**The following post comes from our DC-based colleague and FH Digital expert Mark Story.**

I was having lunch the other day with one of the thought leaders of the intersection of online and politics and I shared a thought that has been haunting me since the last electoral cycle: the “Hispanic vote.” We are both horrified that, as well as the political Web sites have done in pushing out information to discrete, segmented, target audiences, why is there a standard “en español” link – a one size fits all?

Let’s drill down the numbers like the campaign managers do:

• There were 122,267,553 votes cast in the 2004 presidential election.
• Both the number of Latinos registered to vote (9.3 million) and the number of Latinos who cast ballots (7.6 million) in November 2004 marked increases of political participation over the 2000 election that were larger than for any other ethnic or racial group in percentage terms.
• A study from the Pew Hispanic Center posits that 78 percent of Hispanics online are English dominant, 32 percent of them are Spanish dominant, and 76 percent are bilingual.
• So you reach the English-speakers with English, the Spanish speakers with Spanish, but what about the 76 percent who are bilingual? What do you have to say, and in which language to those 7,068,000 people? And how to you demonstrate that you get them?

Given the segmented nature of the Internet and the further segmentation of the Spanish-speaking communities, carving up the potential electorate into chunks who will receive information only in English or only in Spanish is a grave tactical error. Both Republican and Democratic campaigns would be well served by developing sections of their Web sites that are targeted to young, bilingual potential voters who are often spoken of as “The Holy Grail” of political campaigns.

A terrific example is the online version of Latina Style magazine. Is it in English? Yes. Is it specifically targeted to a slice of the United States-based Hispanic audience wanting to receive information in English? Yes. It is right on the mark, in terms of delivering information for the female component of the 76 percent that Pew says is bilingual, and likely prefers to receive information in English with a “Latino/a flavor?” Heck, yes.

And not to beat a dead horse, but an additional, online-only example targeting a younger demo is www.vidagirl.com. In their own words ’VidaGIRL is the hip and informative English language online magazine and newsletter that celebrates the life, culture, style and spirit of today’s young Latinas and multi-cultural women.’

So why, with in an age of micro-targeting, data mining, sophisticated political operations spending millions of dollars a day, do political campaigns think that we exclusively hablamos inglés o español?

Me pregunto por qué. I wonder why.

Mark Story

Guest blog from Mark Story from FH Hispania’s digital team.

The State Of Blogging in the Hispanic and Minority Communities: a Report from the Front Lines

José Antonio Vargas, a writer for the Washington Post, recently attended the Yearly Kos convention, by far the largest and most influential gathering of bloggers, although it clearly skews to the political Left. He noted:

“Walking around McCormick Place during the weekend, it became clear that only a handful of the 1,500 conventioneers — bloggers, policy experts, party activists — are African American, Latino or Asian. Of about 100 scheduled panels and workshops, less than a half-dozen dealt directly with women or minority issues.”

Not good.

While some statistics differ slightly, the Pew Hispanic Center reports that 56 percent of Hispanics in the U.S. use the Internet, and a whopping 67 percent of 18- to 27-year-olds — the group most likely to visit social-networking and blogs – are online.

So what’s the problem? Hispanic bloggers are online. There are clearly sufficient numbers. So who is pitching them? Who is advertising with them, something that will help monetize and advance Hispanic blogging?

Read more »

This past June 29, I had the opportunity to witness firsthand the latest consumer gadget craze while working on the launch of the iPhone for one of our clients. Tech (and more precisely) Mac and iPod fans from all walks of life flocked to stores to cheer and welcome the latest device to capture their imaginations. America learned from TV reports of the frenzied fans waiting in line to be the first to adopt this new technology, and countless others heard first-person accounts from family and friends who stood (or sat, even camped) in lines across the country.

One such fan was first in line at the Apple store on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. As reported by The Miami Herald, Jorge Bernal stood in the rain, subsisted on Red Bull and caffeine, and anxiously awaited his turn to hold an iPhone in his hand and navigate its many features. Many Hispanics like him joined in and demonstrated how consumers from the demographic are thirsty for the latest and greatest in consumer technology.

What happened confirmed what research reports have been telling me for a while – that Latinos are early technology adopters. They outpace peers in using data, ringtones and other mobile features and according to Forrester Research, Spanish-dominant Hispanics are the group most likely to stream or download music at 35 percent. They, too, wanted an iPhone, which after all has the heart of a music player.

Research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project indicates that Hispanics make up 18 percent of the Omnivore tech user category – a term coined by Pew to describe an elite 8 percent of the population who are leading the digital age. Omnivores are avid users of all things digital, generate content, and stay connected the most. This month, a report from Jupiter Research also declares that Hispanics will fuel the growth of online shopping. So, when the time comes to be smitten by the next it gadget, make sure to count us in.