A study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project confirmed what a lot of us in the Latino marketing community have known. Latinos index higher than any other group on Twitter. In a survey conducted last month – running up to the Thanksgiving holiday – 18 percent of Latino respondents who spend time online have a Twitter account, versus 13 percent of non-Hispanic blacks and 5 percent of non-Hispanic whites.
Looking at these and other numbers, many people will ask, “what is it about Latinos – are they more social?” But for marketers, there’s a more immediate, perhaps mundane question: “how do you effectively engage Latinos on Twitter, one of the fastest growing segments on one of the fastest growing networks?”
The question is a lot less simplistic than it sounds. For many marketers today, the raw numbers that characterize the Latino market have gotten more visibility than the soft science that experts use to build meaningful plans for engagement. This is the world of the social Web, and a fascination with the long tail of Latinos alone will only get you so far. What’s required here is a bit of work, though not so much work that it should discourage anyone. It’s just a different kind of work – social work, if you will. Here’s a simple approach that has worked well for many people who are new to the Latino Twitter community. It worked for me. Though I’ve been on Twitter since the early days, I’ve been a resident of the Latino Twittersphere for little more than a year.
Read the entire article at ClickZ.