Joe Kutchera

The following is a preview to the forthcoming book – Latino Link: Communities and Content Online – 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

This article originally appeared on MediaPost. The new report from the Pew Hispanic Trust — Latinos Online — shows that 64% of all U.S. Hispanics use the Internet and that foreign-born Latinos have crossed the tipping point with 52% online. As the Hispanic audience grows, they seek new content and increasingly find and regularly visit foreign web sites. Why is this happening? “Search engines and social networking are making it easier for [U.S. Hispanic] consumers to find and consume content outside of their home country,”

This article originally appeared on MediaPost. 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 costs are at historic lows. And computer and mobile phone prices fall every year. Combine these questions with the

The following is a preview to the forthcoming book – The Spanish Net: How to reach and segment Latinos online – from Paramount Books. Scott Heiferman, now famous for starting MeetUp.com, and Adam Seifer launched Fotolog, a leading photo sharing site, in 2002 as an online community for their friends in Brooklyn, NY to post photos and share them. Instead of building up a domestic fan base, as they thoughts would happen, their user base took them down an unexpected path, according to Yossi Langer,

The following is a preview to the forthcoming book – The Spanish Net: How to reach and segment the 136 million Spanish-speakers online – from Paramount Books. Many U.S. Hispanic publishers and e-commerce sites find that when they launch a site in Spanish targeting U.S. Hispanics many Latin Americans find their site for a number of reasons: 1) Their site has been optimized for search and so other Spanish-speakers find the site 2) 136 million consumers read in Spanish online, most of whom live outside

The following is a preview to the forthcoming book – The Spanish Net: How to reach and segment the 136 million Spanish-speakers online – from Paramount Books. Image via Wikipedia In June of 2009, the Cervantes Institute of Chicago launched a short story contest on their blog with the goal of engaging local writers and Spanish students in the Chicago area. What happened provides a perfect example of how our expectations of launching a Spanish-language promotion or website do not conform to the reality of

With computer prices falling, Internet users skyrocketing and no borders on the Internet, how can marketers turn their international Spanish-language web site visitors into revenues? That is the question that Juan Tornoe and I will answer in our panel discussion at SXSW Interactive in 2010. Please submit your feedback, suggestions and vote for the panel here on SXSW’s panel picker: Some of the questions that we will answer include: 1. How do consumers cross geo-political boundaries to find, read about and buy what they want?

Christine Webster-Moore, the VP of Business Initiatives at Best Buy, recently outlined three goals for how Best Buy wants to increase their sales among Hispanics and Latin Americans at the Hispanic Retail 360 conference: 1) We need to be more fluid in how we invite Spanish-language users to our web site including US Hispanics, Mexicans and visitors in our border stores. 2) We need to provide more creative ways to have our customers buy. We need to experiment more with programs like Flexicompras, our store

Joe Crump, Group VP of Strategy and Planning at Razorfish, recently spoke at the IAB Mexico’s annual conference about his agency’s plans to expand into Latin America.  He shared a few digital success stories that can be brought to Latin America, most notably Obama’s digital marketing campaign and Terra, one of Razorfish’s clients.  You can download his presentation here. Why is Razorfish expanding in the region now? Latin America, he says, is stuck in an “old media” rut.  Online ad spending per user in Latin

This article originally appeared on MediaPost’s Engage:Hispanics column. How can you grow e-commerce by targeting the 25 million Hispanics online? Let’s look at a case study comparing two major retailers and how they managed their “U.S. Hispanic” sites. We can learn a lot from their successes and mistakes. The Home Depot vs. Best Buy The Home Depot launched its Spanish-language e-commerce site for U.S. Hispanics in early 2009, hoping to reach a new audience and grow a new profit center. After only four months, The