Creating Value for Hispanic User Generated Content
Not to sound trite, but I’d like to steal a line from US Weekly to summarize today’s ‘Social Networking and Consumer Generated Content in the Hispanic Market: Has a Value Proposition Emerged?’ roundtable: Hispanics! Just like us!
While the session started with Zia Daniell Wigder, VP and Senior Analyst, Jupiter Research, presenting chart after chart of stats revealing that Hispanics are consistently over-indexing non-Hispanics in terms of online social networking usage, the rest of the panel was spent discussing reasons for engaging in social media and methods used to do so. And guess what? There’s no fundamental difference between how Hispanic and non-Hispanic people take part in all things online.
(Also, as one audience member pointed out, Jupiter’s study was based on results gathered from English-speaking Hispanics—so it can be assumed that we’re still missing data about the online activities of those who only speak Spanish.)
Jose Rivera-Font, VP and General Manager at Yahoo! Hispanic Americas kicked off the discussion by explaining that young Hispanics turn to social networks as a way of identifying with “tribes” through self-expression. Music is an essential part of this identity, as well as one of the main forms of engagement for social networks and user generated content. As the users get older, social networks are still important but the purpose changes to a focus on building more meaningful relationships as well as achieving professional notoriety.
I wasn’t familiar with the online music portal Batanga before coming to ad:tech, and so I’m glad the panel included its Chief Marketing Officer Rick Marroqu√≠n—and not only because he delivered some pretty great one liners throughout the discussion.
Batanga hosts over fifty radio stations all dedicated to the twenty-six different genres of Latin music (including “mood channels” where listeners can hear music that complements their current emotional state) and also hosts over 50,000 user-created radio stations. This is engagement way beyond the “I uploaded a clip to YouTube” level—in order to host a show, you have to commit to playing at least sixty songs from twenty different artists. And out of those 50,000 user-created stations, ¬æ of them air English and Spanish songs. Batanga is literally helping Hispanics redefine Spanish culture by creating new cultural binds.
The question of value in user generated content came up, and immediately Facebook’s failed Beacon initiative is mentioned. Finally, a good summary of what went wrong:
- Users expect everything online to be free, but still recognize there’s inherent value to all content online.
- The value of sharing basic personal information, such as where I went to high school, is a fair exchange for being able to connect with people from said high school, so users feel okay giving that kind of data away.
- But to just share that I bought a pair of shoes at Bloomingdale’s for the sake of sharing? Nope, no thanks, not worth the barter.
The value proposition question turns to Lee Vann, Founder and CEO, Captura Group, who is pretty candid in announcing that Captura’s current project, an American government-owned social media portal for Hispanics, really needed to be “cool” to be valuable to its audience. (Cue audience laughing.)
But he’s quick to explain that Hispanics are over-indexing in social media because they’re culturally inclined to network and make connections with friends and family, while also being a younger population overall. So the Hispanic audience is there and it’s up to us to create relevant methods for generating and sharing digital content. Just like the non-Hispanic audience—it’s all about authentic communication and not being pushy or obvious in your marketing message.
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By Malinda Mueller on 2008 11 12
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