Hispanic Population in Your Business Community

Unless the majority of your sales are online, a key factor for business success is location. In order to choose the best location for your business one of the most important things to consider are the demographics.

A quick, easy and free way of getting some statistics about the percentage of Hispanic and other population in your business area is to Google your zip code. Plug in your zip code number on Google’s search box. You will be surprised of all the information that you can get by doing this.

Social Media Marketing: The Time Is NOW, notes Guest Blogger

Social media is now ubiquitous. Usage of blogs, social networks, and video sharing sites is increasing rapidly and millions of people now look to social media websites as their primary source of news, opinion, and entertainment. As we witness this dramatic shift from traditional to social media, we believe it’s important to examine its cultural dimensions—that is, who is driving this shift, what are the cultural factors behind it, and what are the implications for marketers seeking to reach specific ethnic/cultural groups via social media?

We recently conducted an analysis of newly collected data to examine the patterns of social media behaviors of different ethnic/cultural groups in the US. The data comes from the Florida State University Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication with the support of DMS Research from a national online sample of nearly 2,500 people with approximately 500 cases in each of the following cultural groups: Hispanics who prefer English, Hispanics who prefer Spanish, Non-Hispanic Whites, African Americans, and Asians in the United States.
Ethnic minorities visit social networking sites more frequently than non-Hispanic Whites

We aggregated information to find out what ethnic/cultural groups are more likely to visit social networking sites. We found broad diversity in social media behaviors among different ethnic/cultural groups and that emerging minorities visit social networking sites more frequently than non-Hispanic whites.

Dedicate resources to proactively engage your audience with timely and relevant content

Ethnic minorities are turning to social networks to express themselves, connect with their culture and communicate with each other. To be successful, marketers must be open to engaging audiences with timely and relevant content that stimulates feedback and sharing. Engaging in meaningful conversations is the goal of social media marketing and doing so requires a deep understanding of needs, openness to negative commentary and dedicated resources. A social media presence is worthless if it lies dormant.

The time is now

Few marketers are proactively targeting ethnic minorities online and even fewer are leveraging social media to do so. A first mover advantage is available for those that devote the time and resources to engage these critical audiences in ways that they find meaningful. The fact is that we now have an unprecedented ability to reach and interact with ethnic minorities; and companies that deliver value to this segment today will be rewarded with the long term loyalty of this market.

Read the complete post The Multicultural World of Social Media Marketing

GUEST BLOGGER Felipe Korzenny, Ph.D., Director, Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University, and Senior Strategy Consultant, Captura Group Dr. Korzenny is interested in the new Multicultural Society of the United States and how technology and marketing are changing in parallel. The questions he asks include: How do we market more effectively and with respect to emerging minorities? and How are emerging minorities behaving in a new technological landscape? Visit his blog Marketing Trends in a New Multicultural Society