Think Multicultural

TM’s own Jose Villa has a post over on MediaPost’s Engage:Hispanics titled ‘Hispanic-fluentials’ Share About Products, Brands about using blogs to reach the Hispanic market.

Jose points out:

The growth of the Hispanic blogosphere represents two very important trends. First, the growth in the number of Hispanics writing blogs represents the emergence of a new group of Hispanic influencers with a very visible footprint. These are individuals who are going online and sharing their opinions with the world, or at least their friends, family and broader community. They are talking politics, fashion and business, among other topics.

A March 2008 Burson-Marsteller study revealed that the most influential Hispanic consumers, dubbed “Hispanic-fluentials,” use the Internet to share their views about products and brands as well as to connect with friends and family. Specifically, 49% of Hispanic-fluentials used blogs to tell others about product experiences.

The second trend hinges on the fact that Hispanics are reading what bloggers (both Hispanic and non-Hispanic) are writing. They are spending more and more time reading news, commentary and opinions written by individuals and not tied to the traditional once-per-day, five-days-a-week newspaper news cycle of the old media world. This represents a marked shift in media consumption.

There’s more to it, so go to MediaPost and check it out: here.

One of my favorite blogs is EveryDayShouldBeSaturday. It’s about college football and funny as hell – two of my very favorite things. However, Orson (the blogger) has one annoying habit – about every 4th or 5th post he resorts to the blogging equivalent of mailing it in – he posts a video. Posting a video, usually by embedding YouTube, is a blogger’s way of saying “I don’t have anything interesting to say, so here, watch some TV.”

Sometimes video is pertinent and interesting, like when a blogger is referencing something or someone in particular (like Rey Maualuga), but just as often it means that a blogger doesn’t have anything to say.

The ability to post photo/audio/video is relatively new, as is blogging. When people get new tools, it takes a while to figure out the best way to use them. Eventually the balance will get worked out. In the meantime, bloggers with little to say will keep posting video.

Here at TM, we get a lot of emails from PR hacks trying to call our attention to various new products and companies. Some of them are sort of relevant to what we write about, but most of it is not. Honestly, I don’t mind getting all these press releases, as it is interesting to see what people are pushing (and PR hacks got to earn a living, right)?

On the other hand, we’ve discussed blog comment spam before. Lately, there is a Hispanic social network that is leaving a lot of comment spam on our site. Do you really think that a blog about interactive marketing is going to be dumb enough to let you get away with that?

It’s our policy to avoid naming names in these kinds of situations, but please stop.

Thanks