Tweet So often, when friends learn that I speak Spanish, they tell me, “oh yeah, I studied Spanish in high school but I don’t remember anything. I’m not good at learning languages.” If I could have a nickel every time I heard that, I think I’d be a millionaire. Tim Ferriss’ video on TED.com below highlights how he learned Japanese, Tango dancing and how to overcome his fear of swimming. “Fear is your friend,” he says. It can point you to what you can do

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. 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 of the U.S. 3) Sites in the U.S.

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content 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 the World Wide Web. Salvador Vergara, the librarian

Tweet 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

Tweet Interesting news in Acento‘s email newsletter today from Steve Roth, their director of business development. Back in February 2008, Facebook tapped its own user base to translate the social network’s interface into Spanish. That project is a great case study on how to leverage the power of social media to enhance a brand and build a user base. At the time Facebook had about 2.3 million active users in Spanish-speaking countries. Fewer than six months later, Facebook reached 2.5 million active users in Chile

Tweet 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

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost and is an early preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. 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

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost and is an early preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. In a recent report from Pew Hispanic Center, U.S. Hispanics represented over 50% of the U.S. population growth since 2000. In our current economic climate, one would think that that be the kind of growth that marketers would aggressively seek out. While Hispanic media investment overall has grown considerably, especially television, the online ad segment has under-indexed relative to