Latino Rebranded: Latinos and Social Media

Subtitle:  Hispanic Media Myths

A great article…it even seems to have some picante to it as it’s spiced up with some humor and witty lines.

If you have some image in your head of a poor campesino looking confusedly at a computer screen, delete it. Replace that with an image of Perez Hilton tweeting and blogging and instant-messaging all day. In fact, Latinos far outpace Anglos in online and mobile usage. Of all wireless users in the U.S., 39% of U.S.-Hispanics use their mobile devices to read the news, in comparison to just 17% of non-Hispanics.

Note the quick change to ‘Latino’ from ‘Hispanic’ when talking about online/mobile usage.  I almost got excited about that, but then noted that Hispanic and Latino are used interchangeably throughout the piece.  It’s still a great read.

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I started a hastag (#) – actually rediscovered – to help fight against Twitter spam:  #unfollow. It’s a good way to use Twitter’s own basic tools to fight back against spammers.  Use #unfollow to share with others and cut back on Twitterspam. (And, then of course follow up by blocking them from your account.)

Like for instance, this guy: wayne10005. He tweets today: “Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.” – Samuel Johnson–>  And link provided has nothing to do with quote (not going to provide site for obvious reasons).  So today, I #unfollow and block.

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I’ve been reading a ton of information on Social Media; add: a NY based Latino Social Media group just got off the ground; add: organizing a business, including legal stuff, networking & interlinking, and new leads. This has kept me quite busy the past couple of weeks. But, I am armed with my handy, dandy Blackberry Curve and my day planner and realize I have to make some shortcuts, prioritize and schedule before everything tips the table.

More to follow.

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This would be a follow-up post to my “Is Your Brand Bull?” post.

Via the BuzzBin:

1) The online community — a.k.a. the market — doesn’t give a damn about your personal brand.

2) The only people who give a crap about personal brands are the personas trying to prop them up as a business model.

3) While personal brands are concerned with themselves, the market is also concerned about itself.

4) The market doesn’t care about the persona, only what value the persona contributes to the larger community.

5) Ultimately, if the market does not perceive value, the personal brand — while famous — will not successfully monetize him/herself.

6) Businesses do not need personal brands to succeed online. They need to come off their ivory towers and communicate with the market in real conversations.

7) Then companies need to listen so they can give back to their online communities and markets vis a vis real valuable information or products.

Messaging — whether delivered through a personal brand or from the corporate ivory tower — doesn’t work online!

9) Personal brands can be contrived and faked.

10) If a personal brand promises one thing and delivers another, their personal name is mud!

11) If a company over-relies on personal brands it can be let down with no social media presence post persona (Microsoft and Scoble)

12) Personal brands can let the market down… in some cases regularly (Calcanis).

13) If a personal brand becomes regularly tied to a corporate brand, then it’s not personal. It’s business.

14) Having personal interaction is a small part of the larger value proposition to the market in order for it to have a transaction with you. It is not a business model in itself.

15) The difference between a good personal reputation and personal brands is subtle. One delivers constant substance while the other relies on BS to overcome shortcomings.

16) The only value of a personal brand is blinding the uneducated on lack of social media expertise (from Micah).

17) When a personal brand fails to deliver real expertise, the market turns quickly on the persona.

18) Twenty years later national personas gone wrong get super bowl ads (MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, or in the case of K-Fed 2 years later). Micro personal brands online are simply forgotten.

19) When reality catches up with personal brand hype, bad endings occur.

20) The marketplace wants solutions, not to feel better by hanging out with coolness. Even better if you can provide both, but at least provide the prior.

21) Personal brands are like toilet paper. They are a tradable commodity on the interent. Reputation is another thing.

22) Social media consultants rely on personal brands, communicators rely on building value between organizations and their stakeholders.

23) Communicators can measure their social effort, personal brands talk about friends and “hubris.”

24) A personality oriented brand does not necessarily equate to successful results. Ask John “Maverick” McCain.

25) The marketplace doesn’t need specific personalities. There’s always another chap who can fill the role.

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Posted a great introduction on the core basic principle behind Twitter over at LatinoPundit.

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It took me an overall 20 minutes to land here on this WordPress platform, hosted on by my own server:

I moved from Blogger (www.louispagan.blogspot.com) to Wordpress (www.louispagan.wordpress.com) to my own domain (www.louispagan.com), in two days that took about 20 min overall.

Ten minutes to install WP on my existing host account (I had more room than I thought/and they had a one-click install).  Since it was that easy, I just re-pointed my domain name (already had this) there .  Now all that is left is deciding on a theme (another 10 min to upload), and tweak it from there, and I’m done.

This was much quicker than I thought thanks to the pre-install already installed by my hosting domain (most do this now probably).  Sweet.

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Reaching deep into a well of contacts on social sites, old media and old friends, because it is not what you know, but who you know.

I’m also starting to make cold contacts. I’ve learned some techniques while I was in Amway (not a bad word), years ago that need dusting off, as well as some new techniques. Hmm…this would be a great topic for the next post. See you there!

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I’ve a number of sites: LatinoPundit.com, LouisPagan.com as well as a private one or two, not to mention some upcoming ones. Each site serves a specific goal. Twitter however…ah Twitter, will server as a conglomerate of everything.

Tweet along, my friends. Tweeeeeeet!

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I checked my inbox to see what my sub-contractor had completed. A weird satisfaction settled over me as I listened to the embedded song in a flash banner pumping over the speakers – a job several weeks past due. Not bad, I thought. Here I am, looking at a job complete which I had not worked on personally. Sweet!

Being extremely busy, I hardly have time to do everything I want, not to mention things that I don’t want to do. It’s true – I could have done it myself if I commited to a few hours of work (I’m leaving out that the software would of cost upwards of $100, but the main fact of the matter is that I did not want to lean over my monitor for hours doing this job). However, I thought sub-contracting to someone else and taking a small cut was a better way of managing my time.

Ultimately, time is more important than money for me. After all, the reason for trying to amass a large sum of money is to free oneself from matters that eat up all their time…I would think so anway.

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I see a lot of people using slick buzz words, and playing/dressing the part. Usually, after a few minutes or days of talking/working with them one begins to realize that they are not “The Real McCoy,” and when it comes down for show and prove time they come up lacking.

The old package of “we are all salesmen,” has been repackaged with the ultra-slick catch phrase: “Brand You.” It’s basically the strategy of selling yourself and projecting an image of success (or however you want others to perceive you).

You can read about the benefits at iHispano.

There is more info about this out there, and I recommend (for those w/ [shorthand for with] limited time, Tom Peters I enjoyed most – 2&3):

1. Creating Brand You
2. The Brand Called You
3. Brand You Survival Kit
4. It’s a Brand-You World

(Note: again, you have to read #2 as this was the article (back in 1997) that coined Brand You. Although, self-branding as been around for a while it is gaining renewed attention because of recent excitement concerning Twitter.)

All of that in of itself is great for getting attention, but now what do you have to back it up…to be of any value? Go read “The Brand You Is Dead. Long Live The Brand You Build.” Put concept A (Brand You) and concept B (Brand You Build) together, and you know have a solid brand w/ purpose that will prove over and over again that your brand is no bull.

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