Hispanic Blog Profile: Ana Lilian Flores and Roxana Soto of Spanglish Baby

Hispanic PR Blog: Tell us about your self, any relevant journalism experience you have and why you started your blog?

Ana Lilian Flores: Born in Houston, TX and raised in El Salvador, I’m truly a child of both worlds. I grew up spending parts of the year on each side of the border and never really knowing where I was from.  As a consequence, I’m fully bilingual, biliterate and bicultural.

After spending five years in Mexico, my husband and I relocated to Los Angeles where we welcomed our now almost three-year-old daughter into our family.

I have 15 years experience working as a television producer focused on the Hispanic and Latin American audience with networks such as Univision, MTV Latin America, mun2 and more.

My blog partner, Roxana A. Soto, is an Emmy-award winning TV producer and journalist who made her career with The Miami Herald, CBS, Univision and Telemundo.

Born in Peru and raised in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and the U.S., she is also fully bilingual, biliterate and bicultural and wants the same for her two children, a son and a daughter, whom she is raising with her husband in Denver.

We’ve been friends since college and have always kept in touch despite the distances between us.  Once we both became mamás, the bond grew tighter and we discovered we both were passionate about raising our girls bilingually and biculturally.  Information-obsessed, as we’re professionally trained to be, we scoured the web for resources and fell short of finding a site, blog or community which catered to our needs of maintaining our heritage alive through our native tongue.  We decided it was our mission to learn more and share what we learned with others in our same situation.  We’ve put all our journalism and production skills to work to find the best experts, create relevant and useful content and cater to the needs of our readers.

AF: Our target are parents who are raising, or plan to raise, bilingual and bicultural children.  We cater to all language combinations, but focus mostly on acculturated Latinos, English/Spanish bilinguals and Spanish dominants.

AF: SpanglishBaby has a very defined niche topic and we are very loyal to it.  We are very specific about the topics we choose to write about as we know our readers come to us expecting a particular topic and we will not betray that trust.  Even our reviews and giveaways are specifically about products or services that cater to bilingual and/or Latino children and their parents.

AF: Yes!  We are very active and love to engage with our readers and friends through social media. Our favorites are definitely Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter:  http://Twitter.com/SpanglishBaby

http://Twitter.com/RoxanaSB

Facebook:  http://Facebook.com/SpanglishBaby

ALF: It’s http://www.spanglishbaby.com/

Not an easy task to accomplish by two freelance mamas, but we somehow manage to update daily,  (Mon.-Fri.), sometimes even twice a day, with the help of the experts on our Ask an Expert panel and our five amazing contributors.

AF: madre@SpanglishBaby.com

AF: We focus on topics of interest to parents raising bilingual and bicultural kids. Anything from the latest research on the positive effects of bilingualism on a child’s brain, to the best dulce de leche recipe, to the coolest new toy in español, to bilingual education, to our own children’s progress learning two languages.  We are also fond of guest posts submitted by readers who share their own experiences as it creates a sense of community.

We will never write reviews or articles that cannot creatively fit with our niche.

AF: Email us at any time.  We do our best to answer on the same day.

AF: We are happy to receive well-thought out and on-target pitches from PR companies and marketers about products or services that are beneficial and relevant to our audience.  If unsure whether a pitch will resonate with us, don’t hesitate to send it and we will honestly give our feedback.

AF: SpanglishBaby is an online resource and community where parents raising bilinguals come for peer and expert advice and support.  Our audience is predominantly Hispanic.  We understand it is a very attractive and captive target audience.  We will help you reach them through honest and creative campaigns.  Through our combined years of experience communicating to the Hispanic audience through various mediums we’ve developed an acute sense of how to deliver the content.  Feel free to contact us to combine efforts to creatively reach our audience.