

On what type of agency is presently best suited to lead the charge for Hispanic social media marketing

Jose Villa: I have some thoughts on that, and these are not my noble ideas. I think Forrester broke this down. I don’t think anyone is really suited. There’s a cool chart you guys should look it up. None are perfectly suited for what we need…PR gets our medium better that I would argue, even digital agencies, or traditional agencies, they understand


“What’s fascinating to me is that because the Hispanic audience relies heavily on dialogue amongst themselves...their social media networks are much stronger than the general market’s” Gavin Twigger, Deiste


continued on page 11

102010 U.S. Hispanic Social Media Guide2010-2011 U.S. Hispanic Social Media Guide



the concepts of creating a dialogue, but PR doesn’t have the tech tools….

Several people: I do...we do...

Manny Ruiz: Anybody can launch a blog nowadays…

Jose Villa: But you can’t outsource the tech somewhere else all the time because they may screw it up, I mean I don’t think anyone is set up perfectly.

David Henry: Let’s look at Facebook, if you are looking at conversation, well maybe PR is better, but if you are buying ads, then PR is not for doing that, so there are all these different elements. If you talk to PR they are going to talk about the conversation. If you talk to an advertising agency they are going to talk about buying media in the correct spots. If you talk with digital agencies they are going to have their part, everybody is trying to claim this because they are looking it from their own POV.

Sonia Sroka: I think we are discovering that even though there are different points of views, their points of views are blurred…

Jose Villa: The good news is that the clients don’t know...

Sonia Sroka: We give our clients options, we have alliances, we work with sister agencies, but we give our client a one-stop shop but we are not...

Paul Rand: What a good client is now is different to what it was years ago

Manny Ruiz: you got to be careful now….

Everyone: ((laughter))

Paul Rand: Best clients say, “ these are our partners and we know our brand.” They are successful because they have a clear understanding of their brand as well as how it should be represented. When it’s all said and done, the brand needs to be talked about in the right way and all conversation should feed back to some unifying idea.

Sonia Sroka: That’s an ideal client.

Amy Zubizarreta: Well that’s what we are. Just to give you an idea, from a corporate perspective, when we have, a campaign, we will bring advertising, marketing and public affairs. At a corporate level the executives will come and decide what the campaign strategy is going to be and it will most likely be multi-platform and it will involve each component, advertising, marketing and PR, so we

go back to our retainers that we have with our agencies of record, and we give them a task of the scope of what we need to get done. We will have a kick-off meeting and they will all collaborate together.

Manny Ruiz: Well Amy, isn’t State Farm a mature Hispanic marketer? What about the newbies to the market, Debbie?

Deborah Charnes: What I was going to say is, going back to something David said, it’s all about the strategy. We don’t have clients come to us and say, ‘Okay we want a social platform’. What we do is we go from the ground up; you know, we have interdepartmental pow-wows, and decide what we are going to do. Sometimes it’s social, sometimes it’s traditional media; we look at it holistically, we are all different groups sitting together in an agreement.

Monica Ragutinane: If I may add, from the client perspective, The Hispanic College Fund, for us, we know who we are; we are a non-profit organization that develops the next generation of Hispanic professionals, and part of that is having an educational

development continuum, so for us, if we were to go to agencies, we know who we are, but we need people to help us funnel students that we need to really reach. The bottom line about our mission is to get funding for those students, so for us, we would really love to have an integrated approach whether or not that’s with three agencies or one agency, and obviously we are non-profit, so (we need) the most affordable platform. From a client perspective that’s what we are really looking for; it’s just whoever has the best marketing strategy that can hit those two bottom lines.

Jose Villa: To be realistic, everyone is looking out for their own business, that’s the real answer; everyone’s looking out for ‘my bottom line, my business, my group’...

Manny Ruiz: I don’t know any PR agency in the whole world that would ever say: we need to go to Sensis to do a Hispanic website because we don’t do that ourselves.

Jose Villa: Yeah everyone says they know how to do it. Yeah I would argue in the top tier, you are going to have some type of re-organization, consolidation... Because I don’t think that the current structure of traditional PR, digital, direct media buying, I don’t think that’s going to exist…. I don’t think media buying firms can survive as structured, I don’t think PR continued on page 54

“I think more than ever, corporations, especially mid to upper managers, are being challenged...they are being asked to do more with less, so advertising companies, PR, everyone, needs to come to the table and be much more creative than before...relationships may go by the wayside. It’s all about results now.” Aymee Zubizarreta, State Farm



Who’s Best Suited to Lead HispanicSocial Media Marketing?

You may be surprised to learn what type of agency might be best suited to lead Hispanic social media marketing

Let’s just put this to rest right now: not one type of agency – not PR, advertising, digital or word of mouth – is worthy of “owning” the entire Hispanic social media marketing space. It is ridiculous for anyone to say that any type of agency should “own” Hispanic social media marketing when in fact all types of agencies have something special to potentially contribute to it. The rhetorical question then is not who deserves to own Hispanic social media but rather who is best suited to lead it? The word “lead” is important because it suggests that when it comes to Hispanic accounts, marketers almost always do what comes natural: they assign one agency or another to lead their efforts. Nine out of 10 times it’s always been the advertising agency.

That traditional assignment model is already changing and that’s the rub here because social media marketing represents a paradigm shift that will only get more pronounced with time. The more traction social media makes with Hispanics (and studies show Latinos are ravenous users of it) the faster Hispanic brands will determine who is best suited to lead their Latino social media efforts.

Based on my experience as a marketing professional as well as numerous interviews and interactions I regularly have with brands, agencies and marketing associations, I’ve developed an in-depth analysis that’s meant to outline the various processes and stakeholders that would typically be involved in Hispanic social media marketing initiatives.

In order to analyze the different elements of Hispanic social media I compiled a chart that accompanies this story and divided each task as best I could into 20 different categories ranging, more or less chronologically from strategy to implementation to measurement. I then arranged the chart listing PR agencies, advertising agencies, digital agencies, word of mouth marketing agencies and clients. If I felt a particular marketing entity was solidly suited for a specific role in Hispanic social media marketing I gave them a listing of “Advantage.” If they were not strongly suited for it, I left them blank.

Following the chart is a more detailed explanation for each of the 20 categories and why I felt some types of agencies stacked up better than others in different areas. At the conclusion of this overview is a final analysis that might surprise you so enjoy and join the conversation.

(Note that this chart is true for many of the different types of agencies listed but does not necessarily reflect those who may have hybrid components of other types of agencies).

ANALYSIS



S A N C H E ZR I C A R D O

AGENCYTHE

...when it comes tomulticultural communication,

authenticity is key

social networking | branding development | media visibility

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Who’s Best Suited to Lead Hispanic Social Media Marketing?, cont.

The chart below is meant to categorize the different types of duties usually involved in Hispanic social media marketing. Please note that there is often overlap in the types of capabilities offered by advertising, PR, word of mouth and digital agencies. Everyone wants to theoretically say they can comprehensively fulfill all of the categories listed below but in practice this is rarely the case.

Category PR Agency Ad Agency Digital Agency

Word of Mouth Agency

Client (Marketer)

strategy/Planning advantage advantage advantage advantage advantage

Web site development -- -- advantage advantage --

Facebook, twitter development advantage advantage advantage advantage --

advertising creative -- advantage advantage -- --

Webisodes -- advantage advantage -- advantage

Media buying -- advantage advantage -- --

hispanic aPPs -- -- advantage advantage --

search engine optimization (seo) -- -- advantage advantage --

leveraging ad buys -- advantage advantage -- --

Working with hispanic portals -- advantage advantage -- --

event marketing advantage advantage -- advantage --

Mobile Phone Marketing advantage advantage advantage advantage advantage

social media conversations / content creation advantage -- -- advantage --

blogger relations advantage -- -- advantage advantage

earned Media advantage -- -- advantage --

customer service relations advantage -- -- advantage advantage

alliance / Partnership building advantage -- -- advantage --

crisis communications advantage -- -- advantage advantage

Measurement advantage advantage advantage advantage --

ongoing social media community building advantage -- -- advantage advantage

Final tallY 12 advantages 10 advantages 12 advantages 15 advantages 6 advantages

©2010, 2010-2011 U.S. Social Media Guide, copy right 2010


Comparison Chart of How Different Agencies Compare in Hispanic Social Media Space



STRATEGY/PLANNINGEvery type of agency has something unique and powerfully different to offer marketers at the stage of planning and strategy. I called this part even among the various players because theoretically everyone of them could easily belong in this crucial conversation depending on the client and their needs. What products or services they plan to market and who internally is leading the marketing for the client organization often dictates who will be called to strategize for the brand. The strategy stage is one of the few facets of the Hispanic social media marketing grid where everyone in PR, advertising, digital and word of mouth are equally weighted because of their potential contribution to the process.

WEB SITE DEVELOPMENTSpanish and bilingual web site development is no longer the ultra specialty that it used to be five or 10 years ago. I struggled to give the advantage in this category to digital marketing and word of mouth agencies because nowadays most any decent marketing agency can create a solid Hispanic web site. The main reason I gave the advantage to digital marketing and word of mouth agencies is because today’s newest specialty are Spanish and bilingual web sites that are also optimized for SEO and social media. Those are specialties of the digital and word of mouth agencies. It’s only a very slight advantage but as of right now it is still a differentiator for digital and word of mouth agencies.

FACEBOOK / TWITTER DEVELOPMENTNo particular type of agency has the advantage in this category. Agencies who regularly do social media know how to create the identities and simple creative components to create a brand’s presence on Facebook, Twitter or blogs. The more important part is not what the Hispanic social media tools look like but rather what will that presence on these platforms mean and what will the content they have consist of. These components are in a different category with their own rankings.

ADVERTISING CREATIVEAdvertising and digital marketing agencies are the masters of creative advertising campaigns so this is an easy one to evaluate. Even the most respected Hispanic PR or word of mouth marketing agencies won’t argue that. The only PR agencies that are best suited to help with creative are those who like Ketchum, Fleishman and Porter Novelli are owned by companies like Omnicom because they can leverage their advertising shops to work together with their PR agencies.

WEBISODESAdvertising agencies and digital shops have the proven chops to script and create quality webisodes. PR and word of mouth agencies are typically at a strong disadvantage in this category but ironically there are a growing number of independent filmmakers that potentially make this difference irrelevant because they can work with anyone that wants to produce webisodes and other Internet-based programs.

MEDIA BUYINGMedia buying has long been a staple of advertising and will likely not quickly. Historically, PR shops that have tried to do this, have failed at it.

HISPANIC APPSDigital agencies, word of mouth agencies and even Hispanic portals are all best suited to create Facebook, smart phone and video game APPS. That is not to say that PR and advertising agencies aren’t capable of working with consultants to develop a Facebook, blog or iPhone APP but when it comes to creating these from start to finish, you generally want to work with the pros. Right now those pros are at the digital and word of mouth agencies.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)They say Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is part marketing and even more science so the ones best suited to help you with SEO strategies for your web site and blogs are digital and word of mouth marketing agencies. Everyone is talking more and more about SEO but the ones who get it right now the most are these types of agencies.

LEVERAGING AD BUYSThis category may seem a peculiar addition to this grid but it’s actually valid because it is no secret that advertising agencies can successfully leverage offline and online ad buys for favorable media coverage of companies and products, especially when it comes to large brands. The ones who do this best are the advertising and digital marketing agencies.

WORKING WITH HISPANIC PORTALSDigital agencies and advertising agencies have the longest history of dealing directly with Hispanic portals and ad networks. These types of agencies understand best how your brand can leverage these portals to advance your social media marketing presence, especially during the initial stages when you may need these portals to build traction for your web sites and social media platforms. The irony with Hispanic portals like Univision.com, Terra and Yahoo en Español is that they are terrific repositories for content but many Latinos are choosing to do most of their hardcore social media posting on non-Latino platforms like Facebook, individual blogs and Twitter. In most cases brands are paying portals for social media initiatives that could shift globs of their own audiences to other brand-centric platforms.

EVENT MARKETINGPR, advertising and word of mouth marketing agencies are equally strong at helping brands execute effective event marketing. Digital agencies are traditionally not used to conducting branded outdoor marketing events.

MOBILE PHONE MARKETINGEveryone is even in this category





Latinos are born social networkers.

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No ad in the world works better than a family recommendation. We’d trust a neighbor

sooner than a pitch man. Which is why you should engage Latinos through social

media. Because social networks are built into our DNA. Todos somos digitales.

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SOCIAL MEDIA CONVERSATIONS / ORIGINAL CONTENTThe champions at creating and sustaining online conversations are PR and word of mouth marketing agencies. There is little dispute about that even though there are some notable exceptions in the Hispanic advertising world with agencies like The Vidal Partnership, Bromley and others who actually have top caliber PR talent on their teams. Still, these are currently the exception and not the rule. PR and word of mouth agencies are also much more adept at consistently creating and managing original, conversational-style web content for platforms like blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

BLOGGER RELATIONSBlogger relations is a very hot topic right now in Hispanic social media because major brands like General Mills are searching high and low for Hispanic bloggers that they can work with to become potential brand ambassadors or spokespersons. If you have any doubt about this important trend note that at the recent re-launch press event of General Mills’ QueRicaVida.com web site the company flew in more than 34 Latina bloggers. Blogger relations, like its media relations cousin in traditional PR, are the specialty of public relations and word of mouth marketing specialists.

EARNED MEDIAEarned media is a large part of what PR and word of mouth marketing do best. Generating interviews and press coverage off and online can play a pivotal role in creating viral buzz for social media campaigns and initiatives as well as the platforms where they reside.

CUSTOMER SERVICE RELATIONSMonitoring Twitter in English and “en español” has become a top social media job for Hispanic marketers like State Farm, Walmart and Southwest Airlines. These companies have active “listening” teams who monitor for content that may indicate customer frustration, rumors or even controversy. Although PR agencies and word of mouth marketing agencies are able to handle monitoring duties for brands, marketers are frequently better off monitoring their own customer care issues. The general consensus appears to be that most of the major Hispanic marketing brands do their own customer service monitoring though sometimes they will enlist their agencies to help them, especially when dealing with a crisis.

ALLIANCE / PARTNERSHIP BUILDINGAlliance and partnership building is another core competency of PR and word of mouth agencies. These are the organizations

that companies turn to most often when it comes to building relationships or alliances with key Hispanic stakeholders and organizations.

CRISIS COMMUNICATIONSAs Walmart’s Lorenzo Lopez, director of corporate communications stated recently at the Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference, when all hell breaks loose for a company on the Web, there’s usually one group of marketing experts everyone turns to to put out the fire: the PR pros. The biggest challenge for Hispanic marketers isn’t just that it’s faster and easier than ever for somebody to post content or fuel rumors on the web. Making matters worse is that customers can post negative content to more platforms. A crisis can spread very easily through increasingly interconnected social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Smart companies have strong PR contingency plans for crisis and in the online space that means PR and word of mouth agencies have the advantage.

MEASUREMENTHispanic social media measurement is in its infancy but a variety of well-developed tools are now available (see accompanying story in this Guide) that already allow marketers to gauge Hispanic visits, audience perception and more. In my view, - though some can argue that the digital and word of mouth agencies appear to have a slight advantage because of their razor-focus on digital marketing - I don’t think anyone has a clear advantage in this arena. That’s because when you dig deeper you realize that what several agencies in PR, word of mouth and advertising brand as proprietary measurement are almost always reformulated ways of mixing and matching existing social media measurement tools. That’s smart and good of them but what it really means is that everybody in this space should work harder to have their own formula beyond counting the number of visits, viewers and fans their campaigns generated.

ONGOING SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY BUILDINGOnce a brand has created its strategy, leveraged its advertising and generated traffic for their campaign, the key is long-term, sustained engagement. The final stage of the Hispanic social media grid is all about continuing to build the social media community that was created. If you look long and hard at what work this task entails it is all about one to one, conversational-style, engagement marketing. As of today, based on how most Hispanic advertising agencies are configured, we’re talking about a role that is super suited to the public relations and word of mouth agencies.

SUMMARY ANALYSIS AND KEY QUESTIONSIf you look at the graph and summary comments carefully they reveal pockets of strengths and weaknesses for all the types of Hispanic agencies listed. The chart also features some surprises, including the fact that whoever most closely resembles the new breed of PR, the word of mouth marketing agency, will be in a very strong position. Below is an analysis of where I think each of the players main strengths and weaknesses lie. Below is a summary





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Focus on experience rather than a campaign: You do not “launch” a social media campaign - you begin a social media effort. There is no finite start or end date.

Find the right agency that knows their role: Agencies should be conduits to the community you are nurturing and help you listen, learn, direct co-creation and facilitate the discussion.

Embrace loss of control: The most effective social media programs encourage consumer co-creation and creativity.

Test & Learn: there is no exact roadmap for building communities online; instead you should look to fail cheaply and quickly, and use iteration to figure out as quickly as possible what works.

Begin with a Plan

The process of building a Hispanic online community starts like any good commercial initiative – with a sound strategic plan.

1. Start with Listening. That sounds easy enough, but this goes against most marketing, PR, and advertising professional’s DNA. And you don’t need to commission complex, expensive and multi-month research projects (put down the phone to your favorite Focus Group moderator). Some tried and true research tools combined with new digital listening tools can provide powerful insights to guide your community building strategy, including:

These insights are absolutely critical as you try to identify what

unique value you can offer Hispanics to join your community, particularly vis-à-vis general market initiatives. This listening might even inform you that a stand-alone Hispanic community doesn’t make sense.

How to Build and Manage a HispanicOnline CommunityBy Jose Villa

SOCIAL MEDIA HAS FUNDAMENTALLY changed mass marketing by providing an unprecedented opportunity to establish scalable and deep relationships with consumers. That sounds like an oxymoron, but in fact, social media provides the ability to establish the types of intimate relationships previously only possible at retail points of sale, local event activations, and customer service calls that involve significant “physical” costs. With the advent of large, ubiquitous social media platforms, marketers have the ability to build virtual communities of consumers that have “opted in” to have a relationship with a brand, product, or organization; representing the most valuable “customer list” we have yet seen in the marketing world. Whether it’s a Facebook page list of “Likes”, a Twitter following, MySpace “friends”, blog or YouTube subscribers, or any of the countless other ways to engage with a brand via social media, building these online communities are now at the heart of effective marketing for all brands, products and companies.

Using social media to engage Hispanics arguably represents a more promising and organic opportunity than in the general market because:

Hispanics spend more time on social media sites than their •general market counterparts (Korzenny, 2009)

Hispanics have larger offline social networks (larger •households and extended families, most live in densely Latino communities)

Since social media functions well as a low-cost •communications tool, it has enjoyed a direct network effect with Hispanics (i.e. the more people register onto a social networking Web site, the more useful the Web site is to its registrant)

A growing group of Hispanic “e-Influentials” use digital media •to recommend products, blog, and warn their larger social networks about product problems (Burson-Marstellar, 2008)

Changing Your ApproachBuilding a Hispanic online community involves shifting how most marketers think about their trade. Some differences are subtle, others are not. A couple of key concepts to keep top of mind when looking to build a Hispanic online community:

Shift from “Push” to “Pull”: everything you do in social media will require a compelling enough value proposition that a Hispanic consumer will choose to “pull” information from your organization, as opposed to simply “pushing” unwanted advertising or content on them.

Understand the 1-9-90 rule: Only 1% of your community will be “creators” who drive large amounts of the social group’s activity; a slightly larger 9% of users will act as “editors”, sometimes modifying content or adding to an existing thread, but rarely creating content from scratch; and the remaining 90% majority of the community will be a passive “audience” who simply observes.




2. Understand Your Audience. Understanding and planning how you will interact with your target Hispanic consumers will require a deep behavioral view into their goals and digital behavior. Demographic and psychographic information provides a 2D picture, but building Personas provides the all important 3rd dimension necessary to understand what you need to provide the community to be successful. A persona is a user archetype - synthesized from ethnographic research (gathered from “listening” techniques listed above) and Web data and then summarized in one- to two- page descriptions that include behavior patterns, skills, attitudes and environment combined with a few fictional personal details to bring the persona to life.

3. Find the shared ideal. What are the common values your brand, product or company and Hispanic consumer share? Armed with the insights gathered

from listening to Hispanic consumers and using behavioral guidance provided by your Hispanic Personas, you can start to identify ideals where your target Hispanic consumers and brand/company align – personality traits, values, benefits, and/or attributes. This ideal is the basic platform for a central idea, most effectively expressed as the story you will tell to build your community. This is another critical step in defining the difference between Hispanic and general market communities.

4. Develop a Social Media Roadmap. Armed with research, a clear picture of your target Hispanic audience, and a story you’re going to tell to keep your community engaged, you need to develop a Hispanic

social media roadmap. The most important step in developing a social media roadmap is prioritizing – social media involves multiple potential platforms (see fig. 2).

Personas and our “listening” research will provide insight into which platforms are most viable and appropriate for your particular Hispanic target. While social media is typically free of the “hard costs” of media placement, it is very resource intensive, particularly when it

comes to content. This prioritization is best summarized in a social media roadmap, a temporal plan that details a phased approach of how you will enter social media to strategically engage Hispanics, by prioritizing 1-3 platforms per phase, usually in a 2-3 year timeframe.

In today’s fragmented and socially-driven media world, brands need to look at how they use their owned media (e.g. Web sites, Facebook page, content, etc.) harmoniously with paid and earned media. Forrester Research has summarized this balanced approach with their “Holistic Media Model” below:

5. Create Your Owned Media Platforms. This is the nuts and bolts phase where you take your Priority 1 platforms from your Hispanic social media roadmap, and customize, brand, and populate those platforms. If it’s a Facebook page, you will want to name your page, determine how you will use your tabs, design a logo on the main page (Wall), and establish your content strategy. If you have the resources,

I strongly suggest drafting a Social Media Style Guide to ensure a consistent voice, tone, and standard of quality for content distributed by your brand via social media channels

6. Identify and Staff a Community Manager. This is an often overlooked step that can doom your Hispanic online community from the start. Building a community can usually be accomplished by using your marketing, corporate communications or brand team. Managing your community usually cannot. Why? Well one, it’s time consuming (see point under Social Media Roadmap). Two, a good community manager usually requires a different skill set, part moderator, part customer service, part facilitator. If you community if heavily Spanish-speaking, you will need a native speaker who can write professionally and colloquially in Spanish.

Build Your Community

7. Build Your Base. With a sound strategy and key social media platforms in place, it’s time to begin building a community. Start by making sure you have well-thought-out content and / or an editorial plan. If you don’t have a community of Hispanics actively discussing your brand/product/company, you will need to “seed” initial discussions, and that means content. Where will this content come from, how often, what language? All questions you must address. This initial community will be your foundation.

How to Build and Manage a Hispanic Online Community, cont.


fig. 2

Earned Media“the result”

Paid Media“the catalyst”

Owned Media

“the portable brand”

•Facebook• Twitter•Content•Web sites•Microsites•Mobile site• Videos

• Social dialogue• WOM activity• SEO traffic• Social media tracking•Press coverage• Blog activity

• Display ads• Paid search• Social media ads• Traditional media}

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8. Leverage Paid Media as a “Catalyst”. Although paid media should be viewed as a luxury instead of a requirement, there is no denying the importance of using targeted paid media as a catalyst to kick-start the growth of your community. Facebook provides the ability to launch targeted cost-per-click text ads to build your “Friends.” Twitter just launched sponsored tweets which can help grow a following. Paid search text ads can be highly efficient in targeting Hispanic consumers that fit your Personas.

9. Measure Earned Media Results Using Tracking Tools. The results of your Hispanic online community initiative will come in the form of earned media. However, to effectively track these earned media results, you’ll want to leverage the numerous social media tracking tools (ranging from free to significant monthly fees) to create a dashboard of measurements of:

Review/Ratings•

Blog / Forum mentions & comments•

Tweets•

Volume•

Consumer sentiment•

Web analytics•

10. Start a dialogue with key influencers. Try to identify key “influencers” in the Hispanic community who have some connection to your brand and / or story. If you’re in health care, identify prominent Latino health care thought leaders who are active in social media. Personally connect with them and invite them to be involved in your community. Your goal is building a community and facilitating conversations.

11. Syndicate Content. A well run community will produce a steady stream of content. Make sure you take advantage of all the technology available to integrate and distribute it to other platforms and affinity communities. Allow people to subscribe to RSS feeds. Integrate your Facebook page Wall with your Twitter stream. Make your content portable and easy accessed, on as many platforms as possible.

You need to be patient, but if you follow this step-by-step approach, you will start to build a Hispanic online community and jump ahead of your competitors in this game-changing environment.

About the author: Jose Villa is the founder and president of Los Angeles-based Sensis, a full-service advertising agency providing digital-centric solutions. His e-mail is [email protected]. His Twitter is @jrvilla

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How to Build and Manage a Hispanic Online Community, cont.



By Gaby Alban LIKE IT OR NOT, CONVERSATIONS about your company and brand are more than likely already taking place on social networks in Spanish and English. And you can bet that your customers, your employees and your suppliers are engaged in these online conversations, collaborating beyond the corporate firewall, outside of your traditional communications planning.

Old-school, top-down marketing campaigns don’t address this ever-changing web environment and the growing importance of social media—or the power they have to influence consumers’ decision-making processes. These days, most companies have developed some semblance of a social media strategy, but far too often it is part of a specific marketing initiative or relegated to a particular silo such as emerging markets, public relations or, if it is community-based, Hispanic marketing. Furthermore, these “new media” campaigns often focus only on customers, ignoring the immense networking value of employees, friends and suppliers, and limiting the ability of the social media campaign to deeply inform the company’s own marketing team.

The good news is that by dedicating resources to support these organic networks, you can help them grow and flourish, broadening the reach of your traditional public relations and communications strategies. Consumers are bombarded with marketing messages every day. Suffering from marketing fatigue, they’re far more likely to respond positively to a recommendation from a real, live individual—the kind social media fosters—than to yet another corporate marketing piece. Social media is the fuel in today’s world of word-of-mouth marketing. Good social media campaigns offer many tools to harness the power of these relationships and track their influence—by quantifying reviews, comments, non-corporate blogs, employee blogs, likes, photos and links—to gauge brand loyalty, sentiment and engagement.

Effective social media campaigns tap into the vital online conversations that are already happening, creating and supporting powerful networking opportunities. They also unleash critical information about your customer base. By recognizing—and leveraging—the new social media reality, well designed social networking campaigns increase brand loyalty while simultaneously feeding critical market information back to all levels of the organization in real time. The result: a boost to the company’s image along with increased productivity, responsiveness and ability to react to market changes—the keys to success.

These seven simple rules can help you implement stellar social networking campaigns and manage your brand’s positioning in the social media environment:

Provide employees and close suppliers a set of guidelines 1. for posting.

Identify core internal and external individuals who currently 2. use Social Media in Spanish and English. They are your first

resource for listening to conversations about your brand.

Clearly define your target audience. For example, 3. while Hispanics are uniformly heavy mobile users across demographic categories, their usage habits and applications vary widely based on age, income and location.

Once your target is defined, be deliberate in choosing 4. applications. Select applications and platforms that appeal to your core audience and are appropriate for your message. Take the time to research exactly where your target audience is, taking into account that different cultures and age groups will connect using different tools and may have different language preferences.

Measurement and timeframes are equally important. Give 5. any efforts enough time to have an impact and measure it against actual business goals, not just posts or hits.

Listen to feedback. Success depends on your ability, 6. willingness and flexibility to assimilate process and respond to feedback. Just collecting it doesn’t count.

Don’t get stuck on the numbers. Quantitative data is 7. important, but qualitative data is just as valuable. Listen to what your core influencers have to say and respond to their input. Spending time with high quality feedback will return as much as all the other data metrics you can track.

At first glance, the current social media environment seems to have changed everything, but the truth is that this new reality has only brought certain long-standing business realities to light—and as a result turned them into powerful tools. Employees, customers, suppliers and partners have always networked with each other, but in the past it was impossible for marketing departments to easily harness these broad connections. Social networks make these relationships transparent, providing business managers an unprecedented view into their inner workings. The key now is to embrace this new reality, joining and supporting these vital conversations, rather than trying to block or control the interactions. The rewards are priceless: Your organization becomes more agile, connecting employees, partners, customers and suppliers; boosting customer engagement and brand loyalty; and deepening your relationships with your customers to enable delivery of superior customer support. These, after all, are the keys to success in any business environment.

About the author: Gaby Alban is co-founder and COO of Conexión.

Her e-mail is [email protected]. Her twitter is @gabyalban

Social Media Is a Fact of Life —And the Key to Success



Hispanics and Social Media: A 23 Million Person Conversation.

By Armando Azarloza

THERE’S A PARADIGM SHIFT happening in the multi-cultural marketing landscape. For the first time ever, Hispanics are just as likely to come home after a long day at work, spread out on the couch and cozy up to their favorite social media site with their favorite primetime TV shows glowing simply as backgrounds. Latinos are increasingly engaging with their family and friends on their preferred blogs, video sharing sites, Facebook and Twitter.

These tech savvy millions now look to social media websites as their primary mode of communication, conversation, and entertainment. We’re witnessing a dramatic migration from things like the telephone to online social media and marketers have taken notice. While overall U.S. ad spending is generally down or flat, multi-cultural ad dollars in the digital space are booming.

According to various studies, social media usage by Hispanics is outpacing that of non-Hispanics. This is partly due to the fact that there is limited, culturally-relevant, original content in Spanish online and Hispanics in general, tend to be drawn to the collective values of their respective communities. Social media enables them to meet, interact and engage with culturally similar groups of friends and family, some who are often geographically dispersed.

Simply put, culture is the universal constant that binds these social media communities together. And understanding that is key to creating any long-term, multi-cultural brand-building initiative in the social sphere.

Social media offers us an unprecedented opportunity to leverage the technical capabilities the platform provides, allowing marketers to reach out and engage Hispanics in a finely tuned, culturally-aware brand conversation. Careful study, planning and analysis will help us understand why our consumers are using social media to begin with. Are they talking about music? Keeping in touch with family in Latin America? Sharing their culture, experiences or connecting with other members of their community?

Once we understand and recognize all these various factors, we as marketers can engage Hispanics with culturally-relevant and interesting content that stimulates discussion, feedback and sharing that helps our brands become an integrated part of their conversation and their community.

A successful social media strategy depends on a deep understanding of the culture of our audience, displaying an openness towards positive and negative comments and deploying dedicated resources to maintain a social media presence. This unique ability to reach and interact with millions of Hispanics online allows companies to join the conversation and deliver a brand message to a focused audience. In the process, corporations can earn the trust and long-term loyalty of Latinos.

There are 23 million Hispanics talking online. Are they talking about your brand? With the proper social media strategy, they could be.

About the Author: Armando Azarloza, is president of The Axis Agency, one of the nation’s leading multicultural marketing agencies. Azarloza can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @360culture.

DEGREE MEN: AN ONGOING CASE STUDY

Since the beginning of Q4, 2009, the Axis Agency

has been working to establish Degree Men: Siempre

Enfrenta El Reto as one of the top leading brands in

the Hispanic Social Media Space.

Facebook has provided the best opportunity to

establish rich consumer engagement and brand

conversations with the brand’s target audience.

The Degree Men: Siempre Enfrenta El Reto community

is strong and actively growing on a daily basis.

QUICK CAMPAIGN FACTS:

40,620 Facebook fans

18,565 total interactions

7,532 comments

9,920 likes

226,281 page views



By Manny Ruiz

IF YOU SCOUR THE LATINO WEB as often as I do, you’ll notice that one of the biggest trends right now is that not only are Latinos definitely engaging more through social media but that they are producing unique content as bloggers as well.

I’ve only been blogging daily for a year but it has taken me a short time to see the dynamic array of blogs emerging in what we call the Hispanic blogosphere.

If you want to find a “mami blog” - easily one of the top three content categories in the Hispanic blogosphere - take your pick. There are at least 24 (and counting) mami bloggers that I’ve identified and each of are as varied as the family lives they live. Want a good blog that talks culture or politics in general? Sit down and learn about one of the more than 50 quality ones out there.

Latinos are increasingly creating blogs to make their viewpoints known and many are getting very specific in what they write about in Spanish, English, bilingual and even Spanglish. In the true spirit of blogs, Latinos are even blogging regularly about such hyper specific topics as taco establishments in Austin. (Don’t believe me? Go to TacoJournalism.com).

As a blog publisher of two sites (Hispanic PR Blog and PapiBlogger), I have the unique opportunity to hear both sides of the conversations taking place around Hispanic blogs. Leading brands are studying or asking their marketing agencies to investigate every known Latino blog that strategically fits their marketing initiatives, products, brands and/or services. From the viewpoint of Hispanic bloggers, the issue is usually about how to continue producing great original content in one or two languages and possibly make a living at the same time. (One sage marketing blogger has noted that more than 98% of blogs are not viable businesses).

VETTING THE BLOGS AND YOUR EXPECTATIONS

As a marketer targeting Latino consumers, the first step in working with Hispanic bloggers is knowing who are the quality ones to work with. The definition of a good Latino blog is highly subjective but in general the best blogs are well written, publish consistently (at least three times a week ) and have a very defined editorial criteria. Without these elements Latino blogs typically won’t gain a loyal, growing audience.

Remember that most Hispanic blogs can’t be measured side by side with the audience numbers of a major Hispanic portal. Most of the best ones have just a couple thousand unique visitors. They have as few as 1,000 followers or more on Twitter and/or Facebook.

The tricky part is that the number of visitors and followers are only part of the story. Most seasoned social media marketers will tell you that the criteria they use for judging bloggers is not just the number of followers the blogs have but also who is following them and what is the quality of those interactions. It boils down to quality followers/audience vs. quantity, which is precisely why savvy marketers are so interested in learning more about Hispanic bloggers.

The final factor to keep in mind about Hispanic bloggers is that most of them fall into one of three types. Some blogs exist just to get free stuff. Others depend wholly on what they generate through their blog. The third type of bloggers are the ones who are passionate about a topic or issue and don’t have any specific interest in either getting free stuff or generating revenue. Many blogs fall somewhere between the first and second types listed above.

If you are a marketer trying to learn the ins and outs of working with Latino bloggers here are a couple of top tips you need to know about how to effectively collaborate with them.

How to Effectively Work with Hispanic Bloggers

General Mills’ re-launch of QueRicaVida.com included flying more than 34 Latina bloggers to Miami. Some of the nation’s leading bloggers are pictured here with the author of this story and publisher of PapiBlogger Manny Ruiz.



www.papiblogger.com



KNOW THY BLOGGER

In two conference sessions with and about Latino bloggers at the 2010 Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference everyone heard the No. 1 complaint Hispanic bloggers have about marketers: they call us without knowing who we are. This is the first cardinal rule about working with any and all Hispanic media and it is no different with Hispanic bloggers.

Some of the top Latino bloggers are former journalists with little tolerance for this mistake but even those who weren’t journalists share the same mindset.

“Read our content before you call us,” says Ariel Coro, publisher of the technology for Latino newbies web site TuTecnologia.com and a nationally syndicated tech journalist. “Know what we talk about and how we talk about it. I get tons of generic emails from PR pros who don’t know what we do and it makes me upset because they waste my time with irrelevant content.”

In that same context, some bloggers say that it helps when people personalize their pitch. Many bloggers are also fond of adding any existing product videos to accompany the stories they will post for product-specific stories.

CONTACT THE BLOGGER BEFORE SUBMITTING

Most Hispanic bloggers accept products or services for review. The big rule of thumb is to not submit a product for review without first speaking with the blogger. They generally don’t want to review products or services that they may not like, a fact that works in marketers’ favor.

DON’T ASK BLOGGERS TO REVIEW SOMETHING THEY CAN’T KEEP

Given that bloggers rarely get paid to review products, don’t bother sending them a product they can’t keep. Our time is worth money so many times the items that we review are the only compensation we get for our time, said mommy blogger Roraima Lassanske of the hip, Spanish-language site Mamå Contemporånea.

Car reviews, vacation packages and other items that are either intangible or ultra high luxury are a few of the exceptions to the keep it rule. (Per FCC rules, anytime a blogger accepts any gift from any company they must fully disclose it online).

How to Effectively Work with Latino Bloggers, cont.

DON’T BE PUSHY

Contact bloggers about working with you but don’t harass them because in most cases this is NOT their job. Most Latino bloggers don’t get paid so they don’t want to feel like they are getting paid unless they are.

KEEP YOUR PITCH SIMPLE AND DIRECTSome bloggers complain about being pitched by marketers who are not only clueless about who they are but also what exactly it is they want from them.

“They have these convoluted pitches and sometimes are not direct about what it is that they really want,” says Lassanske. “Be direct and be honest about what it is you really want.”

BLOGGERS PREFER FINANCIAL COMPENSATION

Most bloggers understand that part of why marketers reach out to them is to get their endorsements in return for products or services. Although that’s a universal fact about blogging it doesn’t mean bloggers aren’t being creative about getting money from marketers.

In order to better monetize their blogs some bloggers sell sponsored posts, ad sponsorships as well as host product giveaways and even serve in some cases as product ambassadors and/or spokespersons.

The cost for working with Latino bloggers varies greatly from blogger to blogger but the principle is that bloggers want brands to consider partnering with them with cash and not just products.

“When I get paid, I don’t just post a story on the blog, I also promote everything on Twitter, Facebook and my other forums,” says Lassanske. Some Latino bloggers like Coro argue that when given the opportunity they can even serve as an extension of the marketing teams that contract them.

FOLLOW UP WITH GIVEAWAYS

A couple of Latino bloggers say they are more careful than ever about doing giveaways because they have had instances where marketers




used them to promote a giveaway and then those marketers never rewarded the winners.

“It’s happened to me twice with toys,” said one blogger who did not want to be identified. “It’s really embarrassing to leave your readers hanging like that so I’m more careful now.”

PERSONALIZE AND PITCH PRODUCTS/SERVICE THAT ALREADY EXIST

The final tips are all about personalizing the pitch. Bloggers typically want to be addressed personally and want to be pitched with content that is conversational in style.

Some Latino bloggers also say that marketers should not expect them to blog about products or services that are not already in the market. Several mami bloggers for example have done preview stories about products that are either not in the market or never made it to market.

“It’s not a good situation to have your readers asking you where you can buy something and you have nothing to show for it,” said Lassanske. “I’ve done that and it leaves your audience frustrated because they wonder why you got them excited about something they can’t have.”

How to Effectively Work with Latino Bloggers, cont.

www.twitter.com/hispanicprwww.facebook.com/hprblog



Open ‘round the clock

Your website and online marketing efforts work as your virtual salesperson 24/7/365.

So, how do you get started? Here are some simple “Spanish-language SEO” tips to get you going:

Check for accurate Spanish translation. To ensure that your messages hit home, make sure your website is translated by native Spanish-speakers. Professional translators are your best bet.

Review your website structure. There are many factors that contribute to the ranking success of your website, including: age of domain/URL, URL structure, content, internal link structure, trust, keywords, outbound links or inbound links.

Analyze your site. Not only can web analytics measure website traffic, but it can also be used to give you insights on how to optimize web usage and drive click-throughs. Google Analytics to improve your marketing effectiveness.

Spanish and English keyword research. There are a multitude of keyword research tools than can help you get started on optimizing your website to address both the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking markets. Some include: Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, Compete, Hitwise, and Google Keyword Tools.

Optimize website copy, titles and labels. Apply steps 1-4 to improve natural search results.

Off-page factors – promote your site through content. Backlinks and inbound links originate from outside your website, but points directly back to it. They are used to measure the importance and popularity of the website, establishing credibility and better ranking results. Some of the various ways you can create authoritative inbound links are:

By Silvia Prado

THIS YEAR MARKS A VERY exciting year for Hispanic marketers as we await the results of the 2010 US Census. The outcome will surely represent significant opportunities for Hispanic communications professionals, especially in the online space. How do marketers effectively target this lucrative demographic? Below are a few compelling reasons to incorporate Spanish-language search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) initiatives into your communications mix:

Population size

According to the last US Census, Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority in the US, comprised of nearly 50 million Hispanics and 3 million Hispanic-owned businesses.

US Hispanics are online

The Hispanic online market, a diverse group, presents a unique opportunity to reach one of the fastest-growing and lucrative customer segments on the internet. According to eMarketer.com, a digital marketing research firm, over 52 percent of US Hispanics are online, representing about 24 million internet users in 2009 and an estimated 39 million by 2014.

Two languages, two opportunities

Many US Hispanics online are bilingual and, according to comScore, about 19 percent of US Hispanic internet users use Spanish as their primary language. Search engine marketing can be an effective way to target US Hispanics in both English and Spanish.Increase your visibility and marketshare Spanish is the third most-used language on the internet, says World Internet Statistics. However, thousands of Spanish-language websites are lagging because they are not effectively built, do not include quality content and are not search-engine optimized, among other reasons.

SEO boosts website traffic

Spanish-language SEO is an effective way to increase website traffic and conversions. Some of the benefits include targeted traffic from natural search results, increased web traffic, more sales/leads, expanded reach, boosted search-engine rankings and established brand credibility.

Invest for the long term

Spanish-language SEO is a long-term strategy with a high return-on-investment because it can decrease your marketing expenditure while providing a more efficient way to reach your target market.

How to Reach U.S. Hispanics with Spanish-Language SEM Strategies



http://2010.census.gov/2010census/

www.eMarketer.com

www.comscore.com

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

http://www.google.com/analytics

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

http://www.compete.com/

http://www.hitwise.com/us/

http://www.googlekeywordtool.com


• Directories• Blogs• Articles • Press release distribution and media outlet pick-up• Social media sites • Link-building from other websites that agree to point to yours• Online advertising• Pay-per-click marketing

Keep at it! The internet has lots of resources to help you reach your communications goals through SEO and SEM, including:

Marketwire’s US Hispanic NewslineSEOTOOLSSEOmozAOL Hispanic CyberstudyHispanic Market Overview - 20102010 US Hispanic Social Media & Marketing Overview

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Silvia Prado is an account executive at Marketwire, a leading global newswire, and is based in Miami. Her email is [email protected] and her Twitter is @Silvia_Prado.

How to Reach U.S. Hispanics with Spanish-Language SEM Strategies, cont.


www.facebook.com/papibloggerwww.twitter.com/papiblogger

Coming this

Join PapiBlogger as he travels 10,000 miles across the U.S. in 40 days with his family. You're invited to follow along at www.PapiBlogger.com,

and join in the conversation as he Blogs, Tweets and Facebooks parenting tricks along the way.

Father's Day (June 20th)

For additional information and sponsorship opportunities, please e-mail [email protected]

http://www.marketwire.com/MediaRelations/pdf/Latin_American_and_US_Hispanic/US-Hispanic-Newsline.pdf

http://tools.seobook.com

http://www.seomoz.org/tools

http://advertising.aol.com/sites/default/files/webfm/research/HispanicCyberStudy-2010.pdf

http://www.hispanicad.com/banners2/downloads/2010-US-Hispanic-SocMediaReport.pdf

http://www.hispanicad.com/banners2/HMO10/HMO2010.pdf

http://www.hispanicad.com/banners2/downloads/2010-US-Hispanic-SocMediaReport.pdf

http://www.linkedin.com/in/silviavprado

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/include.do?module=DIST&pageid=845


Hispanics Beyond Broadband: Leveraging Video and Web 2.0 to Facilitate Online Conversations

By Cristy Clavijo-Kish BY NOW WHILE ATTENDING a marketing, PR, branding or advertising meeting or another you have heard some sort of statistic or comment that Hispanics are really a growing online community. Your client or your boss may already have asked how are we going to reach Hispanics online or via social media? Or maybe you’re creating your own strategy to present new ideas and options to pursue this audience. Either way, the trends and research updates in 2010 alone paint a canvas that portrays the Hispanic community becoming increasingly engaged with social media.

How is your brand going to connect or resonate with online Hispanics? In 2009 a leading Hispanic online marketing firm Captura Group in partnership with the Florida State University Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication presented research findings that hone in on how various multicultural audiences are spending time online. More specifically how they’re spending time in social networking sites and how they average nearly double the numbers of mainstream online visitors. The Hispanic audiences were further segmented by language as the online space can be very customizable by language and thus engage a varying level of Hispanic audiences. When combined, the two Hispanic groups represent more than 50% of online social networking users.

This April the same group provided an update on those user numbers illustrating the major surge of social media usage by multicultural audiences between 2008-2009 – and the numbers were significant. In just one year the Hispanic figures alone surged more than 20% in each language category- making this community a significant online presence.

So now we know there is a mass of Hispanic consumers online but what are they actually doing? A variety of research indicates that the main activities include email and music download, but one of the central functions is to Watch Internet video or streaming video.

On the general market side, The Pew Internet & American Life Project’s first major report on online video showed that more than half of online video viewers (57 percent) share links to the video they find with others, and 75 percent say they receive links to watch video that others have sent to them. In addition, comScore recently released that more than three-quarters (77 percent) of Americans who are already online watched online video this past November, with more than 146 million unique users watching a total of 12.7 billion videos.

So if you combine the Hispanic online trends with the general market statistics on video usage- a fairly compelling story begins to build that surrounds using video to drive brand communications among Hispanic online users.

According to Manny Santos, Director of MultiVu Latino (the video production and distribution division of PR Newswire) marketers need to understand, if they are not using video, their audience surely is, especially Hispanics. “Video more than ever is playing a crucial




role in terms of how individuals are communicating and how new audiences are engaged. The power of images and sound is being fully explored by everyone as video is more accessible and more interesting. From webcams, flip cameras and cell phones recording video to the wide range of more affordable digital video formats and high quality video production, individuals and marketers are finding video basically essential in the social media space,” Santos commented.

When producing video for the web, the Top 5 elements to consider for your Hispanic online communications are:

Relevant & Compelling Content

Emotional Appeal

Engaging

Dynamic Idea = Multi-Platform

Format & Style

Brands’ multimedia assets should be engaging and drive home a dynamic idea that connects with their audience. Some marketers are using hand picked celebrities or relevant Hispanic professionals (doctors, lawyers, nutritionists and dieticians, teachers, accountants, etc) to deliver their messages via video. Others are creating more grassroots strategies and allowing consumer-created videos to tell their story. Either way, the criteria should match your overall strategy and the video or multimedia assets should become the visual tools.

Going back five years to 2005- our team at Hispanic PR Wire conducted a study of Hispanic media usage and content preferences that at the time revealed that Hispanic media are 35% more likely to use stories that have photos or other multimedia assets over those that do not. Considering what the recent research says about Hispanics’ appetite for online video and music, that study’s conclusions appear to still hold true today. So now you’ve decide to develop multimedia assets to tell your story to Hispanics online, then what? Here are some Top Tips to guide your plan:

1. Have a Strategy that Answers the 5 Ws Central to Success (Who, Why, Where, When, What)

2. Be Willing To Take a Risk – Be Prepared

3. Monitor & Measure

4. “Talk” & “Listen” à Engage 5. DON’T Stop! (ongoing process)

Hispanics Beyond Broadband: Leveraging Video and Web 2.0 to Facilitate Online Conversations, cont.




One of the key benefits of including multimedia assets and video as part of your online Hispanic outreach initiative is the ability to monitor its engagement and downloads. Reporting strategic results across your organization will help build rationale for continuing a program.

Here are some examples on how video and multimedia vividly present a story and drive overall buzz. In the first example from the Hispanic College Fund and the Ad Council, the video helps deliver a message that “humanizes” the central concern that Hispanic youth are not attending four-year college programs and graduating in similar numbers as their non-Hispanic counterparts. The video presented in conjunction with a press release for the National Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning and the EPA informs viewers as to the need to be aware and know the warning signs of lead poisoning in children. Similarly, photos draw in viewers’ attention more so than plain text. It’s time for brands to be engaging with these audiences in new and dynamic ways that will drive brand recognition and tell a story. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cristy Clavijo-Kish is Senior Vice President of Multicultural Services for leading newswire service PR Newswire and MultiVu Latino. You may reach her at [email protected] or fallow her on twitter @ latinomarketing.

Hispanics Beyond Broadband: Leveraging Video and Web 2.0 to Facilitate Online Conversations, cont.


http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/adcouncil/43593/

http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/adcouncil/43517/

http://www.hispanicprwire.com/News/in/17196/9/latin-singer-juanes-honored-at-8th-annual-fedex-st.-jude-angels-&


By Stephanie Noble and Midy Aponte

The evolution of the Internet is a remarkable one. Once upon a time, the Internet was filled with static web pages filled with content that presented, provided or advertised to audiences, usually with little regard to who was visiting, reading or listening to that information on the other end. What has evolved since then is a vast confluence of conversations, community, exchange and dialogue. Your audience is active, vocal, yes – sometimes testy, but most importantly, your audience is a community that must be engaged with.

This dynamic is evident in how we measure social media. What was before measured by website traffic, page visits and unique visitors, is now measured by influence, reach, amplification and impact. In this new world, where dialogue trumps sales, it is “okay to touch.” In fact, it is encouraged. Because it is this constant engagement, this ever-evolving conversation about your industry, your company and your brand that has become the new currency on the Internet. Understanding this is critical.

Ultimately, however, you want the right traffic, the right conversations, between the right people and taking place in the right location in order to return your greatest ROI. To measure this, consider utilizing the following #Free tools:

SamePoint • rolled out one of the first conversation search engine platforms to help brands monitor and measure consumer feedback. SamePoint also displays a rudimentary sentiment analysis of the conversation pieces by counting negative and positive words.

SocialMention • allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. It monitors more than 100 social media properties, including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg and Google, etc. and offers the option to receive free daily alerts.

Alexa Internet • has developed an installed-based Toolbar that allows you to find sites similar to the one you are visiting and lets you go back in time to see how a site looked in the past via a capture screenshot.

Quantcast • engages all 220 million U.S. Internet users, and provides you with detailed audience profiles. This allows advertisers to learn more about what consumers are doing online. They also provide advertisers with a new way to evaluate their individual customer profiles against the entire U.S. Internet population, so they can identify prospective customers.

The Klout Score • is the measurement of an individual’s, or brand’s, overall Twitter influence. The scores range from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 25 variables to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. The size of the sphere is calculated by measuring True Reach (engaged followers and friends vs. spam bots, dead accounts, etc…) while Amplification Probability is the likelihood that messages will generate retweets or spark a conversation.

Lastly, while the above tools will help you measure your online

influence and impact, you may need additional support mining for information among multicultural and/or multilingual websites. PadenNoble has been working intently on its M3 Multicultural Media Monitoring tool. M3’s natural language processor locates, penetrates, and accurately determines (with human involvement) brand sentiment among multilingual audiences. Additionally, by analyzing large volumes of data and flagging “outliers” the system reduces time needed to digest consumer-generated media.

Some of the metrics to track include:

Viral Spread • – In how many, and how diverse, places can a particular marketing message/app/link be found?

Inoculation Speed • – How soon after posting the message/app/link/video etc. did it spread to other communities and users?

Brand Reputation • – What is the sentiment about the brand? Breakdown of sentiment within each source. Sentiment may be higher on facebook versus an independent blog with bias.

Relationship Quality and Depth • – How well do you know your audience? How much information do you have on them? This is derived from social network profile information.

The tools mentioned above can be used in different ways. Here are some ways we’ve used them:

Paden Noble used SamePoint, SocialMention, and its own M3, •when it implemented the social media strategist for an urban men’s clothing line in New York. The brand needed a new vehicle to deliver their message. By monitoring feedback on the Web, Paden Noble was able to properly place multilingual paid advertisements on search engines, and promote the brand in lesser-known online communities where its key audience resides. Alexa, Quantcast , and increased sales, confirmed that the strategy worked.

Sánchez Ricardo Agency is very loyal to Klout. The agency •started tweeting for a small non-profit organization called the International Dementia Research Foundation (IDRF). They tweeted specifically about Alzheimer’s impact in the African American and Hispanic community. The agency secured 30 followers in just one month. And while 30 may not seem impressive, keep in mind the key is relevant dialogue. IDRF’s Klout score is 17, which is categorized as an Explorer. According to Klout, the agency “actively engages in the social web” and is “constantly trying out new ways to interact and network.” Most importantly, our score concluded that the agency “gets it” and predicts it will be moving up.

About the authors: Stephanie Noble is the founder of New Jersey -based Paden Noble, a hi-touch firm focused on mapping complex social media landscapes. Her e-mail is [email protected] and her Twitter is @padennoble. Midy Aponte is the founder of The Sánchez Ricardo Agency, a D.C.-based firm focused on multicultural public relations strategies for corporations, government and non-profits. Her e-mail is [email protected] and her Twitter is @midyaponte

Measuring Multicultural & Multilingual Social Media

Stephanie Noble Midy Aponte



Meet The Latino King of Facebook

By Katherine Johnson

As the founder and creator of Being Latino – arguably one of the largest and fastest growing Facebook fanpages targeting Hispanics - Lance Rios never thought that a little idea he had one night would blow up as huge as it did. Rios created the page in May 2009 as a way to try and connect Latinos of all backgrounds and locations in one space to discuss history, culture, politics and social issues.

Since its inception, Being Latino has experienced exponential growth. Today it counts on over 31,000 fans. As Rios writes on his blog, one year later his “little” Facebook concept has already garnered “an army of bloggers, multiple celebrity endorsements, presidents from Latin America knowing about us (and loving the concept), multiple television appearances, successful events, thousands of dollars to various charities, multiple businesses supporting us…establishing ourselves as a nationally-based community,”. And he adds, all this and “we don’t even have a webpage,”

Rios’ story is a testament to the power of social media and proves how Hispanics, if provided with the right platform and relevant content, will engage, network with one another--and most importantly-- spread the word to others. In this interview Rios shares with us his social media and marketing insights and gives us a peek into how he accomplished so much, so quickly.

Tell us about yourself and how you got involved in social media? That is, what sparked your interest, were you always interested in technology/media?

I’m Puerto Rican. I was born and raised in Cleveland. My mom was born in Ohio but my dad came to Ohio from Puerto Rico when he was three years old. I’ve always considered myself to be a social person and I’ve always been a heavy media consumer so for me social media has always been a natural fit. Technology and social media have always been a part of how I’ve communicated with other people for many years. I’m interested in social media because I do most of my communications through it.

What launched your interest in Facebook specifically?

Facebook has always been my favorite social networking site. Right now, there is nothing that compares. I chose Facebook because it was the fastest growing social networking site, and Hispanics/Latinos, was the fastest growing segment. So I concluded that would be an appropriate space to start an initiative that focused on Hispanic/Latino issues and topics. I am a Twitter user as well, but I feel that the Facebook audience is more engaged with content whereas Twitter users consume quickly and it’s over.

Did you ever expect it to become as large as it’s become with more than 30,000 followers?

No, it wasn’t about that when I started. It was initially just to encourage a discussion. But in regards to what it is today, it’s sort of surprising but there have also been some marketing efforts to get it to what it is today.

Who are most of your “friends” and why do you think you became so popular?

My friends are a wide variety of people. I believe that my platform grew so quickly because the quality of the content posted is always relevant. Content is king.

What’s the unique value proposition of your Facebook and page?

What’s unique is the fact that I put content out for Latinos in English that isn’t offensive. Many times when people try to target the Latino community in English, they tend to skew very Urban. There is a huge portion of us that are educated, care about politics and want to connect with others with the same interests... Content is king.

Have you worked or partnered with NGO’s, non profits or PR agencies, and if so, what type of work did you do? I’ve done a significant amount of consulting work with various agencies but for most of the organizations and corporations that I’ve worked with I’ve had to sign non-disclosure agreements. A lot of agencies do not really understand social media platforms or social networking, and they send my concepts to their clients so I can’t really give specific examples.

What has been your biggest revelation about Hispanics in regards to media and marketing?

That there is not one single “type”. We are an extremely diverse crowd that has aspirations and not just speaking Spanish. For the most part, I think Hispanics, and it’s been shown recently in a few studies, are definitely more likely to engage in content, so they are

more likely to comment than just “like” something. So there is that back and forth that you see in the community that you don’t see in the general market. And they are loyal. I think that for the most part, if they like what you are putting out there, they don’t have to go anywhere else to get that information. You created a brand, it’s a good brand and




currently doing in order to continue growing your base?

Well, with content, we’re creating strategic postings that are relevant. We’re also getting out there making ourselves known to the Latino community. There are multiple strategies to growing your base.

Do you have any tips you can share with us?

When you create your Facebook page, create it to be a very personal experience. People aren’t stupid. Therefore if you come off very commercial, they will pick up on it quickly and it will turn people off. So basically don’t build a place for people to go talk about where they can get a discount or buy tickets for your brand, it’s more along the lines of telling people about what your brand is doing. So if they want to buy tickets, for example, they can go to your website, but not Facebook. Facebook is a one-on-one conversation place so you must engage them in it one-on-one, or people will get turned off quickly.

For additional and more specific tips on how to grow your base, you can become a fan of “Lance Rios’ Social Media Tips and Tricks” at www.facebook.com/lancestips. For more information about my page, visit www.facebook.com/BeingLatino.

they’ll be loyal to you unless you give them a reason for them to leave you.

What are three top tips you can give somebody that wants to start a Facebook group targeting Hispanics?

Number one, don’t start a group; start a fan page. The difference is that when you create a group, you can’t post something as that brand. When you post as a Fan page, you can. For example, if Dairy Queen starts a Facebook group, whoever the administrator of the group is, when there are updates or postings made on the group’s page, the name of the administrator, for example, John Doe, will come up as being the author, instead of Dairy Queen itself. But when you have a fan page, even if John Doe is the one doing all the updates, it will say it’s coming from Dairy Queen. So in terms of branding, it’s important for people to associate with the brand, making it personal. Therefore you want to go with a fan page, not a group.

Second, don’t be afraid to have a conversation with your fans. Third, remember that content is king.

What are the three biggest mistakes people/organizations make with their Facebook?

They are not consistent with updates. They are afraid of two-way conversation. They use Facebook as a marketing platform rather than an information platform.

Who is your Facebook audience? My audience ranges from New York to Miami to Los Angeles and Austin. As a whole, the audience has a median age of 35.

How much time do you dedicate to your Facebook page?

About 5-6 hours a day or 35-42 hours a week. The page itself comes all from me, but I do have people assist me with creating engaging original content. There’s also a blog that shows up in the page. I have 12 bloggers nationally. I also have people that blog for me, and I have people that are just focusing on creating content on the issue of Arizona, specifically.

Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

I see myself having a consulting firm and/or media agency.

Where do you see social media in the next five years?

I see social media being the most sought out media platform for advertisers to reach relevant audiences. I think that brands/marketers will start taking social media more seriously. And I really think it will be taking more importance over the traditional dotcoms. Brands are going to have to refocus their initiatives in a way that makes sense within the social networking space. There’s no way they can really get around it, you just need to show that you can quickly become a part of it instead of creating an alternative.

What marketing strategies have you implemented and what are you

Meet The Latino King of Facebook, cont.



The fastest growing online destinations for popular culture with a Latino twist

For partnerships, advertising or to become a contributor, please contact :Rosa Alonso, 201-947-3097, [email protected]

Over half a million U.S. unique users per month

Music, �lm, lifestyle, food, news, our stories, our way


Founded in 2004, WOMMA has approximately 300 member companies. They include marketers and brands that use word-of-mouth marketing to reinforce their core customers and to reach out to new consumers, agencies that deliver word-of-mouth services and technologies, researchers that track the word-of-mouth experience and offline and online practitioners. More information about WOMMA is available at www.WOMMA.org.

ASSOCIATION OF HISPANIC ADVERTISING AGENCIES

The Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA) is the national organization of firms that specialize in marketing to the nation’s more than 46 million Hispanic consumers.

AHAA promotes the strength of the Hispanic marketing and advertising industry. AHAA agencies offer a unique blend of cultural understanding, market intelligence, proven experience and professionalism that deliver Hispanic market success for clients.

AHAA agencies help organizations gain market share, increase revenue and grow profits by delivering the messages to reach America’s Hispanic consumers with an estimated buying power of nearly $1 trillion. More information is available about AHAA at www.AHAA.org.

HISPANIC PR BLOG

A division of Miami-based Hispanic Media Trainers, LLC, the Hispanic PR Blog is the leading marketing trade journal focused on Hispanic public relations and social media news and views. Hispanic PR Blog co-publisher and marketing executive Manny Ruiz is the organizer of the annual Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference held each May and is also the publisher of the annual U.S. Hispanic Social Media Guide.

The Hispanic PR blog provides daily insights on current PR strategies, Case Studies, multicultural social and political issues and keeps readers updated with anything that is happening in the Hispanic public relations, marketing and social media industries. The blog is a national partner of the Hispanic Public Relations Association and frequently conducts regional roundtables and national webinars focused on Hispanic social media best practices. More information about the blog is available at www.HispanicPRBlog.com.

By Yeniret Prokesch

A GROWING NUMBER OF organizations and groups are available as resources for marketers wishing to get more involved in Hispanic social media. Below is a summary of who the different players are:

HISPANIC PUBLIC RELATIONS ASSOCIATION

The Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA) is a national membership organization dedicated to providing professional development, career advancement and networking opportunities for marketers in the corporate, government, non-profit and agency fields. Founded in 1984, HPRA is the oldest Hispanic marketing organization in the nation and has chapters in Los Angeles and New York. In 2010, HPRA announced a national initiative that will lead to the creation of new chapters in Dallas, Miami and other cities.

HPRA is a co-founder of the Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference that is celebrated yearly in May and whose strong focus is on topics of Hispanic social media marketing. The organization is also responsible for the annual PRemio Awards which is held annually in Los Angeles in the Fall and the Hispanic PR Awards, which is the industry’s first and only annual competition about Hispanic PR and social media.

Thanks to HPRA many of its members have moved on to successful careers in the field. Also, the HPRA Scholarship Program is one of the largest in the country and has helped many leading Hispanic professionals in the field achieve top positions in the corporate, agency, government, and non-profit world of communications. More information about HPRA is available on their web site, www.HPRA-USA.org.

WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING ASSOCIATION (WOMMA)

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is the leading trade association in the marketing and advertising industries that focuses on word of mouth, consumer-generated and social media platforms including marketing techniques such as buzz, viral, community, and influencer marketing, as well as brand blogging.

The organization is committed to developing and maintaining appropriate ethical standards for marketers, identifying meaningful measurement standards and defining “best practices” for the industry.

A Directory of Hispanic Social Media Marketing Resources




LATISM (LATINOS IN SOCIAL MEDIA)

Latinos in Social Media (LATISM) is an organization of social media professionals of Hispanic origin. Based primarily in New York, LATISM members include bloggers, marketers, twitter users, social network group leaders, e-commerce owners and others. LATISM members actively host different regional events and Twitter parties throughout the year in different parts of the country. For more information go to www.Latism.org.

TWITTEROS

Twitteros is a community group that allows Latino twitter users (or twitteros) to connect and continue their conversation via profiles, groups, discussion boards, occasional live chats for special events, photos, and music.

Twitteros also offer its customers a world of mouth model because twitteros are, by nature, influential in their networks, both online and offline. Many Twitteros have blogs and profiles on other social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…).

According to Quantcast.com, 50% of Twitteros visitors are female and 50% are male.

Twitteros.com is divided into different sections such as Main, Invite, My Page, Comunidad, Blogazina and Advertising sections. It also features some categories that people are actively tweeting about such as Art, Business, Culture, Environment, Immigration, Marketing/PR, Politics, Religion, Tech and many more.

A Directory of Hispanic Social Media Marketing Resources, cont.



THE RESULTS OF THE FOUR-MONTH LONG Hispanic PR Census, an initiative that garnered responses to eight questions from more than 319 marketing professionals who work in Latino PR and/or social media, shows a large percentage feel PR or other fields are better suited to lead social media initiatives in comparison to advertising. A surprising 76% also said that they have worked on a Hispanic social media-related campaign in the past year.

“Even if you argued that the Hispanic PR Census skewed to attract responses from professionals in PR and social media it is interesting to note how strongly these same professionals feel that social media is best suited for PR and not advertising,” said Manny Ruiz, Hispanic PR Blog publisher and the organizer of the Hispanic PR & Social Media

Hispanic PR Census Results Show Marketing Pros Feel PR Best Suited to Lead Social Media

Conference in Dallas where the results were released. Only seven percent of the respondents said social media belonged in the field of advertising versus 47% for PR, 15% for digital agencies, 21% for a stand-alone social media field and even 10% for none of the above.

A PDF copy of all 10 questions and their answers are available for download by clicking http://www.hispanicprblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Hispanic-PR-Census-Results.pdf.

The results of the Hispanic PR Census were presented at the Advancing Diversity opening reception of the Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference in Dallas that was sponsored by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).



U.S. HISPANIC SOCIAL MEDIAFACTS: A 2010 SNAPSHOT

Following is a snapshot of the latest facts and studies that best illustrate the current trends in Hispanic social media and marketing. The data also includes research results that illustrate how marketers view Hispanic social media and marketing, and their perceptions of how Hispanics use social media. Our facts come from research company Mintel International, Los Angeles advertising agency Orci, the 2010 AOL Hispanic Cyberstudy, research firm Sophia Mind(of parent company Bolsa de Mulher) Arbriton’s Twitter Usage in America study with Edison research, Synovate’s 2008 Diversity Markets Report, The Pew Hispanic Center Latinos Online Study, and mobile marketing firm, Hipcricket.

Hispanic population growth has been substantial, surpassing just about every attempt to gauge its future trend.

SOURCE: Hipcricket




U.S. HISPANIC SOCIAL MEDIA FACTS: A 2010 SNAPSHOT, cont.

HISPANIC ONLINE CONSUMPTION HABITS

• Hispanics have transferred some of the same offline media consumption attitudes and behaviors into the online space. These internet users navigate the web in English and/or Spanish, and continue to adopt new online technologies and applications at faster speeds.

• Offline, Spanish-dominant and bicultural Hispanics have less of a stigma regarding advertising in general and this sentiment has transferred those attitudes to their online experience. Hispanics that use the internet frequently are more incline to respond to an internet advertisement than non-Hispanics. They respond to email advertising twice as often as their non-Hispanic counterparts. Online Hispanics perceive internet advertising as a source of valuable insights and an opportunity to secure the essentials in order to navigate the web successfully.

• Education also plays an important role in determining who is online. Hispanic internet usage has a strong correlation to education levels. Nine in 10 (89%) Hispanics with a college degree and 70% of Hispanics that have completed high school are online. Only 31% of Hispanics that have not completed high school use the internet. (Source: Mintel Oxygen 2010)

A PROFILE ON THE HISPANIC INTERNET USER

They are young, affluent, have large households and are “more enthusiastic about the benefits of the Internet than [is] the general market.” What’s more, the study shows that Hispanics are more sophisticated technology users.

SOURCE: AOL Hispanic Cyberstudy/Cheskin 2010









The number of Hispanics online has grown significantly since 2002--faster than the total US online population.







Hispanics have a high regard for the internet as a medium for information and socialization







One of the reasons why many Hispanics prefer English content is their mistrust of sites in Spanish, which often are little more than literal translations of English content. Only 3% of respondents found Spanish language sites more trustworthy and useful than those in English, leaving an important percentage of the Hispanic segment feeling under served.





TWITTER USAGE AND HISPANICS

Twitter Usage In America 2010, Arbitron/Edison Research continued on page 46



Twitter Usage In America 2010, Arbitron/Edison Research

Twitter Usage In America 2010, Arbitron/Edison Researchcontinued on page 47



HISPANIC WOMEN AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Hispanic women in the U.S. are one of the fastest-growing online demographics.

Social networks represent a huge opportunity for marketers trying to reach Latinas -- but many in this growing audience believe they are being poorly served by such nets.(Source: The Use of Social Networks by Latin Women, Sophia Mind, May 2010)

• 38% percent of Hispanic women in the U.S. say these networks lack content created especially for their unique interests(Source: Sophia Mind, May 2010)

• Facebook is the social network used most by U.S. Hispanic women Followed by Twitter, Hi5, MiGente, Univision and Bebo (Source: Sophia Mind, May 2010)

• Other networks visited by women are Tagged,Buzznet, Classmates.com and MySpace. (Source: Sophia Mind, May 2010)

• While American women use social networks mostly to connect with friends and family, women in all the countries surveyed use such venues to find information on products and services. (Source: Sophia Mind, May 2010)

• In all countries, more than 85 percent of Latinas visit social networks on a regular basis. (Source: Sophia Mind, May 2010)

• But when it comes to U.S. Hispanic women, only 21 percent feel social networks meet their needs. (Source: Sophia Mind, May 2010)

• Their main complaint, according to the study, is the lack of specific content for Latinas and the lack of an increased participation of Latinas in social networks. (Source: Sophia Mind, May 2010)

2010 HISPANIC MARKETING TRENDS SURVEY

A natioal survey by advertising agency Orci reveals that despite buzz about social media, marketers are still not investing as much on this medium as more traditional ones.

SOURCE: Orcí, 2010




SOURCE: Orcí, 2010

SOURCE: Orcí, 2010




MOST POPULAR WEBSITES FOR HISPANICS AND HISPANIC SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Websites preferred by Hispanics

Not surprisingly, the websites visited by Hispanics on a regular basis (an average of at least two times a week) include sites in English like Facebook and MySpace, as well as properties in Spanish such as; Telemundo and univision.com. They also include Batanga, where users can select the language of their choice (English or Spanish). Batanga is an up-and-coming bicultural and bilingual sites that focuses on music and entertainment. Batanga is a great example of a site that is looking to fill the ever-growing niche of bicultural Hispanics regardless of language preference.

FIGURE 23: Websites regularly visited by Hispanics, November 2008

HISPANIC SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Six years ago social media networking sites were predicted to become extremely popular amongst Hispanics, but then Facebook and Myspace started taking over, causing most of these sites to lose traffic and eventually shutdown. Yet few are still working towards reinventing themselves in hopes of attracting the ever-growing Hispanic Internet user.

Moreover, A number of websites are beginning to use social

Hispanic29 %

43 %6 %13 %13 %7 %45 %

SOURCE: Mintel 2010

Base: 297 Hispanics aged 18+ with internet access

Facebook.com

Myspace.com

Batanga.com

Univision.com

Yahootelemundo.com

Linkedin.com

None of the above

networking mechanisms to capture the attention of customers and get their feedback. Hispanic users have also begun to realize the value of vertical social initiatives built around specific content strategies like entertainment and professional networking that caters to the various needs of the Hispanic consumer. (Source: Mintel 2010)

• Univision.com and telemundo.com remain at the top because of the content and functionality they


SOURCE: Orcí, 2010




offer as portals. Newcomer impre.com, owned by ImpreMedia, the largest Spanish-language newspaper company in the U.S., is beginning to gain momentum with its extensive local and regional coverage. These online properties stem from a traditional channel: print, radio, or TV. They also offer additional functionality to attract users. Most of these sites have begun adopting social networking capabilities within their suite of tools. Their primary function, however, is that of a media company. They target primarily Spanish-dominant and some bilingual Hispanics.

• Hispanic portals and search engine websites like espanol.yahoo.com or latino.aol.com are either the Spanish-language version of general market portals or purely dedicated to the Hispanic consume such as terra.com. Most of these properties continue to add new tools and technology like social networking tools and online video content, as these are adopted by online users. They target Spanish-dominant and bilingual online Hispanics.

• Hispanics social media networks, such as migente.com and quepasa.com provide Hispanic users with multiple applications to share and discuss, with the ultimate purpose of belonging to a discrete community of users (your friends). Lately there has been an increase in traffic and new profiles being created by Spanish-dominant and bilingual Hispanics looking for culturally relevant content. Although most social networking sites are popular among young adults, older Hispanics have a greater presence than their non-Hispanic counterparts.

• Category-specific social networks such as music social networking sites are online properties built around music and entertainment. Registered users of internet sites like batanga.com and cyloop.com can rank songs or share music, pictures, video and chat within communities made up of different Latin music genres, bands, or artists.

• Professional social networking sites such as ihispano.com and hispanicpro.com target professional Hispanics and offer content that is relevant to professionals while promoting networking within a career or professional-oriented environment.

• Hispanic blogs rely on an open type architecture that makes it easy for the blogger or its readers to post short comments. These sites continue to grow in number and coverage and most blog about politics, news and entertainment from a Hispanic cultural perspective. English-language blogs like vivirlatino.com and hissp.com target primarily bicultural and retro-acculturated Hispanics.

• Educational and professional camaraderie is one of the focuses of these types of professional organizations. Online

opinions and content observe a utilitarian point of view. These online communities go beyond casual chatter; ideas here are presented for the betterment of the community. Members participate in these organizations’ online settings for professional growth and visibility. Websites like nshp.org and ushcc.com target primarily bicultural Hispanics.(Source: Mintel Oxygen, 2010)

Many brands lack an online Hispanic marketing strategy and are missing this opportunity for growth. Some companies have developed a Spanish-language landing page or an English-language culturally relevant site for Hispanics that is informational, but not content-driven. The key for brands is to use this medium to foster interactivity by engaging in a dialogue with online Hispanics that use social networks.

Social networking trends

Hispanic internet users continue to follow the general market trend towards a richer internet experience.

Social media have three significant characteristics:

• Participation

• user-generated content

• audience fragmentation

This is in contrast to the older or traditional internet where users were limited to viewing. Online Hispanics in the new web environment can own and exercise control over the content they generate. Social media Hispanic users develop opinions, perspectives, and impressions of brands and create content (participation and user-generated content). The content is shared (user participation) and distributed across an entire platform (like msnlatino.telemundo.com, Cyloop, TintaFresca) of similar participants. Since it promotes user-generated content and individual participation, social media fragment online Hispanics into discrete groups (Latin music fans will go to websites like Cyloop, while web TV aficionados will populate sites like mio.tv). These groups are distinct because they fulfill specific needs of the Hispanic consumer while expressing opinions on diverse topics. ( Source: Mintel/Oxygen 2010)

The Hispanic social networking space remains up for grabs, none of the top Spanish-language websites dominate this market. Portals like Yahoo en Español and MSNLatino remain strong with regards to entertainment news, classified channels, and online video, but lack a robust music channel offer. There are those Hispanics that are users of social networking sites and are opting for verticals like entertainment-related cyloop.com (bilingual) or professional social networks such as iHispano.com (English-only).

Source: Mintel/Oxygen 2010




The WOMMA Guide to Disclosurein Social Media Marketing

THE WOMMA ETHICS CODE IS THE CORNERSTONE FOR prudent practices in the WOM industry. In light of the December 2009 effective date of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, WOMMA leadership responded to member demand for additional meaningful disclosures for social media marketing. This is a continuation of an effort started in 2008 when WOMMA began formalizing best practices by engaging industry leaders, members, non members, academics and consumers. The process included:

• Launching the inaugural Living Ethics process in November 2008 at the WOMMA Summit, leading to meaningful changes to the WOMMA Code in 2009;

• Convening an expert panel in September 2009 to address transparency and disclosure in social media;

• Creating the Living Ethics Blog to allow comments/questions concerning transparency and disclosure in social media;

• Incorporating feedback from the Living Ethics Blog to create the first draft of this WOMMA Guide to Disclosure;

• Presenting the preliminary Disclosure Guide at the 2009 WOMMA Summit and re-opening the Living Ethics Blog from November 18 thru January 4, 2010 to obtain public comments and:

• Formalizing final recommendations for industry use.

Social Media and the Responsibilities of Advertisers,

Marketers and Bloggers

With the rising popularity of social media websites from blogs to Twitter to Facebook, the issue of ethical word of mouth marketing has taken on new prominence. Many brands and agencies are designing word of mouth marketing programs to foster relationships with social media participants. (Those participants or speakers are referred to in this document as “bloggers.”)

Consumers have a right to know the sponsor behind advertising messages that could influence their purchasing decisions, but key information is not always adequately disclosed in a social media context. Thus, for testimonials and endorsements delivered to consumers through social media - - whether by consumers, experts, celebrities, or organizations - - the FTC requires advertisers and bloggers to disclose all “material connections.” Such “material connections” may be defined as any connection between a blogger and an advertiser that could affect the credibility consumers give to that blogger’s statements. Important examples of “material connections” include (a) consideration (benefits or incentives such as monetary compensation, loaner products, free services, in-kind gifts, special access privileges) provided by an advertiser to a blogger, or

(b) a relationship between an advertiser and a blogger (such as an employment relationship).

Scope and Purpose of the WOMMA Guide to Disclosure in

Social Media Marketing

This document provides best practices in light of the FTC Guide that was released last year. It is not WOMMA’s intent for this document to replace your company’s legal advice or practices but rather to enhance it. As social media is ever-changing, the WOMMA Disclosure Guide will be a living document – continuing to be refined to reflect evolving industry best practices.

Key online platforms covered in this Guide include, but are not limited to blogs, microblogs (e.g., Twitter), online comments, social networks, video sharing websites, photo sharing websites, and podcasts.

Clear and Prominent Disclosure

No matter which platform is used, adequate disclosures must be clear and prominent. Language should be easily understood and unambiguous. Placement of the disclosure must be easily viewed and not hidden deep in the text or deep on the page. All disclosures should appear in a reasonable font size and color that is both readable and noticeable to consumers.

Disclosure Best Practices

As stated above, bloggers are required to disclose “material connections” to advertisers. Listed below is sample disclosure language, organized by the platform used. Alternative, but substantively comparable, language may also be used where appropriate.

Personal and Editorial Blogs

• I received _____________________ from _____________________

___________________ sent me ___________________

Product Review Blogs

• I received _____________________ from _____________________ to review

• I was paid by _____________________ to review

Additionally for product review blogs, WOMMA strongly recommends creating and prominently

posting a “Disclosure and Relationships Statement” section on the blog fully disclosing how a

review blogger works with companies in accepting and reviewing products, and listing any conflicts

of interest that may affect the credibility of their reviews.

product or sample

product or sample

product or sample

company name

company name

company name

company name




The WOMMA Guide to Disclosure in Social Media Marketing, cont.

Providing Comments in Online Discussions

• I received _____________________ from _____________________

• I was paid by _____________________

• I am an employee [or representative]of _____________________

Microblogs

Include a hash tag notation, either:

• #spon (sponsored)

• #paid (paid)

• #samp (sample)

Additionally, WOMMA strongly recommends posting a link on your profile page directing

people to a full “Disclosure and Relationships Statement.” This statement, much like the one

WOMMA recommends for review blogs, should state how you work with companies in

accepting and reviewing products, and listing any conflicts of interest that may affect the

credibility of your sponsored or paid reviews.

Status Updates on Social Networks

• I received _____________________ from _____________________

• I was paid by _____________________

If status updates are limited by character restrictions, the best practice disclosure requirement

is to include a hash tag notation of either #spon, #paid or #samp. Additionally, WOMMA

strongly recommends posting a full description or a link on your social network profile page

directing people to a “Disclosure and Relationships Statement.” Note that if an employee blogs

about his or her company’s products, citing the identity of the employer in the profile may not

be a sufficient disclosure. Bloggers’ disclosures should appear close to the endorsement or

testimonial statement they are posting.

Video and Photo Sharing Websites

Include as part of the video/photo content and part of the written description:

• I received _____________________ from _____________________

• I was paid by _____________________

Additionally, WOMMA strongly recommends posting a full description or a link on your video

and/or photo sharing profile page directing people to a “Disclosure and Relationships Statement.”

Podcasts

Include, as part of the audio content and part of the written description:

• I received _____________________ from _____________________

• I was paid by _____________________

Additionally, WOMMA strongly recommends posting a full description or a link directing people to a “Disclosure and Relationships Statement.”

product or sample

product or sample

product or sample

product or sample

company name

company name

company name

company name

company name

company name

company name

company name

company name



2010 US Hispanic Social Media Roundtablecontinued from page 14

agencies can survive as structured, I don’t think digital agencies can survive as structured.

Manny Ruiz: What about advertising agencies?

Jose Villa: Well, I don’t think they will survive as structured either, I mean I think that they are in the best position…

Paul Rand: They are…

Jose Villa: because they are the biggest accounts and have the C level relationships. I mean the people that are running their businesses now, I would argue that when the people on the client’s side, the decision makers, change, and become gen x’s and gen y’s, they are (going to be) in a whole lot of pain because the people that are making decisions about who they hire, you know, who they still have relationships with people at Leo Burnett…that’s where it gets tricky…

Paul Rand: What I think is that advertising has changed faster because they had the gun to their head. And the gun went there four or five years ago with the client of the 30-second spot . I think what you see are many more ad agencies that have become very progressive saying, we have to realize that we have many other tools. It’s not uncommon for me to sit across an ad agency and they won’t even have an advertising campaign on the table, so what the definition is of a marketing agency or communications agency, or advertising agency, I think it’s changing very, very fast.

Gavin Twigger: When interactive was hard years ago, when all the big brands were jumping in interactive, they didn’t succeed because they didn’t know what they were pulling in house. I think the same thing is going for mobile now, we have this mobile channel, well, what is this mobile channel? What does it entail? You know can we just pull something in house? I mean a lot of times it doesn’t happen. I think the agencies, I think you’re right in saying, that the agencies that are at the C level, that have the relationships already, as long as they are bringing the right people in, I think they will succeed.

Jose Villa: I think they will succeed also. Because we were talking about one of the challenges of PR vs. Advertising is that the budgets are so much bigger, so they’ve got the money to do more research, the follow up, for everything, the money in detail, to get into it in much more detail, and I think that’s the big advantage that advertising has…

Manny Ruiz: Yeah but I think social media changed the dynamic

Paul Rand: It does, and I think that’s who your buyer is…Even internally with clients, you will sit in a table like this, and whoever ‘gets it’ the most on the client side, will be the one who leads it. It may be an ad person, a PR person, and it could be an interactive person, but whoever gets it that could mean new leadership of whatever new marketing is coming out and is really being redefined by the people that really understand this paradigm that we are talking about.

Amy Zubizarreta: We are in the relationship business. So you touch something that is warm and dear to us and, I understand what you were saying Jose, about the loyalty and the relationships at the C level with managers but, I think more than ever, corporations, especially mid to upper managers, are being challenged. You know, they are being asked, we want you to do more with less, so advertising companies, PR, everyone needs to come to the table and be much more creative that before, so that relationship may keep you, but if you are not succeeding, if you are not bringing in the numbers, I don’t care if you have been with that company 20 years, you know, that relationship may go by the way side, it’s all about results now.

On their predictions for the coming year in Hispanic social media

Jose Villa: People are still going to be trying to figure it out. I don’t think there’s going to be any kind of game changing platform.

Paul Rand: I think that in some ways the Hispanic and B2B are laggards in the marketing world. And I think what we are going to see in the next year is just what we are seeing in the B2B side, Hispanic is many of the things that have been learned just conversationally, we will be further along the path, we will still be trying to figure it out on the Hispanic side, but we will be in many ways where the general market is because the dollars are shifting on a much bigger scale but I think you’ll find that we’ll have made much progress and I think if we do it really right, we’ll find out that we are not having a conversation about Hispanic social media, or social media at all, we’re talking about how do we make sure we are engaging with the audiences we are supposed to.

Marisa Treviño: I think there will be phenomenal growth in the Hispanic usage of social media, but I think the outlets for the vehicles will change.

Deborah Charnes: At Bromley we have additional task force and it basically includes somebody from every single department, so we have people in every single department in our task force. And the purpose is to educate ourselves, but also the agency and our clients. Because I think we end up being the advocates but we still have that burdened to educate the clients and to convince that client of the ROI. Hopefully in the next year we will have more case studies, and of course I’m talking across the floor, all agencies will have more case studies to prove the marriage.

Ariel Corro: I think that Facebook is going to become the provider of your online identity for signing in everywhere and everyone is going to figure out how to integrate that.

David Henry: I agree with some earlier comments. I think first we need to take out the word Hispanic when we are talking about engagement. I think that’s really where things are going but whether it’s global or social media, I think that if we add the Hispanic fact in there, I think some of the problem is that there are so many companies out there that haven’t even gotten to step one with marketing to Latinos… I think we’re going to be having a similar conversation (next year)…


Continuation of Stories



2010 US Hispanic Social Media Roundtablecontinued from page 54

Sonia Sroka: I actually have three trends that I see. One, mobile apps. Mobile apps are going to rule and we better start thinking about mobile apps for our clients especially when it comes to entertainment for the Hispanic market. Right now the market for mobile apps is $7 billion dollars in 2010 so that’s what’s estimated to be so that’s only going to continue to grow. I think the next thing we are going to see is location, location, location; I think that as marketers we’re going to try to figure out how to connect our clients with the location, you know like foursquare and Twitter. I think that’s going to be a key determinant to know where you’re shopping, what you’re buying, I mean you’re going to be walking into a store and when you check in, you will get coupons, told exactly where you need to go… That’s where we’re going to be going and I think that in terms of social media in general this is something that we need to embed as part of what we do. Clients are going to start discovering that millennials are 90 million plus, tech savvy…we need them in our companies, employers are going to have to provide those platforms and not only as businesses and employers but internally, so we’re going to see changes in how internally our clients are going to start embracing technology because they are going to be forced to by all these newcomers to their companies.

Monica Raugitinane: I think I would see an increase in localized marketing. And what I mean is instead of targeting just Hispanics, targeting El Salvadorians, or Central Americans and Mexicans- or South Americans instead of just general Hispanics…

Aymee Zubizarreta: My prediction? Well, once the U.S. Census comes out with its results, alarm bells will be sounding in corporate boardrooms across the country. Those senior level positions that perhaps have been ignorant or just not wanting to grasp and understand something that may be foreign to them, may be forced to do an about face and look at the Hispanic market much more intently. On the Hispanic social media side, I concur with many points. I agree with (Sroka’s point about) mobile apps…we’ve invested in that and will continue to invest in that. We first rolled them out in English then in Spanish, so I could see how many corporations will follow through and do the same. Music will continue to play an important role in connecting with Hispanics online and on TV. We sponsored the Latin Billboards for a reason and we will continue to look for those areas where Hispanics converge regardless of their level of acculturation.

Gavin Twigger: Sonia, you nailed it primarily with the Smartphone penetration. I think it’s going to be the end of the barriers to jumping on the social media platforms. That is going to go away. I think whoever mentioned the geo location…that’s going to be really popular, and I think it’s really going to apply based on this sort of collective culture, that the progressives, those are the people that will become the brand advocates that are going to take the information back to the non-connected rest of the community.


Who’s Best Suited to Lead Hispanic Social Media Marketing? continued from page 17

PR AGENCY STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSESHispanic public relations agencies are weakest at such advertising-related areas as creative, media buying, producing webisodes, creating Apps and working with portals. Most clients wouldn’t dream of assigning some or any of these components to PR agencies without the assistance of an ad agency.

On the plus side all of these components are elements that are used at the earlier stages of social media platform launches. After that stage almost everything that follows is best suited to PR, including social media platform management, partnership building, events, blogger relations, crisis communications and ongoing social media community building. The latter piece is the one that requires the most sustained effort and it is the one that in my opinion makes Hispanic social media effective in the long term. That’s the main reason why you can conclude that PR needs to play a lead role in Hispanic social media marketing.

ADVERTISING AGENCY STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSESLike the Ying and the Yang, ad agencies are strong where the PR and word of mouth marketing agencies are weakest. Ad agencies excel at executing such marketing elements as creative, media buys, events and webisodes, among others. The flip side is that most Hispanic advertising agencies are weakest where the PR agencies are strongest: one to one communications, earned media, crisis and ongoing engagement, among others.

WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING AGENCIESThe biggest surprise I had in studying the implications of social media for different types of Hispanic marketing agencies was that at least on paper, the ones best suited to lead Hispanic social media marketing were not the traditional PR agencies (a second place finisher) but the word of mouth marketing agencies. I can probably count in one hand the number of Hispanic PR agencies that can claim to be true word of mouth marketing agencies today but here’s what makes these special: they have all the advantages of a PR agency and most of the characteristics of the Hispanic digital agency.

It will be interesting to see if the near future more and more Hispanic PR agencies redefine themselves as word of mouth marketing agencies. If I owned a PR firm, I definitely would consider this move because the footprint of Hispanic social media marketing is only going to grow and even today more than 75% of the respondents who took a recent Hispanic PR Census survey reported that in the past year they have helped execute a Hispanic social media campaign.




THE FINAL ANALYSISPerhaps more important than what marketers want to do with Hispanic social media are what the Latinos themselves will do with it. The patterns show that more and more will be blogging, Facebooking and tweeting in 2011 than they do in 2010. This strong growth pattern will continue for years to come and especially as smart phones like the new iPhone and Android make social media even more ubiquitous than it is today. Another factor impacting the growth of Hispanic social media is the place of traditional media. Univision and other TV networks continue to post great ratings at the expense of mainstream TV networks. Radio stations have had some struggles in the past year but they remain vibrant. Good ole Hispanic newspapers - the truest, purest voices of many Latino communities nationwide - continue to fare well despite a tough climate for their mainstream counterparts. Against conventional wisdom new ones continue to sprout up in emerging Latino communities nationwide. Overall, despite the tough economic climate the nation just faced during the Great Recession of 2009, Hispanic media have proven quite resilient.

So what does this all mean to Hispanic social media marketing? It means that some things will not change immediately but change they will. It also means that there’s room for everyone to participate at the Hispanic social media marketing table. At the end of the day, as a wise young marketing friend of mine said recently, “social media platforms are just tools. For every kind of agency out there, what matters are not the tools themselves but how you use those tools to engage Latinos.” The agencies that will fare best in this evolving world of Hispanic social media marketing are those who embrace that thought.


Who’s Best Suited to Lead Hispanic Social Media Marketing? continued from page 54



Manny RuizCo-Publisher, Hispanic PR Blog / PapiBlogger

Manny Ruiz is co-publisher of The Hispanic PR Blog, the leading marketing trade journal focused on Hispanic public relations and social media, daddy-in-chief of the bilingual daddy parenting web site PapiBlogger.com and the founder/organizer of the Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference. The three organizations are business units of Hispanic Media Trainers, LLC.

Prior to launching his blog and national tradeshow business, Manny was President of Multicultural Markets and Hispanic PR Wire for PR Newswire. Prior to PR Newswire’s acquisition of Hispanic PR Wire, Hispanic Digital Network and LatinClips in 2008, companies he founded, Ruiz was Chairman and CEO of HispaniMark, the parent company of these three businesses.

A media trailblazer, former journalist, award-winning PR professional and dynamic keynote speaker on media trends, Ruiz is often sought after for his expertise on media, PR and public affairs. A longtime member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Ruiz is the immediate past co-chair of PRSA’s national diversity committee and the host/co-founder of the organization’s national monthly podcast “PRSA Diversity Today.” He has also served as a board member of the PRSA Miami Chapter.

Prior to launching Hispanic PR Wire in 2000, Ruiz was a founder and media relations director of the National Hispanic Market Practice of Porter Novelli. While at Porter Novelli, Ruiz played a central role in the success of the Florida anti-teen smoking campaign “truth.” Ruiz spearheaded Florida media relations for the “truth” campaign which for two consecutive years swept all of the PR industry’s most coveted awards including the PRSA Silver Anvil Award of Excellence and the PR Week Health Campaign of the Year.

Before entering the PR profession, Ruiz was a police beat reporter for The Miami Herald. He was part of the editorial team that in 1992 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Community Service for their coverage of Hurricane Andrew. While he was a reporter, Ruiz also shot photographic documentaries in Cuba. His black and white photography from Cuba has earned him three exhibits, two solos and a national award.

Ruiz, a Miamian of Cuban American descent, has a bachelors of arts degree in history from Florida International University.

About the Publishers

Angela Sustaita-RuizCo-Publisher, Hispanic PR Blog

Angela is co-publisher of The Hispanic PR Blog and president of Hispanic Media Trainers, LLC, the parent company of the Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference and PapiBlogger.com, the nation’s first bilingual website dedicated to showcasing creative parenting tricks for fathers and mothers of all cultures. A longtime Hispanic public relations and marketing consultant, Angela has provided senior counsel to clients such as Unilever, Burger King, Washington Mutual, Shell, AstraZeneca, Schering-Plough, and the Texas Beef Council, among others wanting to reach diverse audiences.

Prior to consulting, Angela worked in Edelman Multicultural’s New York and Austin offices, where she continuously delivered success for clients such as Kraft Foods, Hershey’s, Unilever, Starbuck’s, the New York International Latino Film Festival, Pfizer, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen, Schering-Plough, and McKesson. Angela played a leading role with award-winning Hispanic and general market PR campaigns including the 2004 Mercury Silver Award for Client Product Launch: Hershey’s Kisses filled with Caramel, and the 2003 Silver Anvil Award for Marketing Consumer Services – Healthcare: Together Rx.

Prior to joining Edelman, Angela served as International Operations Supervisor for Cinemark, an international motion picture exhibitioner based in Dallas. While at Cinemark, she worked closely with Latin American satellite offices to formulate strategic marketing plans for Mexico, Argentina and Chile.

Angela, a native Texan of Mexican descent, holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Baylor University.


http://www.hispanicprconference.com

http://www.hispanicprconference.com



www.papiblogger.com

www.papiblogger.com