Content production and distribution are now accessible to most people everywhere. Thanks to modern communication technologies, those who used to be passive spectators are now becoming active creators. In the U.S., Hispanics are driving this change.

According to 2010 Forrester’s report, “Social Media is Mainstream for Hispanics,” this population is ahead of the curve in what it calls high-order activities.

This means that Hispanics are more likely than their counterparts to be Creators: to publish a blog or webpage, upload videos or songs they’ve created, and write articles or stories and post them. Hispanics are also ahead of the game as Critics, posting ratings/reviews of product or services, commenting on someone else’s blog, and contributing to online forums. Finally, Hispanics are more engaged than other groups as Collectors using RSS feeds, voting for Web sites online, and adding tags to Web pages or photos.

This is heaven for us curious investigators of the Hispanic consumer. We now have access to this never-ending mine of information coming straight from those we want to understand.

With the content they create, Hispanics are feeding us with their stories, vision of the world, emotions, memories, aspirations, contradictions and, of course, what they want from products, services, and brands.

Consider Lifeinspanglish.com, a blog written by a young Latina in Los Angeles. She writes in native Spanglish (not the made-up Spanglish that we sometimes see out there.) By reading her blog I have learned about her fashion style and the exact products she wants from Target’s Missoni Fall collection. Now I know which places she considers cool to hang out in because she showed me her favorite corners in Downtown L.A. (with great pictures taken by her).

I also know why she thinks “A Better Life” is a must-see movie, which New York Times columnist she reads, what political issues matter to her, and what makes her feel nostalgic about Mexico (Cantinflas!). I left her blog feeling I had talked for hours with an interesting woman. I’m sure I’ll be going back to her blog looking for more insights about bicultural Latinas.

But insight chasers and digital anthropologists are not the only ones who can benefit from keeping an eye on prolific Hispanic Creators. Look, for instance, at Kmart’s Latina Smart Facebook platform or Todobebe’s blogsdemamas.com. These smart marketers are already winning the digital space by partnering with Latino writers and providing them with platforms to share their stories and create community.

Every marketer can now build a stronger online dialogue with the Hispanic consumer. Some small steps can include contacting targeted Hispanics who love to create, collect, and share content, inviting them to try products and create original content (videos, photographs, stories, etc.) based on their experience. Similarly to what they would do off-line, marketers can reach out to the new breed of digital influencers who will spread the word through their own communities.

And you ,Creators, keep up the good work and thanks for helping us see things we might otherwise never see!

via MediaPost Publications Knowing Our Consumers Through Their Own Stories: Hispanics And Content Creation 09/15/2011.

There appears to be a new digital divide, but this one has nothing to do with socioeconomics.

For reasons that are not altogether clear, women now dominate men in their use of social media as a communication tool, according to a new study from Harris Interactive conducted on behalf of mobile VOIP provider Rebtel.

Among online adults, 68% of women now communicate via social media, compared to 54% of men in the United States. By Harris Interactive’s estimation, that translates to approximately 75 million women who communicate with friends using social networks versus 57 million men.

“Our findings show that men tend to lag behind women when it comes to communicating with others through social media, which debunks other recent studies that suggest that men are more savvy networkers between the sexes,” said Andreas Bernstrom, CEO of Rebtel.

Among those online adults who use social media to communicate, one out of five — 19% — expect to use social media more in the near future to communicate with these groups, representative of approximately 27 million American adults. Of this group men — 23% — are significantly more likely to indicate this than women — 16%.

That said, related findings show that 11% expect to use social media less in the near future to communicate, while 70% expect to use social media the same amount in the near future to communicate with these groups, with women — 74% — being significantly more likely to indicate this than men, at 65%.

Specifically, among the 93% of the U.S. online adult population that communicates with family other than in-person, 60% of women communicate with family through social media, compared to just 42% of men. That equals about 67 million women communicating with family via social media versus 44 million men.

Evan among the 58% of the U.S. online adult population that communicate with work colleagues other than in-person, 34% of women — compare to 22% of men — use this method to stay in touch. According to Harris Interactive, that comes out to 21 million women who communicate with work colleagues compared to 16 million men.

When given the option to choose one communication method to stay in touch with friends (other than in-person), 18% of women — compared to 12% of men — choose social media.

Men are now slightly more likely to use phones to communicate: 75% versus 73% of women.

via MediaPost Publications Talk To Me: Women Top Men As Social Media Communicators 09/23/2011.

While Hispanics account for 16% of the U.S. population, less than 5% of media spending is targeted at Latino consumers — a disparity that’s disgraceful, said Antonio Ruiz, partner and director of communications planning for ad agency The Vidal Partnership.

Ruiz, speaking here Tuesday at the B&C/Multichannel News Hispanic TV Summit, said corporate America needs to understand that reaching Latinos is a “make-or-break” proposition. Vidal, which focuses on the Hispanic market, has $380 million in annual billings.

“I personally think it’s disgusting that only 4.5% of media spending is going toward Hispanic consumers,” Ruiz said. “I think it’s disgusting that we had to make a big deal out of the 2010 Census.”

He added, “I think most organizations in the U.S. don’t know how to fully value the Hispanic contribution to the business — it’s largely perceived as a secondary segment of the population.” In certain markets, Hispanics can represent upwards of 50% or more of spending for specific categories, Ruiz noted.

Kraft Foods, for one, has increased its spending in Hispanic media threefold in 2011, according to Chris Montenegro McGrath, vice president of sustainability and Latino marketing. She declined to provide specific figures but said Kraft is above the 4.5% industry average.

“I feel like, right now, we are spending enough [in Hispanic],” Montenegro McGrath said. “We are on a journey. We were not spending enough and investing in this marketplace. It is embarrassing to admit how few brands we had in Spanish-language media” three years ago.

Montenegro McGrath, who heads Kraft’s three-year-old Hispanic center of excellence internal advisory group, acknowledged that some of the company’s brands “don’t get it…. They just don’t see the Latino opportunity. We have to help them see the opportunity for their brand.”

Ruiz argued that agencies and programmers need to redouble efforts to “move that 4.5% to get to 9%, instead of finding smarter ways of splitting up that 4.5%.”

However, it’s important to put the growth of Hispanic TV advertising spending in context, said Caleb Windover, senior vice president and managing director at MV42 Degrees, a multicultural media agency within Starcom MediaVest Group.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Gee, we’re not spending enough in this industry,’” Windover said. “I think it’s important to recognize accomplishments we as an industry have made. It’s getting better than it was. I look back and see that our rate of growth as a company, 42 Degrees, has been more significant than our general-market counterparts.”

Tom Maney, Fox Hispanic Media senior vice president of ad sales, agreed that the market has made great strides: “The conversation has gone from ‘Why should we advertise in Hispanic’ to ‘How can we effectively market to those consumers.’”

And as long as the return on investment is there, Hispanic media spending will continue to grow. “People don’t cut things that are working. They get rewarded if the business grows,” Montenegro McGrath said.

The panelists also discussed the diversification of the Hispanic TV market, with more choices than ever for both Spanish- and English-speaking Latinos.

Rentrak now measures 32 linear Hispanic networks via set-top box data from 7.8 million households and provides “census-level” measurement of Hispanic content, said Carol Hinnant, senior vice president of national network sales for TV.

With more Hispanic cable networks being measured that means more advertising supply, “which all things being equal means lower CPMs [cost per thousand] for our clients,” Windover said. “It all combines together to ultimately increase budgets but also increase return on investment.”

The trend has also meant more Hispanic viewers are shifting to cable, Fox Hispanic Media’s Maney said. Cable now has 22% share of Latino viewers on a total-day basis, while for Hispanic men it’s up to 28%, he said.

“It’s new content,” he said. “It’s changed from mass appeal to mas appeal.”

NBCUniversal’s Telemundo has addressed the growing diversity of the U.S. Hispanic population with the flagship Spanish-language network and the bilingual cable network mun2, said Christine Escribano, vice president of integrated marketing solutions. “Language is one important tactic [for reaching Hispanic audiences] but it’s just one,” she said.

Ruiz said that over the next decade, as younger marketing executives come up through the ranks, they’ll be more attuned to spending in multicultural media.

“As they take over leadership, the way they see things is going to be more conducive to a multiethnic marketing approach,” he said.

The panel was moderated by Jon Lafayette, business editor of Broadcasting & Cable.

via Hispanic TV Summit: Level Of Ad Spending Is ‘Disgusting’: Vidal’s Ruiz – 2011-09-20 15:40:26 | Multichannel News.

BOSTON, MA–(Marketwire – Sep 13, 2011) – Kantar Media Compete today released data indicating that successful retailers are using free shipping, sales and email promotions to attract increasingly budget-conscious consumers. The results, part of Kantar Media Compete’s quarterly Online Shopper Intelligence Study that tracks cross-channel shopping behavior, also show that more than a third of consumers reported that Twitter has been influential or extremely influential on purchase decisions.

Email, social networking influence purchase decisions; SMS use by retailers remains relatively low

Kantar Media Compete’s study also found that nearly one in three consumers receive more than 20 emails from retailers in a week. And in good news for retailers relying on email, 89 percent of respondents at least occasionally click through to a retail site from an email or visit a retail site immediately after reading an email.via Successful Retailers Use Sales and Email Promotions, Free Shipping to Attract Shoppers Online.