Posted: February 27th, 2010 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: Hispanics, Interactive Marketing, International, Latam | 2 Comments »
This article originally appeared on MediaPost.
The new report from the Pew Hispanic Trust — Latinos Online — shows that 64% of all U.S. Hispanics use the Internet and that foreign-born Latinos have crossed the tipping point with 52% online. As the Hispanic audience grows, they seek new content and increasingly find and regularly visit foreign web sites.
Why is this happening?
“Search engines and social networking are making it easier for [U.S. Hispanic] consumers to find and consume content outside of their home country,” says Rafael Urbina, the CEO of Batanga. “As a result, country-specific brands, such as newspaper domains, are generating a significant portion of their traffic outside of their home market.”
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Posted: February 25th, 2010 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: Hispanics, Interactive Marketing, International | No Comments »
This article originally appeared on MediaPost.
After reading Felipe Korzenny’s and Lee Vann’s column about Hispanics’ adoption of social media relative to other ethnic demographics, a question came to mind: how will social networks affect the acculturation process among Hispanics? The ability to keep in touch with family and friends from countries-of-origin via email, Skype and online newspapers back home makes it easier than ever. Travel costs are at historic lows. And computer and mobile phone prices fall every year.
Combine these questions with the fact that more communities like Miami and McAllen, Texas, are reaching the tipping point of having a majority of Spanish speakers, and the question about how online media affects acculturation deserves some consideration. Six experts discuss this issue, after which you are invited to leave your comments, links to research and additional questions below.
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Posted: February 11th, 2010 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: Blogging, International, Latam, Photography | 1 Comment »
The following is a preview to the forthcoming book – The Spanish Net: How to reach and segment Latinos online – from Paramount Books.
Scott Heiferman, now famous for starting MeetUp.com, and Adam Seifer launched Fotolog, a leading photo sharing site, in 2002 as an online community for their friends in Brooklyn, NY to post photos and share them. Instead of building up a domestic fan base, as they thoughts would happen, their user base took them down an unexpected path, according to Yossi Langer, Chief Product Officer, and Arne “Joe” Jokela, Chief Technology Officer of Fotolog.
In 2005, Scott and Adam’s friend, Cora Ronai a journalist from Brazil, visited New York and was impressed by their site. She returned home, wrote an article about Fotolog for O Globo, Brazil’s leading newspaper, and within two months, Brazilian users outnumbered American users. The popularity of Fotolog then spread like wildfire to Argentina and Chile in 2006 and then jumped the Atlantic Ocean over to Spain and Portugal in 2007. That same year, traffic took off in the North of Mexico, especially around Monterrey. Today, Spain is their number one country, in terms of users.
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Posted: January 5th, 2010 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: Interactive Marketing, International, Latam | 1 Comment »
The following is a preview to the forthcoming book – The Spanish Net: How to reach and segment the 136 million Spanish-speakers online – from Paramount Books.
Many U.S. Hispanic publishers and e-commerce sites find that when they launch a site in Spanish targeting U.S. Hispanics many Latin Americans find their site for a number of reasons:
1) Their site has been optimized for search and so other Spanish-speakers find the site
2) 136 million consumers read in Spanish online, most of whom live outside of the U.S.
3) Sites in the U.S. and Spain typically feature better-produced content than in Latin America
4) Since there isn’t enough content in Latin America, Internet users find foreign sites in Spanish via search
5) Many U.S. Hispanic sites don’t have a landing page for users outside of the U.S.
6) It really is the World Wide Web
Interestingly, publishers in Spain can teach U.S. Hispanic publishers and e-commerce companies about how to best manage cross-border content consumption and grow audiences internationally. During a recent visit to Spain, I learned what a number of Spain’s interactive publishing leaders had to say.
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Posted: December 20th, 2009 | Author: Joe Kutchera | Filed under: International, Latam | No Comments »
The following is a preview to the forthcoming book – The Spanish Net: How to reach and segment the 136 million Spanish-speakers online – from Paramount Books.
In June of 2009, the Cervantes Institute of Chicago launched a short story contest on their blog with the goal of engaging local writers and Spanish students in the Chicago area. What happened provides a perfect example of how our expectations of launching a Spanish-language promotion or website do not conform to the reality of the World Wide Web. Salvador Vergara, the librarian at the Cervantes Institute Chicago, told me how they never expected any entrants from outside of the U.S. just like so many domestic brand managers who launch Hispanic promotions online. Instead, they were shocked to find that over 70% of their entrants were not only from outside of the Chicago area but outside of the U.S. from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Holland, Venezuela, the Ukraine and Spain.
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