Hispanics prefer to "talk about" Facebook activities rather than "like" them

Facebook's new "talking about" feature has everybody buzzing. This automatically deployed tool reports on what their friends are "talking about" by providing instantaneous updates in their news feeds. No one is more interested to see what new information these changes will yield than marketers.

One emerging trend that's raised the attention of digital marketers is what this new "Talking About" feature reveals about Hispanic social media users. According to data reported by ClickZ News, Hispanic users are more likely to "talk about" a business or organization than they are to "like" them. Even more revealing is the fact that the many "popular" sites geared towards Hispanics aren't the ones that generate the most discussion.

For example, Facebook en Espanol has collected nearly 9,500,000 "likes," however, only 1.7 percent of the users who say they like it have engaged in discussion or link sharing. Conversely, Wendy's Latino, a page with only around 3,700 "likes" has had even more success getting people to "talk about" its page - nearly 50 percent of users who like it contribute to the site in another way.

For marketers, one of the important early trend is that Hispanic audiences appear to prefer engaging with smaller, more personalized pages like Wendy's Latino rather than larger, more generic ones such as Facebook en Espanol. In order to have online users contribute, and therefore expand the usage of the new "talking about" feature, the content being shared must have an intrinsic value to the Latino audience. Posts that engage users by asking pressing or thought-provoking questions are more likely to see success, as do posts about Latino holidays, humor or celebrities.

Of course, before businesses can take advantage of the extended outreach to the $1 trillion Hispanic community offered by the "talking about" feature, they need to make sure their Facebook ads and pages are consistently reaching the right audience.

Semcasting's facebook microTargeting can help organizations increase their Facebook presence by ensuring their social ads make it to the right people at the right time. The platform uses high-quality demographic information to identify Hispanic users and present them with the most relevant content. Once their ads are viewed and the targeted content accessed, online users can begin "talking about" them and widen their outreach even further.