Reaching out to Latinos? Digital Video Paves your Way in

On January 27, Google announced its strategy to tap into the U.S. Hispanic market (as they call it). Since then, you can still feel the shockwaves of their efforts across the blogosphere. For more details, you can read ClickZ’s Giovanny Rodriguez recap or Chiqui Cartagena’s coverage of what when down in the event. I was also lucky to be among the attendees. However, of all the panelists, TV Azteca’s Director of Innovation Juan Manuel Rowland did the most striking presentation of the afternoon.

As Cartagena explains, “The TV Azteca presentation blew me away — although it mainly focused on what the company is doing in Mexico, I believe the next big thing in the Hispanic market is video online. And I don’t mean putting TV clips online; I mean creating original content for the online audience.” This is exactly the point that I want to highlight in this blog post.

TV Azteca’s project is called IrreverenTV. They basically identified the most talented YouTube video bloggers across Mexico, put them together under one roof and gave them all the resources to create quality content for YouTube. Do you think this idea could be a risky bet with no tangible results? Look for a chair before you keep reading, you’re going to need it.

First, TV Azteca made an alliance with Google, who owns YouTube. That was an excellent way to start. Since December 2006, according to their YouTube page profile, they have harnessed jaw-dropping results. Check them out:

TV Azteca on YouTube:

• They upload 70 percent of the content they produce daily.
• They have more than 30 active channels today.
• 650 million streams to date. (The presentation was done January 27, 2011)
• Over 2 million stream per date.
• From all their traffic, 15 percent belong to viewers in the United States.
• AzAmerica is the number one channel in Latin America by streams and revenue. Yes, I said revenue (although, we don’t know how much but they seemed pretty satisfied about it at the event).
• It is also the number one Spanish-language YouTube channel in the United States.

(Source: Google US Hispanic marketing Forum Event Sizzle Reel video)

But what does all this mean for the emerging video bloggers, small business owners and even big companies that have not cracked the code on how to connect with Latinos? For all of you, go rescue your digital camera from the bottom drawer and charge the batteries. Digital video will definitely help you break some old barriers you have with your audience and build new bridges. If you are not exited about the power of YouTube, check Mashable’s “10 YouTube facts that may surprise you.”

In my next blog post, I will discuss how companies must move away from the language paradigm when marketing to Latinos. It is all about the culture baby!

This article was originally published on Being Latino Online Magazine.

Catching Up with Social Media Lingo

Facebook and Twitter share the glory with thousands of young protesters in Tunisia and Egypt for overthrowing decades-old dictatorships. Social media has proven that it is already an integral part of our global society. However, its evolution has created a variety of new concepts that may confuse even seasoned professionals. Let’s familiarize ourselves with 10 of the newest (for the average internet user) terms in social media:

1. Over-indexing: Lately, every study on how Latinos use the Internet concludes that we are over-indexing on mobile and social media platforms. This simply means that we are using it more often than other ethnic groups.
2. Self-influencers: What? Relax, it is not that complicated. Internet marketers collect information about your preferences when you surf the net. Unfortunately, this process is more intrusive than most of us would like. So, being a self-influencer means you control the information you share online about your tastes without revealing your identity.
3. Tags: When you upload an article, picture, or video online you can assign description words that capture the essence of your post. This is useful when you are searching using keywords in search engines like Google or Bing.
4. Hashtags: When you type a # symbol before a word in Twitter, you are transforming it into a keyword. Then, any person can search for this keyword and read all the tweets sent with the hashtag or include it in his/her tweets to join that particular conversation.
5. Re-tweets: If you like a tweet from one of the people you follow, you are able to forward it to your followers. You may add hashtags or your own comments as long as they stay within the 140-character limit.
6. Social bookmarking: We all bookmark Internet pages that are useful and we don’t want to forget. Now you can share these bookmarks with others and classify them as you prefer. Remember, you are not sharing a file; you are only sharing the link that references the content.
7. Geolocation: Social media is taking advantage of wireless technology. You no longer have to say “I was there,” now you can say, “I’m here and this is what is happening.”
8. Check-ins: With geolocation, you can tell the world that you just walked into a restaurant. Marketers have figured out a way to create buzz, build user reviews and deploy promotions to people that take the time to do a virtual check-in. Popular sites are Foursquare, Gowalla and Foodspotting.
9. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): If you are not a web designer, blogger or marketer, you can ignore this one. Just be aware that every time you look for information online and you find it with ease, accuracy and speed, it is the careful work of many people organizing, tagging and managing information.
10. Cloud computing: You used to buy a computer with many programs that will do a specific task. In the near future, you will need computers with programs that act just like applications on your cell phone. You send your information or query; it gets processed “in the cloud” and comes back with the result. The process no longer takes place in your own computer.

This article was originally published on the Being Latino Online Magazine.

Five Reasons Why Groupon Could Hit Gold with Latinos

Groupon

Plenty of cash flows for start-ups like Groupon, a company that sells daily discount deals using their website and social media sites. In a bold move, they rejected a whooping $6 billion takeover bid from Google. Instead, they are working the details to offer their first I.P.O. with a market valuation of $15 billion. In the meantime, they also raised $950 million from private investors, according to The New York Times. These numbers show how confident investors are in the power and potential of collective coupon sales.

But how does this work? In a nutshell, Groupon and other companies like LivingSocial design tailored daily discount offers with merchants, and then offer them to a growing database of more than 24 million people and 150 cities in the Unites States alone. Shoppers sign up on their website and provide their ZIP Code to receive daily promotions. The trick to offer anywhere from 50 up to 90 percent discounts is that a determined minimum amount of people must commit to the sale before it is activated. Once that minimum is reached, the deal is on. The sweetness of this service for small business owners is that they can deploy marketing campaigns with no money upfront. Also, it is a gateway to the growing online market for small businesses that don’t have an established web presence.

Imagine what this service can do for Latino businesses nationwide. Let’s enumerate the best five reasons why the Latino market is fertile ground for Groupon:

1. Economic growth is led by Latinos: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “the number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States increased by 43.7 percent to 2.3 million, more than twice the national rate of 18.0 percent between 2002 and 2007.” Like most immigrants, Latinos are natural entrepreneurs.

2. Social media is dominated by Latinos: The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project determined that 18 percent of Latinos use Twitter compared to 13 percent of Blacks and 5 percent of Whites. Also, Latinos are closing the gap on Internet usage. Just ask Being Latino or Latinos in Social Media (Latism) for some traffic data. Your jaw may drop.

3. Purchasing power: A recent report from the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business says that despite the recession, the Latino market is expected to grow 50 percent, from $1 trillion in 2010 up to $1.5 trillion in 2015. We are working and spending, a lot!

4. Acculturation levels: The old notion that Spanish is the only language to connect with Latinos in the United States has been debunked. A white paper from comScore says that 70 percent of Latinos prefer to surf the Internet in English. Companies like Groupon just need a little seasoning on cultural intelligence and voila! This could be one of the best business opportunities of the decade.

5. Mobile Internet is also our turf: Sharing the top spot with Blacks, English-speaking Latinos are “the most active users of the mobile web.” So far, we text, take pictures, and access the Internet, among other things. The next frontier? Shopping online using our smartphones.

The original article was published on the Being Latino blog.

Is Cancer Knocking on Your Family’s Door?

Cancer has been looming around my family and friends for quite a while now. It brings a devastating sense of hopelessness but also awakens our hearts to what is really important in life. I want to use this forum to share my personal experience helping others fighting cancer and how it has carved deep inroads in my soul.

The American Cancer Society defines cancer as “the general name for a group of more than 100 diseases in which cells in a part of the body begin to grow out of control.” No wonder how it can show up in any part of one’s body and not be detected in time. Early diagnosis and treatment are the keys for living many years after discovering the disease.

The first impact after being diagnosed is like being hit by a freight train. After the news has sunk in, the inner fighter we all carry deep inside steps up to the plate and says: I’ll battle this illness and survive. For the rest of us, the spectators of such a cruel show, we are left with the responsibility of being as supportive, stoic, and caring as we can. However, we must deal with our frustration in silence when we see our loved ones fall on their knees thanks to chemotherapy or radiology treatments. In time, we learn to graciously lie about how they “look so good today” when in reality they are more fragile and hairless than ever. At night, we pray for endurance and dream of having the power to make it all go away and save the day. But we wake up and realize that we are innocuous against fate.

Despite not holding the higher ground in this battle, we have at our disposal the best medicine: Love. A kind word, a warm touch, and an honest smile can make a world of difference. I dare to say that love might be even more effective in fighting cancer than using proper treatment alone. Unfortunately, all of our efforts are always dwarfed and often unrecognized because we are not the ones fighting to regain our health and survive. That’s precisely the burden that we must bear, and feel grateful for. I’ve managed to share my strength and shoulder to cry on when people needed me the most; in that moment, I am mentally hitting the “snooze” button on my own tears. Later on, I let go because no man should internalize sadness (culturally, women show their feelings easily). Yes, I have cried inside elevators, after hanging up the phone, or before going to sleep. Those tears make me a better, stronger man, never weaker.

These life-or-death experiences are always transformational for everyone involved in the process, including healthcare professionals. But why wait until someone’s life is in peril to open up our hearts and show our real feelings? It supposed to be like that all the time, but we manage to take life and its intricacies for granted. For the record, my sister-in-law is a two-time breast cancer survivor; a young friend lost his fight against brain cancer less than a month ago, and my mother-in-law still battles uterine cancer that unfortunately has metastasized despite chemotherapy and surgery. Her prognosis is reserved.

Sometime I ask to myself how would I react if cancer knocks at my door. I would surely look myself in the mirror and say: Bring it on %*#!, let’s dance! And if I lose my battle, I will die with my head held high because I have loved, I have lived. And for those who have left us, until we meet again guys.

To learn more about cancer, visit the American Cancer Society page and the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital website.

The original article was published on the Being Latino blog.

The Kind of Leadership Latinos Really Need

As the biggest minority in the United States, Latinos are reaching critical mass by becoming a powerful voting bloc, an indispensable purchasing power and a vibrant staple of American culture. Despite all these potentials, we can hardly identify a handful of leaders that understand our shortcomings and trumpet our ideals.

The question that we need to ask ourselves is what kind of leaders we need and/or want to lead our community in the national arena? An easy way to eliminate contenders is to look at the kind of leaders that we DO NOT want:

At the federal level: We don’t want representatives like Charles Rangel who awaits censure for being guilty of violating 11 counts of ethic rules “including failure to report assets and income and misusing his office to raise money for a public policy center to be named after him,” according to USA Today.

At the state level: The New York Daily News compared the organization lead by former state senator Pedro Espada with the most prominent mafia clans in New York City. He “looted more than $14 million from the government-funded nonprofit since 2005.”

Another shameful example is former state senator Hiram Monserrate. He was removed from office after being convicted of assault charges for hitting his girlfriend Karla Giraldo with a broken drinking glass. Mucho animal! However, this was just the tip of the iceberg. On October 19, he was charged with mail fraud and conspiracy for using taxpayer funds for his own benefits, just like Espada did.

At the local level: We cannot afford to have Latino officials like the former Hartford mayor Eddie A. Perez. He was the first Latino mayor ever elected in this Connecticut town running a campaign on accountability, but convicted afterwards on five felony charges of corruption and sentenced to three years in prison.

Is it too much to ask that we get honest public administrators and lawmakers who stay clear from graft? You can make a very decent living as a politician as it is. We need leaders who understand the true nature of being public servants and proudly represent our interests. Also, we need leaders who, once holding office, will not succumb to greed and hubris. However, some in the Latino blogosphere argue that having a single national leader is “strange” and “that just isn’t going to happen” as a response to a Pew poll that highlighted the lack of national Latino leaders. Others, including myself, politely disagree with them.

“The fact remains that Latinos do not have a Martin Luther King, Jr. or a Cesar Chavez, and we could definitely use one,” writes Being Latino’s Cristina Villareal in her blog Are you the next Latino leader?. In addition, AOL’s PoliticsDaily.com correspondent Luisita Lopez Torregrosa hopes that “when the next Latino leadership survey comes around, Latinos will not only be able to name one national leader, but many.” We have plenty of leaders in our community to fit these roles and hopefully they’ll rise up to this unique occasion in history.

The original article was published on the Being Latino blog.