Fifty-Two million Hispanics live in the United States. They will represent 30% of the population by 2050, with $1.2 trillion in buying power (source: AHAA Hispanic Fast Facts). Hispanics are rapidly adopting internet, mobile and social media, and using these technologies to make purchasing decisions.
A look at the ComScore Media Metrix gives a picture of just how online and social Hispanics have become in recent years. More than 60% are online and regularly visit social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.
Hispanics Online By The Numbers:
32 million Hispanics online
22 million Hispanic Facebook monthly visitors
18 million Hispanic YouTube monthly visitors
3.2 million Hispanic Twitter monthly visitors
2.8 million Hispanic LinkedIn monthly visitors
787,000 Hispanic Tumblr monthly visitors
Hispanics are also more likely to own a smartphone 57% versus the general population 45% (source: Nielsen). Hispanics are using their mobile phones to make purchasing decisions, 20% view reviews and 16% make purchases .
Marketers are taking notice and investing heavily. eMarketers estimates that 88% of marketers will target digital campaigns at Hispanic consumers.
The Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber Commerce held a panel during Digital Capital Week exploring how Hispanic mobile and social media adoption is changing Hispanic Marketing. I helped moderate the panel, and here are my key takeaways as well as an info-graphic of the statistics and examples I shared.
Segmenting within the Hispanic consumer base is key
What Hispanic consumer segment you are targeting impacts communication campaign choices like language, social channels and technology platforms. Latinos in Social Media (Latism) DC Director Jennifer Lubrani shared how the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) uses a mix of social networks as well as web banners to reach the different segments within the Hispanic market. CDC worked with LATISM on an immunization awareness blogger outreach and twitter chat campaign.
Culturally Relevant is more Important than Language
Simply translating creative into Spanish misses an opportunity to truly engage consumers. Alison Lemon from the Food & Drug Administration shared how they created ¡Nunca Más! Novelas telenovelas to engage Hispanics on safe medication usage. The series generated 6 million impressions and 14 K plus views by using social medis, online banners and mobile ads to reach Hispanics.
Explore new platforms to increase the ROI of your Hispanic campaigns 
Hispanics are new platform early adopters. Going beyond Facebook and Youtube brings great opportunities to increase your campaign’s reach and performance. Tom Dorf of Mocospace (one of the largest multicultural mobile web sites and game platforms with 3.5 million US hispanic monthly visitors) shared the success of their McDonald’s in-game placements, which generated over 1.6 million in-game engagements.
Be ready to engage and interact
You have to be prepared to engage and interact with your 
Hispanic consumer via social channels. Carla Briceno from Bixal shared how March of Dimes focuses in on responding and interacting on its Spanish langague NacerSano channels on Facebook and Twitter.
Here is the Infographic we created for the occasion:
How are you reaching Hispanics through mobile and social networking?