Tweet This article originally appeared on FoxNews.com According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics open businesses three times faster than the national average. Once regarded as a minority group, Hispanics now represent the fastest-growing segment of our economy. To make their businesses successful, Latino entrepreneurs in Southern California turn to Eduardo Figueroa, a consultant, author, and workshop leader for almost twenty years. Figueroa reports that many of his clients start their own businesses because they have been laid off and don’t have any other option.

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost. Does your company’s talent pool reflect the audience segments that will deliver the fastest growth? And have your executives fostered opportunities for a diverse leadership team that can best understand multicultural America? These are great questions to consider as consumers visit your stores, call your 1-800 numbers and buy your products and services. All of us in Hispanic marketing know that Hispanics represent the majority of the population growth. And, in many industries, they represent a substantial portion

Tweet This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post. A recent post on WhiteHouse.gov outlines some discouraging statistics on Latinos getting the education they need to succeed later in life: • Less than half of Latino children enroll in any early learning program. • Only half of Latino children earn their high school diploma on time • Those who do finish high school are only half as likely as their peers to be prepared for college. • Only 13 percent of Latinos hold a bachelor’s

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost. How should marketers customize a Facebook initiative for the U.S. Hispanic market? State Farm’s Aymee Zubizarreta answered that question during our recent conversation about how the insurance giant found its voice and connected to its Latino audience with content about music, family and culture on the leading social network. Q: This past April, State Farm became the first national insurance company to create a bilingual (English, Spanish) social networking site for Latinos. Why did State Farm launch a

Tweet This post originally appeared on MediaPost Engage:Hispanics. As the English speaking Latino audience grows in size and importance, how can marketers develop culturally relevant promotions for Hispanics? Bernardo Meza, Brand Manager for Wrigley Multicultural Marketing answered that question for me by describing his company’s Vive tu Música with 5 program, which aims to build awareness for 5 gum among bi-cultural Hispanic consumers. Following is our conversation about his work developing the online Latin rock and pop music talent competition. Why a music promotion? This

Tweet The following article first appeared on Fox News Latino. For years, Latinos have been held back by the “digital divide,” an information and technology gap relative to wealthier audiences that enjoy greater access to expensive computers and broadband connections. But two Internet trends will close that gap in 2011 and beyond: mobile and social media. In fact, experts predict that Hispanics could actually become leaders in adoption of new technology. Today, we still see a digital divide in home computer ownership. Six out of

Tweet I watched this presentation on TED.com months ago from photographer, Phil Borges about the loss of endangered languages and cultures and I couldn’t get it out of my head. The photos, personal stories, and statistics that Borges shared blew me away, especially the opening paragraph: A fact came out of MIT, couple of years ago. Ken Hale, who’s a linguist, said that of the 6,000 languages spoken on Earth right now, 3,000 aren’t spoken by the children. So that in one generation, we’re going

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost. Last week, the leading advertisers convened in Miami for the ANA’s annual Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference. Historically, Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American marketers have fought hard for budgets even though demographic trends point to the fact that today’s minorities will become the majority in the coming decades. Hence, the summit was subtitled, “Multicultural – The New Mainstream.” One marketer who clearly sees the growth of multicultural audiences converging with the growth of social media is McDonald’s. Rick Wion,

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. Bicultural Hispanics often switch back and forth between Spanish and English. To learn why, Elizabeth Perez, the Digital Insights Analyst at ImpreMedia, describes why she chooses content in English or Spanish based on the cultural and political orientation of the news in each language. In-Language media is simply written in a consumer’s native language whereas in-culture media provides news from the perspective of the viewer’s native

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. A few weeks ago, while having a very American lunch of cheeseburgers and milk shakes, my goddaughter Madeline, 11, and her brother Ricardo, 13, asked me, “so, what’s your book about Uncle Joe?” “Well, it’s about how families like yours use the Internet and what is the best ways for companies to communicate with people who speak Spanish,” I responded. Madeline and Ricardo speak Spanish with