The Internet Is Key To Latino Politics

Here’s something interesting to think about while you tap away at your keyboard: P365 dusted-off a Forrester Research study that claims:

forty percent of Latinos used the Web for content creation and sharing (blog, upload video and photos, create web-pages, etc.).  By comparison, only 12 percent on non-Latinos used the Internet for these purposes.

This is huge — politically, socially, economically. The same P365 report speaks of a new “digital divide” that has to do with access points (it assumes that most Latinos have access to the Internet) and digital skills.

It’s about quantity and restrictions; the more places you have to access the web and the less restrictions you have to use it, the more involved you’ll be. And the more internet autonomy you have, the more you’ll learn to participate:  “do information searches, send text messages, tweet, share content.”

And because Latinos, as a group, are younger than most other Americans, they are more likely to to be economically engaged and politically active through the interwebs.

The question for non-Latinos — marketers; commercial and political — is how to reach this connected Latino community.  Thinkmulticultural.com has a good piece today about that:

We have all seen multiple charts and statistics that show that Hispanics are at the forefront of mobile device adoption and usage. We are aware that they have the highest penetration for mobile phones (eMarketer, 2011), that they over-index on smartphone adoption (Nielsen, 2011), and that they are more likely (vs. the general market) to use their mobile device to download music, play games, and access social networking sites (Scarborough, 2010). Unfortunately, most of the research out there regarding Hispanics and mobile technology focuses on basic penetration and usage data.

Their conclusion? Reach them where they live: “At any given moment, 45% of Hispanic shoppers at any retail location have their smartphone with them .”