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.

Latinos in 2012: Vote out Loud!

With a new holiday season kicking in and facing a last push to get a vote on the DREAM Act, the November 2^nd midterm elections seems like a distant memory. The results show the growing influence of Latino voters in swing states like Florida and New Mexico. They also secured key races for governor and the U.S. Senate in California for the Democratic Party by repelling GOP advances in the state with most Latinos in the nation. Most notably, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) retained his seat by winning over Tea Party favorite Sharon Angle thanks to  “her inability to stop saying crazy things” like advising young rape victims to make “lemons into lemonade.”

Despite these important milestones, campaigns from grassroots organizations like the National Association of Latino elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) among others, left the aftertaste of being too little too late. They were effective, no doubt about it; however, they failed to motivate Latinos voters to achieve their true electoral potential. According with the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos represented the same eight percent of all voters in 2010 as they did in 2006. However, the number of eligible Latinos to vote this year grew to approximately 19.2 million voters from an estimated 18 million in 2006.

As the national Spanish-speaking media started to turn up the volume and “banging the drum of [the] ‘you have to go vote, you have to go vote,’” the enthusiasm among voters picked up traction starting only until the first week of October, Latino Decisions reported. Once the campaigns were in full swing, social media also played a key role on reaching wider audiences. On November 28, Latinos in Social Media (LATISM) invited Univision’s Martin Berlanga to participate in a Twitter party on the importance of voting for Latinos. The tweetchat achieved an impressive 8.1 million impressions in one night, according to LATISM’s Vice-Chair Elianne Ramos.

(For the not social media savvy, impressions means how many times people saw tweets about the party’s hashtag.)

They all seem like successfully calculated efforts given the positive election results against the most radical anti-immigrant candidates. However, imagine what they could have accomplished if the media heavyweights had devoted their full resources to these campaigns way earlier in the game. This fast-and-furious approach didn’t spark enough interest among many freshmen citizens who may suffer psychological roadblocks thanks to years of discrimination and disenfranchisement. Let’s not forget that the naturalization process is long, hard, and expensive plus many have to deal with their own negative preconceptions on civic participation. Also, the high educational gap between Latinos and Whites remains disadvantageous against the former.

For the 2012 presidential elections, we should expect that the traditional political parties will diligently work to enfranchise Latinos. However, neither party seems to have even a remote idea on how to tally our votes. Right now, they are busy putting down their own fires rather than making a sincere effort to reach out. Democrats have lost their luster with the electorate and face an uphill battle to reelect President Barack Obama on 2012. On the flip side, Republicans remain overconfident between their trepid loses and surprising gains thanks to a new lot of conservative Latino politicians. For illustration, read the opinion from Representative (TX-R) Lamar Smith and a counter argument from columnist Edward Schumacher-Matos on the Washingtonpost.com.

So what to do next? As NCLR’s Director for Immigration Clarissa Martinez-De-Castro writes, a “meaningful outreach is essential.” For sure, both parties will make their best effort to win the Latino vote; at the same time, grassroots leadership must capitalize on their media partners’ increasing clout. Univision is already the number five national network in the nation and seem poised to “surpass the Anglo networks in seven years, even without the boost provided by growth in the Hispanic population,” AdWeek reports. What a better opportunity to rev up their campaigns starting today and entice every able Latino to go out and vote.

This article was originally published in the LatinoPoliticsBlog.com.

¿Por Qué Son Importantes los Asesores Financieros?

Este artículo fue publicado originálmente en el portal de Impremedia.com de Recursos para Negocios. This article was originally published at Impremedia.com’s hub for small business owners.

Hay veces que los dueños de pequeños negocios no tienen la experiencia necesaria para manejar todos los aspectos de una microempresa. Por eso es aconsejable de que se asesore de expertos en finanzas para minimizar sus riesgos y aumentar sus utilidades. Pero usted se puede preguntar ¿Qué sabe un “experto” en finanzas que no sepa yo? Un asesor le puede ayudar con lo siguiente: Contabilidad, nómina de empleados, compra y venta de equipos, seguros para su negocio, finca raíz e hipotecas, prestamos, inversiones en la bolsa de valores, impuestos, fondos de pensiones, etc… Como usted se puede dar cuenta, casi nadie tiene la experiencia profesional de manejar todos estos frentes al mismo tiempo y de una manera eficaz.

Como primera medida, tómese un tiempo prudencial e identifique cuales son los aspectos de su negocio que usted quisiera mejorar y expandir. Después, identifique los asesores financieros que estén certificados en su campo y que tengan como demostrar su expediente profesional. Antes de seguir adelante le tenemos una regla de oro a la hora de pagar por servicios financieros: Al igual que con los doctores, SIEMPRE pida segundas opiniones antes de hacer cualquier inversión ó tomar una decisión que pueda afectar a su negocio. Haga su tarea de investigar y aprender lo más que usted puede acerca de cualquier tema para poder entender mejor lo que su asesor le está aconsejando. Así minimiza el riesgo de tomar una decisión que le pueda afectar negativamente.

Un punto para considerar es el de buscar un asesor adecuado para cada aspecto de su negocio. Algunos grandes bancos y compañías de inversiones le ofrecen planes que cubren toda la gama de servicios financieros que un pequeño empresario necesita. Esta podría ser una buena alternativa siempre y cuando usted necesite toda esa ayuda. Por el contrario, si usted solo necesita ayuda específicamente en escoger las pólizas de seguro necesarias y comprar el equipo para aumentar su producción, no es necesario que pague por un corredor de bolsa o por un agente de finca raíz. Pagar por servicios que usted no utiliza se pueden convertir en una pérdida cuantiosa de dinero, así que tenga cuidado.

Por último, le recomendamos que busque a un asesor que entienda su negocio y que si es posible que también hable su idioma. Sabemos que nuestra comunidad tiene unas necesidades particulares y que mejor que usted se asesore con un profesional que entienda la cultura de sus empleados y de sus clientes. A la hora de decidir si ya es hora de ampliar su negocio, escoger el seguro médico y laboral para sus empleados, o automatizar sus libros de contabilidad busque un experto que le ofrezca ventajas y entienda su visión. Recuerde, la responsabilidad de tomar tanto buenas como malas decisiones recaen sobre una persona: usted.

Atraer y Mantener Clientes

Este artículo fue publicado originálmente en el portal de Impremedia.com de Recursos para Negocios. This article was originally published at Impremedia.com’s hub for small business owners.

Usted pensará que es más fácil decirlo que hacerlo. No se preocupe, aquí le ofrecemos unos cuantos pasos sencillos pero efectivos para ayudarle a que su negocio siga creciendo. No importa si usted vende seguros de automóvil, tiene un salón de belleza o administra un restaurante: la misión principal de cualquier negocio que quiere crecer es la de lograr que sus productos o servicios le lleguen a sus clientes de una manera amable, con calidad y eficiencia.

Partiendo de esta base, hay que diseñar un plan de mercadeo que cubra cuatro frentes. Primero hay que estar seguros de que el producto o servicio que su negocio ofrece cumpla las normas de calidad y seguridad requeridas y que sea algo que la gente esté buscando. Segundo, asigne precios que le den a usted un margen de ganancias y que al mismo tiempo se ajusten a la capacidad de compra del mercado al cual usted le esta vendiendo. Tercero, defina donde usted va a ofrecer sus productos: en un local comercial, en una página de Internet, ventas puerta a puerta, etc… Y cuarto, decida como se hará la promoción de su negocio; si por medio de vallas publicitarias, avisos en la radio, en el Internet, revistas de cupones y volantes entre otros.

Con esta estrategia en funcionamiento, es seguro que usted va a atraer clientes a su negocio. Pero eso es sólo la mitad del trabajo. Mantener sus clientes satisfechos, asegurarse de que siempre escojan volver a su negocio y que ellos se encarguen de hacerle buena publicidad son las verdaderas claves del éxito. Para lograr estos resultados, el servicio al cliente que usted ofrece debe ser excepcional. Póngase usted en los zapatos de cualquiera de sus clientes y pregúntese como le gustaría a usted que lo atendieran. Su meta debe ser de que todos sus clientes digan Wow! cuando salgan de su negocio. Además, diseñe un horario de atención adecuado y flexible que le sea conveniente a sus clientes; aquí usted también puede utilizar nuevas tecnologías para que ellos se puedan comunicar con usted fuera de los horarios tradicionales.

Además, cree un programa de incentivos para sus clientes más frecuentes. Recuerde nuestros consejos sobre ventas y mercadeo multicanal, estos le serán muy útiles para fortalecer los lazos con su clientela. Al llegar a este punto, hay que pensar en cómo convertir esos clientes satisfechos en fervientes seguidores y embajadores de su negocio. Para lograr este efecto, debe concentrar sus esfuerzos en mantener una comunicación fluida y CONSTANTE por medio de las redes sociales, eventos especiales, y publicaciones. Queremos hacer énfasis en la constancia, es la pieza fundamental para lograr los resultados esperados. También, hágales reconocimientos especiales y motívelos a que le hagan propaganda a su negocio entre familiares y amigos y así crear un efecto dominó que haga que su negocio florezca.