Harnessing the power of social media to engage with Hispanic consumers

Social media is imperative to reaching the Hispanic community. It allows Hispanics to easily connect and share information with families in their home countries, playing naturally into Hispanics’ cultural affinity toward family connections. Family is a priority within our culture, as evidenced by our time spent online and, specifically, on social media sites. According to eMarketer, 26.8% of Hispanic Internet users spend six or more hours on social media sites per day, versus 20.4% of African American Internet users and 8.5% of white non-Hispanics.

Social media strategies are increasingly a part of online campaigns for the general market, but they’re not there yet in the Hispanic market. And despite the popularity of social media among Hispanics, the number of advertisers utilizing this medium is far less than with non-Hispanics. It’s important for advertisers to understand that a social media campaign for the Hispanic market has to be focused on relevant content, and that it’s not as simple as translating the non-Hispanic message.

To achieve engagement, social media content has to be relevant to the Hispanic consumer. For example, a food-related Facebook page targeting Spanish-speaking Hispanic consumers should:

-       Include Hispanic recipes, products and visual elements

-       Be in Spanish

-       Be managed by someone who knows the audience and the market, and knows the language

Hispanics are social butterflies. 43% of Hispanics with a Facebook profile log on more than once a day. They like to engage with their friends and family, and also with brands that offer relevant information and relate to their culture. There is a huge opportunity for advertisers to engage with this consumer through social media and increase brand advocacy among Hispanics.

Talk Bite: 3 Ways To Springboard Into the Kinship Economy

Humans are social creatures. They have an innate desire to be with others­. To belong.

Facebook, Skype, Twitter are technologies that have tapped into this basic human need. Developing services that are creating a more social world of interactions. A world where it’s easy to find and tap into a group of likeminded people no matter how niche the topic of interest may be. And in this social world of interactions, consumers are less and less interested in brand relationships. Instead they are more satisfied with relationships with other people. Case in point, Millennials and the fact that they’re less materialistic than generations past.

This focus on social interactions and desire for “human” interactions has ushered in a new era for marketers: The Era of the Kinship Economy. A time when marketers are freely calling out relationships between people rather than relationships between brands and consumers in their advertising. They are still talking about their brands. But instead of just listing out product or experiential attributes, brands that have embraced the Kinship Economy are talking about social attributes. Brand is secondary to the social attribute it’s touting to the consumer. And these social attributes are turning into compelling sources of differentiation for these brands. Check out work from Publix and Budweiser where relationships are front and center.

Here are 3 simple exponential ideas that can springboard your brand into the Kinship Economy.

1. Curate a lifestyle
2. Connect likeminded people who share something in common with your brand values.
3. Tell a compelling human interest story instead of just talking about yourself and your product / service

Talk Bite: Click Here to “Like” the First Amendment

Though it usually is used to express feelings on such super important matters as the cutest thing your college roommate’s dog did the other day, the Facebook Like button is also used by millions to show support for politicians and political causes.  However, a Like in and of itself is not protected political speech under the 1st Amendment, according to the first federal judge to consider the question.

Several Virginia sheriff’s deputies were fired for Liking their sheriff’s electoral opponent, so they predictably sued.  The judge said that “Simply liking a Facebook page is insufficient. It is not the kind of substantive statement that has previously warranted constitutional protection.” Status updates and other written activities on Facebook would be protected, but clicking Like is apparently not expressive enough.  What about Liking a written status update regarding a political view?  Are purely commercial advertiser pages different, even though politicians as well are essentially brands?  Since this is social media, should we be talking about freedom of assembly rather than freedom of speech?

I guess we can just add this to the list of legal issues keeping digital marketers awake at night, a list which includes online privacy and data tracking, SOPA/PIPA, net neutrality, etc.  Though these will be hashed out in courts and legislatures over the next few years, we digital professionals may have to add a constitutional law degree to the resume just to keep up.

All Facebook Fans Aren’t Created Equal: Participation Inequality and the 90-9-1 Rule

Researcher Jakob Nielson suggests that when considering the internet as a network of communities, most large-scale communities consist of users who don’t participate very often. He also explains that most of the content contributed to these communities originate from a small majority of very active users. Nielson refers to this discrepancy as participation inequality and speculates that it typically follows a 90-9-1 rule in which users fall into one of three categories: Lurkers, Intermittent Contributors, and Heavy Contributors.

The 90-9-1 rule aplies to even an inherently social platform such as Facebook. As shown by Adam Mosseri in his presentation presentation during UX Week 2010 about user data’s impact on product design at Facebook, 20% of users generate 85% of content on Facebook. This data comes as no surprise. Many users have those two or three friends within their own communities of Facebook friends who comment on what seems like every status update on their wall and update their own status a hundred times throughout the day. Mosseri makes an important point in citing the Facebook product team’s commitment to accommodating not only to those 20% of power users, but to the lighter users as well.

As brand Pages on Facebook amass millions of fans—becoming large-scale communities—participation inequality challenges brands looking to build a community of advocates on Facebook. The existence of participation inequality within brands’ Facebook communities demonstrates the existence of another hierarchy similar to the one Nielson describes. Brands must recognize the existence of these different types of fans, as they represent varying levels of value for a brand.

• Withdrawn Fans — fans who have hidden a brand’s posts from the News Feed
• Latent Fans — fans who see a brand’s posts in the News Feed but don’t interact with them
• Active Fans — fans who see a brand’s posts in the News Feed and interact occasionally
• Hyperactive Fans — fans who see a brand’s posts in the News Feed and interact often

In fact, Facebook inherently acknowledges this notion, as evidenced by EdgeRank, the algorithm that programmatically decides which stories appear in a user’s News Feed. Firstly, affinity—one of three key components in EdgeRank—draws upon historical interaction data between the viewing user and the originating source of the News Feed story. The premise is that activity from a brand Page that a user interacts on a more frequent basis signifies a more important connection to the user than one with which the user rarely interacts. Therefore, a fan that interacts more frequently with a brand’s Facebook Page holds greater value for that brand. Whereas affinity signifies the frequency of activity, weight, another factor of EdgeRank, demonstrates the different types of activity a fan may take to interact with a brand Page’s content. Simply stated, actions that require more effort from the fan (such as a comment or share) signify greater weight values than lightweight actions (such as a Like). In order to maximize visibility and engagement within the News Feed, then, a brand must incorporate two elements of News Feed Optimization into its Facebook content strategy:

1. Diversity. Content that elicits different types of actions with varying weight values (Shares, Comments, Likes, Clicks).
2. Consistency. A dedication to consistently post engaging content, in order to increase affinity scores among fans.

The existence of these different types and values of Facebook fans further proves that marketing on Facebook—or any other social media network, for that matter—requires a long-term commitment and insightful strategy. Furthermore, the notion of participation inequality supports the claim that when it comes to social media, content indeed reigns supreme.