360DigitalInfluence

Latinos and Hispanics in Web 2.0 are in the sweet spot. Over the course of the last few days, whether it be at Netroots Nation in Las Vegas, the Bridge Conference in the beltway or within Ogilvy’s own LatinRed professional network during an event in New York City, I have found myself in conversations with various folks talking about the opportunity found in engaging this demographic online here in the States.

So what is the opportunity?

At the end of last year and beginning of this year, I was thrilled to see a couple of recent studies that provided a quantitative backing to what I and others in the industry have been saying for years. Latinos are in Social Media.

According to a report released by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Internet & American Life Project in December of 2009, internet use among Latino adults rose by 10 percentage points from 54% to 64% between 2006- 2008. In comparison, the rates for whites rose four percentage points, and the rates for blacks rose only two percentage points during that time period.

A recent report published by AOL and Cheskin states that the number of Hispanics online has grown faster than the growth of the total US population. Two similarly striking findings of this report are that Latinos have more confidence in online product rating sites than their friends’ opinions (78%: 28%) and that they are earlier adopters of technology, more so than general market users.

Moreover, the AOL and Cheskin report found the percentage of bloggers in the Latino community to be at 21%.

So what does all this mean?

The numbers show that Latinos are:
-A significant presence in the Web 2.0 space and growing
-Content producers
-Early adopters
-Significantly influenced by online product ratings

Although two recent studies, “How Young Latinos Communicate with Friends in the Digital Age” and “The Latino Digital Divide: The Native Born versus The Foreign Born,” just released by Pew report that Latinos are still playing catch up to their non-Latino counterparts online, the reports also state that younger native-born Latinos are embracing the technology enthusiastically. According to the reports:

- 85 percent of native-born Latinos older than sixteen use the internet
- 80 percent of native-born Latinos between sixteen and twenty five use cellphones and
- 78 percent of native-born Latinos between sixteen and twenty five with internet access use social networking sites.

With one out of every four children being born in the US of Hispanic origin, the significance of these findings should not be lost on us as it relates to this market or the opportunity it presents in the private, nonprofit and political sectors.

To not realize on this opportunity would be foolish.

It’s like catching a baseball on the ’sweet spot’ of the bat. If you don’t swing, you can’t knock it out of the park. It’s time to swing and swing now!

I see posts on lots of social media blogs with weekly updates on the most successful Facebook Pages or types of Facebook Pages (example below) and they always include the same metric: number of fans (now called “Connections”). Likely this is because that number is the most public metric to compare but a little digging into the engagement on a Page came tell you a lot about its success.

You would never measure the success of a retailer by how many people entered the store or the success of a services company by how many people visit the website so why do people get to lazy with Facebook? Here are the metrics that really matter in a successful strategy and while fan count is one of them it may not be your most important. continue reading

The World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world, is quickly approaching. Starting June 11^th, 32 teams representing different countries from around the world will compete for the soccer title that has been given every four years since 1930 (with an exception of 1942 and 1946 due to WWII). But 2010 is a particularly special and relevant year. Why, you ask? Because of social media!

Social Media as we know it did not exist during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Twitter did not launch until July 2006. Facebook didn’t become public until September 2006. YouTube existed but videos looked like this #6 most popular YouTube video of 2006. Now, only 4 years later, Facebook has over 400 million members and more than 50 million tweets are sent each day. These platforms, which were infants during the last World Cup, are now globally available and hugely popular.

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When I first read about a new work-around to add Google Analytics to Facebook Pages I was set to geek out and asked recent FBML experts Mike Mangi and Jay Marrow to help me set it up.  I added it to our 360 DI Facebook Page and let it run for about five days.

Verdict: Nice to have but not need to have. Not worth the trouble for basic Pages but an easy lift to add to a custom Tab for campaign tracking. Details after the jump. continue reading

Word of mouth practitioners often find themselves in uncharted territory. The majority of the digitally led programs being developed or put into the marketplace simply could not have existed two years ago.  Sometimes not even two months ago.

As a result, planners and strategists in our industry rely on piles of research to gain insights into what’s likely to work for a particular audience. Some of that research comes from inside our own walls, sometimes we consult outside experts and publishers to make sure we know as much as humanly possible about a particular topic. The latter can come from peer-reviewed academic journals or independent publishers like eMarketer or Forrester.

Beyond those sources, though, there’s been a sharp uptick in research from a new universe of resources.  Some doing great work.  Some not.

Here are a few warning signs that suggest you could be relying on some shaky data…

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Apologies that Facebook Friday is coming at you a day late this week but here in Washington DC we got TWO blizzards so I hope you’ll forgive us. The 2010 Winter Olympics started yesterday and of course every major athlete, organization, and sponsor has a Facebook campaign going on. Here are some recommendations for getting the most out of the games using Facebook.

The Officials - Inside Facebook has a good run-down of the main Facebook pages from the IOC, Visa, Vancouver, and NBC. None of these stand outs but some are a great way to keep track of scores and upcoming events if you’re a hard core fan. The majority of them simply repurpose content or sweepstakes from their website or YouTube and the applications are action oriented, inviting fans to learn about the sports or get into the action with virtual skiing, speed skating, or hockey.

The Athletes- There are lots of Athletes who manage their own fan pages and if you have a sport or an athlete you love these are really fun and the best way to feel like you’re there. Brand pages make it easy for athletes to share their stories and experiences with fans through status updates, blogs, and multimedia; today USA’s Lindsey Vonn posted a status update that she was in her condo baking banana bread and is her injury is healing nicely. Vonn and other athletes and also using Twitter but in Vonn’s case you can tell it’s linked off of her Facebook so the posts don’t make much since when their cut off at 140 characters.

Your Friends- Last week, Facebook quietly rolled out their next jab at Twitter: a search feature that letsyou look at friends’ posts and everyone else’s. Search for “Olympics” and you can see status updates, photos, videos, or links your friends are sharing related to the games. The search functions aren’t nearly as flexible as Twitter search and the use of hastags hasn’t appeared yet but if privacy advocates don’tcomplain about this new feature I think we’ll see a new version of the now-dead Lexicon in 2010.

Overall, I’m underwhelmed with branded Facebook campaigns this year because they didn’t take advantage of human element of platform.

In 2008, our team worked with Lenovo to build the Voices of the Summer Games. We found 100 relatively-unknown Olympic athletes from around the world, armed them with Lenovo products, and asked them to blog about their experiences. The reason the program was a success was because it reminded people about who these athletes are: not everyone is going to win gold; most of these athletes have jobs andfriends and families outside of their competition and are living the dream of their moment to compete against the best in the world. Had this program been done today with the flexibility of brand pages, Facebook would be the perfect platform to bring these great stories to life and cheer on the unsung heroes of the games.

Briefly noted- USA Today had an article about broader social media use at the Olympics: here.

In his famous visit to the Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin developed a theory suggesting a link between the environment and evolution. He cataloged the incredible biodiversity of plant and animal life and the unique evolutionary quirks that allows these creatures to thrive.

B2B Marketers are sometimes considered to be behind the evolutionary curve of most digital trends when compared to their B2C brethren.  But like Darwin’s turtles in the Galapagos, the B2B Marcom species is evolving in this space because the social web environment happens to be extraordinarily well suited for their needs as they work to build trust, generate and convert leads, and provide a mechanism for sustained engagement.

Here’s how… continue reading

People hate Google Sidewiki. It’s an ugly word, but people hate Google Sidewiki. The internet is filled with frustration, angst, and incredulity of people who want to know a.) how to get rid of it and b.) how a company with a “Don’t Be Evil” mantra can look at themselves in the mirror after developing something that is so inarguably evil.

I love Google Sidewiki. It mixes the brand engagement of a Facebook Fan Page with the free speech of Twitter. I can now go to a brand’s website and tell future visitors how much I love a brand or how I think it could be better (constructive and fair, of course). If you had Google Sidewiki you could see how I recently sucked up to not only my boss, but also my boss’s boss. It’s great. continue reading

Please join us at an 8 am - 12 noon “unconference” on Friday, August 21st, in Atlanta - PR Camp Atlanta - organized by Dan Greenfield of Bernaise Source Media.

This event will be a fast-paced interactive learning experience free of panels and Powerpoint.   Learn and exchange ideas about social media relevance to senior executives, new approaches to measurement and effective sharing of knowledge.

We”ll be co-leading a session on measurement.  Here’s the full list of who’s helping guide the sessions:

- James Andrews, Managing Partner, Everywhere
- Melanie Babcock, SVP, Digital Strategy & Services, Manning Selvage & Lee
- Debbie Curtis-Magley, Public Relations Manager, UPS
- Bert Dumars, VP, E-Business & Interactive Marketing, Newell Rubbermaid
- Peter Fasano, Principal/Lead Catalyst, mass+logic
- Carol Flammer, Managing Partner, mRELEVANCE, LLC
- Christopher Jones, Digital Strategist, Ketchum PR
- Irfan Kamal, Vice President, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence
- Katie Mingo, Senior Marketing Associate, Delta Airlines
- Marilynn Mobley, SVP, Strategic Counsel, Edelman PR
- Shirley Powell, SVP, Corporate Communications, Turner Broadcasting System
- Jenny Schmitt, President and Director of Client Strategy, CloudSpark

Register here.

Earlier today John Bell and I formally introduced the Conversation Impact(TM) measurement model at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Audience Measurement 4.0.  Here’s a brief overview of the model, its goals and planned evolution.

The model was developed by our team to provide brands with a comprehensive, recognizable framework for tracking social media campaigns.   We relied heavily on our experience with a range of social media campaigns for both B2B and B2C clients, and considered the types of questions and reporting requests we receive with every new project or request for information.

We focus on simplicity and comparability across media - the latter, to help guide marketers with media allocation.  We categorize our metrics into 3 areas, corresponding roughly to objectives and “marketing funnel” stages; each is shown below, with representative metrics (the metrics are selected based on unique client needs).   Included are both familiar and new metrics.

Image courtesy of Crimson Hexagon

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