Latino Rebranded: Social Media and Latinos

Subtitle:  My commitment to blogging.

Blogs are an interesting format, for readers inadvertently discover that they at the whim (mercy?) of blog owners.  Happily, sometimes sadistically readers follow their chosen blog not blindly, but faithful that great content will reward their loyalty.  If unfulfilled, they dutifully leave in droves.

This weekend, I was reminded that I have limitations – I hit a wall and needed a few days to recover, thus the reason for this late post, as well as my absence yesterday here and other social media portals over the weekend.

From this, I’ve had some realizations:

1. My my voice is unique and cannot be duplicated by a ‘ghost writer.’ I’ve no intention of hiring a ghost writer (although it’s a fairly common practice, but not a fit for me right now); I’d rather let someone else blog here if I could not for an extended period.
2. Quality over quantity (related to the above).
3. I’m not stressing social media, but enjoying it.

I hope my regular readers were not deterred by 1 1/2 days of absence (I don’t usually blog over the weekend), and continue their readership and input here.  I’m here for the long haul and have many more new features and interesting content to offer.

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In my hometown – NYC – there are 2 events right around the corner (click pics for website links):

With major changes impacting the multicultural media business, can you really afford to miss the Multicultural Media Forum in three weeks?

What do top executives think about...

How  Census 2010 and multiplatform media will change the Multicultural Media Ecosytem?

What's in store for the business of Hispanic and multicultural advertising, branding, and marketing?

With upwards of 70% of the U.S. Hispanic market under 35, and 65% of its population growth being driven by US-born Latinos, the NGLC’s mission is to advocate two key points; 1.) New Generation Latinos represent a viable and lucrative media target audience that merits special attention and 2.) Quality media, marketing and entertainment resources are available to effectively touch New Generation Latinos who are critical to growing market share now and in the future.

The NGLC Media, Marketing & Entertainment Conference’ will be a one-day conference from 9:00am to 6:00pm on Monday, April 5, 2010 in New York City.

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Subtitle: From blogs to microblogs and back again.

My blog is quickly becoming my favorite social media portal.  Re-wind a few months ago, and I would of had said Twitter.  But, I’ve come to re-appreciate my own pulpit.

There is pride to be taken in the creative process, more so in the ownership of one’s output.  There are those who are insanely successfully on Twitter or Facebook, yet when it comes time to direct traffic from those portals toward their own they fail miserably.  Why?  Because they truly haven’t established an independent and successful fanbase.

You see, a blog is your foundation…Facebook…Twitter…MySpace are all illusions of true networking.  With all this technology that surrounds us, it is easy to be seduced by shortcuts.  If you’re a successful blogger, you will take those concepts to any network and easily dominate them with the networking principles that you’ve learned from blogging.

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Subtitle:  Waxing Data Visually

Data visualization (DV) has been with us for a little while now.  DV frees us from standard pie charts and bar graphs that are prevalent these days.  By representing data in new ways, we stimulate a means for which new ideas and conclusions can occur.

One of the first visual representation was done by Martin Wattenberg, who represented the stock market on the web in a ground breaking manner. Go to Jeff Clark’s site who continues to present data in innovative new ways.

Twitter Venn

The below picture captures the terms ‘Latino’ + ‘Hispanic’ + ‘Mexican.’  I’ve done this for self-amusement several times and the results are always the same:  Latino is always present double or more than Hispanic, and the term Mexican surpasses both terms on Twitter.

More interesting are the most used terms associated with each labeled sphere.  If you click each sphere, the bottom left  presents  common terms.  You can get a feel for some of the conversations that may be occurring – you’ll be surprised by what you see.

Twitter Spectrum

Twitter Spectrum compares the relationship between two terms and how they are associated with one another.

I’ve plugged in the terms ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic.’  It’s a little funny to see the term ‘lol’ fall right between them…’health,’ ‘census’ and ‘marketing’ are other notables.

With no doubt, I am sure many of you have already seen these technologies.  What I wanted to accomplish in this post is one of the ways I use these techniques to challenge some of my ideas, as well as look for new trends.  If you use data visualization in any way (or now start using it) I’d be curious to hear about it.

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Subtitle:  Half the tweets on Twitter are in English

A study done by Semiocast (.pdf), reveled language usage on Twitter over a period of 48 hours in February, 2010.

The study found that most language used was English at 50% from English speaking countries and non-native English speaking users.

Other languages that were tallied – Japanese (14%), Portugese (9%), Malay (6%) – can be attributed directly to international outreach or social media popularity within that region.

Spanish came in 5th at 4% mostly from Spanish users who are in the US.  It’s my belief that this reflects the preference of Hispanic social media users of English as their primary communication language and reflects the young, acculturating traits of Hispanics online. My only wonder if there’s any public usage stats on Twitter’s Spanish translation page.

The rest of the 17% was a combination of various languages each accounting for no more than 2%

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Subtitle: It is not the people that should look to businesses, businesses should look to the people.

Our visions of where influence derives is skewed.  Professionals do not make influential changes, but only identify, define, and market them.

Trends

In his book “The Tipping Point,” Gladwell talks about Hush Puppies shoes and how they went from almost being discontinued to a hugely successful brand.  Hush Puppies became a fad in lower Manhattan not on purpose, not because of a campaign, not because of any professional efforts, but because a few “kids” decided they were cool and the shoes became trendy and hip with their peers. 

Let’s look at social media for a minute.  The true value of social media is not the communication platform, but what that communication brings to the table.  Social media enables a company to gain vital insight to where markets are going by talking with the public.

Companies and Social Media

Companies need to talk to their customers to see what they are thinking.  Companies are usually ‘out-of-the-loop’ when it comes to what is being said on the ’streets;’  social media provides insight and establishes a public ‘advisory board’ that leads executives and marketing professionals to decide what to bring to the market – or discontinue.

The Public

Unbeknownst to the average person, it is they that are the true content providers and definers.  With the help of social media, this is slowly being realized – more people are providing top-notch content and participating in global dialogues.

Profitability is where professionals come in.  Once the public figures out how to crack this threshold, it is at that moment that that industry becomes open to change and revolution.

Here’s a modified statement from a popular quote for the movie “V for Vendetta” – It is not the people that should look to businesses, businesses should look to the people. Oh, so true.

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Subtitle: Are there Latinas in social media? You betcha!

I am driven by We-media – content produced by the public – and am inspired when others share the same drive. A few of my online-cohorts are proposed speakers for a panel at the Blogher conference here in NYC.

Latinas are one of the fastest growing segment of bloggers. In this session, you can understand who we are, why we blog, where we are coming from and where we’re going…Our session will focus on Latinas as a group and how we are using social media to develop relationships and promote our businesses with a distinct flavor. Each of the panel speakers has effectively used social media to promote either her blog, home business, or herself as a brand.

Please take the time to go over and vote for their panel.

Hint: If you want to find engaged mommy bloggers, go follow #BlogHer on Twitter.

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As it turns out, they are everywhere that everyone else is and more.

Hispanics are going to websites that the rest of the world are using which are Yahoo, Google and Microsoft but at the same time there are niche websites that allow Hispanics to socialize within their own communities as well as to search for information such as news, sports and entertainment within Latin America.

Social media, in the same stride is a great place to find ‘real-time’ Hispanics.

Go over and read my friend Frankie’s blog – a contributing voice to the online Hispanic dialogue (the post is a few months old, but still relevant because people ask me this all the time).

Update: Related – Breakdown of Hispanics online.

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Despite conventional advice that one should be authentic and helpful regarding social media, truth is that those traits alone  – even talent! – will not be enough to make you stand apart from the pack and blaze your own trail.

You’ll need an objective and a good sound strategy to get you where you want to go, granted you have a clear direction of where you want to go in social media.

Desire alone won’t cut it.

You must be able to incorporate the dynamics that are specific to your group, niche, market or circle of influence.

For instance, let’s say you want to be a on the football team, but lack the necessary talent to be competitive.  Guess what?  The only way you may participate on the team is by being a waterboy.  If you were smart you would have trained a few seasons ahead of this desire and then went for tryouts.

Let’s say you’re a talented artist.  You want to be recognized for your work, yet you have not met any gallery owners, museum directors, contacted art magazines, etc.  Without making inroads into the creative industry your work will never become known.

What’s your goal?

Where do you want to take your content?  Do you want a lot of followers?  Be known as an authority in your field?  Network?  Make more friends?

Whatever it may be – make a goal.  Then figure out the steps on how to get there.

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To continue on the Hispanic Media Conferences 2010 post, I’ve become aware of two more:

NAHJ, has ten multimedia journalism training sessions in Texas, Feb 20. Blogging, social media and content creation will rule these workshops.

Very innovative and keeping in pace of a trend in the Latino sphere – from their website: The New Generation Latino Consortium (NGLC), the only professional organization of its kind dedicated to the enhancement of the New Generation Latino audience, is proud to announce ‘The NGLC Media, Marketing & Entertainment Conference’ taking place in New York City on April 5, 2010.

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