Hispanics are really more social

As a follow up to my previous post, I wanted share the highlights of my recent presentation, Are Hispanics Really More Social? and also some great insights that I picked up at this week’s Hispanic PR and social media conference in Dallas, Texas.

I chose a rhetorical question for the title of the presentation because most of us know that being social is hardwired into Hispanic culture. Being at the conference with a couple hundred Hispanics really brought this point to life. The atmosphere was friendly, fun and-well-social.

In addition to being highly social, Hispanics consume a ton of media. I came across statistics that indicate that Hispanics teens spend 13 hours per day with media, more than any other ethnic group.

I then took a look at technology usage and showed that Hispanics are leapfrogging to the latest and greatest technologies, including mobile. What’s more, Hispanics have an extremely positive view of the technology and once they get their hands on it, the use it and love it. Here are some key facts:

84% of Hispanics have a broadband connection vs. 79% of Whites
36% of Hispanics view the Internet as tool for building a better life vs. 30% of general market
68% of Hispanics are wireless Internet users vs. 54% of Whites
81% of Hispanics text vs. 62% of Whites

Hispanic social media, the perfect storm

When you combine the highly social Hispanic culture with strong technology usage, you get a perfect storm. I argued that social media is the perfect avenue to unleash the Hispanic culture. For the most part, every day Hispanic culture is confined to neighborhoods throughout America. Social media changes that. It gives every day Hispanics a voice and provides a global, viral platform for spreading the culture.

When it comes to social media sites, I showed an analysis using data from Quantcast.com and ran down the most popular social media sites among Hispanics. Here are the top 5:

YouTube.com, 15 million monthly Hispanic visitors
MySpace.com, 8.8 million monthly Hispanic visitors
Facebook.com, 6.2 million monthly Hispanic visitors
Twitter.com, 3.0 million monthly Hispanic visitors
Univision.com, 1.9 million monthly Hispanic visitors

I spent some time talking about Twitter and highlighted new data that indicates that Hispanics are heavy users. I was able to bring this point to life, and have fun with the audience, by showing real time, lively, insightful and highly social Tweets from conference attendees.

The Hispanic social media opportunity is wide open

I wrapped up with a call to action for marketers to engage with Hispanics through social media. US Hispanics are extremely active with social media and few companies are proactively leveraging this medium to reach them.

So don’t be shy. Be like Hispanics. Be social.