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2017 Hispanic Social Marketing Report
“Social media allows us to take complex things and simplify them for humanity,” he says. “We are brand culture, and communications.”
HMO ● SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CUSTOMIZED & CULTURAL
In 2013, Lance Rios quit his full-time job and devoted his entire working hours to social marketing, as the founder of Being Latino.
Formed out of a 2009 Facebook page that gathered Latinos from all backgrounds, thanks to a merger with a short-form social media-focused production house, Digibunch, Being Latino is best-described as a U.S. Hispanic market social media marketing company.
Brands are connected with social media influencers, across all of the major social media platforms.
It’s an accidental journey for Rios.
“This started in an open forum type of environment. I didn’t have the intention of having it become a company, but we started getting some brand deals.”
That’s when he said goodbye to working in digital ad sales at popular online video portal Vevo and dove into Hispanic-focused social media marketing full-time.
While Rios plainly says that Being Latino targets the U.S. Hispanic social media marketing arena, there’s more to that.
“Having a sales background helps, as I know how to position the product, and that’s strategically important,” he says.
Rios also believes that there was a void in culturally relevant social marketing that specifically catered to the second- and third-generation English-dominant Hispanic that still used some Spanish, when it was most apropos.
From there, Rios believes social media in the last three years has established scalable ROI opportunities, while an increase in time spent online watching video product allowed for “eyes on” metrics in the social media realm.
“I was seeing so much engagement on these platforms,” Rios says of the social media marketing targeting Latinos across the key social media players. “There are so many opportunities to do something scalable.”
But, Rios takes care in explaining the chief purpose of Being Latino.