Digital Perspective Blog

Clickz published an article today featuring research from a Hispanic marketing agency (Orci) detailing that seventy-eight percent of Fortune 1000 companies are not employing social media sites to market to Latinos. This means that only twenty-two percent of Fortune 1000 companies are using social media to connect with the Latino community.

What a missed opportunity! Latino’s are a very social community – both online and off. The opportunity to connect in a meaningful way via social media is immense and given some of our own social media research, I was very surprised that big brands are not taking this opportunity to extend their reach. I’m sure part of this has to do with the fact that organizations are still trying to determine where social media lives from an enterprise-wide perspective – I can only imagine the complexity when you start trying to conduct more targeted programs.

Social media can’t be segmented into any one group within a company. Social media impacts every area of a business from sales to marketing to human resources to corporate communications to investor relations to (I could go on but you get it.) More importantly, social media provides the opportunity to engage every potential audience in a way that is targeted and relevant. Companies must evolve to having a socially conversant workforce that is given the resources and flexibility (withing a framework) to participate in social media so that do their jobs effectively.

I’m curious about what my colleagues from our U.S. Hispanic practice have to say.

New data from Mintel Comperemedia points to a higher email tolerance among Hispanic-Americans. “This population is certainly more receptive to marketing and offers,” explained Carmen Curran senior email analyst at the firm. Hispanic consumers accepted 11 emails a month from companies they knew compared to that of 7.4 for non-Hispanic consumers. However, more interesting was the correlation between other demographic groups and time spent online, a meme that has been written about extensively. Non-Hispanic whites tend to read and write email more often than Hispanic consumers, although the latter group averages 9.2 hours per week online versus 8.5 hours online than the general population.

This shouldn’t be surprising as minority populations are beginning to take a more active role in Internet activities, specifically, social media exercises ranging from social networking to blogging. As we begin to move into a more networked society, both online and offline, it will be interesting to see how new technologies will advance minority voices. Recently, Burson-Marsteller launched a US Multicultural Practice that focuses on this aspect among many others. Take a look at our report focusing on African-American fluentials for more information on the shrinking minority digital divide and stay tuned for additional research that will be forthcoming soon.