Tweet This post originally appeared on Acento.com How should brands adapt their communications and engage consumers in the age of social media? Surprisingly, a book first published in 1936 best highlights how to “win friends” on social platforms, written long before Al Gore “invented the Internet.” Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” outlines fundamental approaches on how to build long-lasting relationships with friends, colleagues, and consumers. Over the past eight months, our team here at Acento has had the opportunity to

Tweet Which region will provide growth for your business in 2011? Paul Gunning, the Chief Executive Officer at Tribal DDB, recently told me, “Latin America is another China” because it has “millions of consumers with rising purchasing power.” A number of recent articles support that claim: This article from Forbes – Forget China, Look To Latin America – highlights that, “with inflation a concern in the Far East, commodity and consumer-driven economies like Brazil and Chile may be 2011′s biggest winners.” It goes on to

Tweet Recently, I read two books on innovation with two entirely different approaches. The first, Change by Design, was a disappointment even though it is the better known of the two. It actively sells the concept of innovative design. The second, The Victorian Internet, provides greater insights into the process of innovation and the pitfalls of new technologies through a historical context. It tells “the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century’s on-line pioneers.” You would think that the book written by the

Tweet This article first appeared on MediaPost and is a preview of my forthcoming book Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content. Imagine moving to China for a career opportunity and taking your first trip to the grocery store to buy food. What do these packages say? How can I find the ingredients that I want to make the food that I know? Which brand is best? The bottom line: what do you recognize in the store? Nothing! It’s all in Chinese.

Tweet While doing research about data visualization trends for my forthcoming book, Latino Link, I discovered a few eye-opening maps that display Internet and economic statistics in new and fun ways. In addition, when artists and illustrators envision the eighth continent, as Don DePalma calls the Internet in his book Business Without Borders, with a unique view of the virtual world, consumers respond, sharing these maps with friends via email, blogs, and social networks. Let’s take a look at a few examples here. Click on

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

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost and is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. After reading Felipe Korzenny’s and Lee Vann’s column about Hispanics’ adoption of social media relative to other ethnic demographics, a question came to mind: how will social networks affect the acculturation process among Hispanics? The ability to keep in touch with family and friends from countries-of-origin via email, Skype and online newspapers back home makes it easier than ever. Travel

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. Miguel “Mike” Ramirez, one of the founders of MedioTiempo.com, tells me that their site was officially “born” on February 7, 2000. When it launched, the U.S. Hispanic market didn’t even enter their mind. They built Medio Tiempo for Mexico. Back then, only two options existed for Mexican-Americans to find news about Mexican soccer: the TV stations Univision and Telemundo. Typically, coverage for teams like Chivas, Pumas

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. How can we develop great content online for the Spanish-language world in the years ahead? Much like the Madrid-based blog networks in my previous post, we can answer this question by looking to one of the leaders of publishing in Spain: Gumersindo Lafuente, who founded SoiTu.es, a truly innovative content portal, previously ran the newspaper site ElMundo.es and as of January, 2010 became a co-director of

Tweet Did you read this article – Malwebolence – from the New York Times’ magazine section this past weekend about the young “trolls” who harass and humiliate strangers? Scary. Wait a second. How much information about myself have I put online? Take a read. It will make you think twice about what information you put on your blog, Facebook profile, MySpace, etc. The term comes from the word malevolence. To be fair though, the Times provides a good counter point to the scary trolls that