Body language is an important part of the communication process. Noticing the signals that people send out with their body language is a very useful social skill. All who specialize in research, grassroots marketing, community outreach, event marketing understand that body language is a key body of knowledge to have.
This is the first of a Hispanic culture series on body language and gestures in Latin American countries.
The meaning of gestures in Mexico
A warm, somewhat soft handshake is the customary greeting among both men and women. Men should let the woman make the first move toward handshaking. After the second or third meeting, Mexican men may begin with or add the abrazo, the embrace along with a few pats on the back. Women friends will embrace lightly and pretend to kiss a cheek.
In some areas of Mexico, you may encounter an unusual addition to the handshake where, after gripping the palm, the two people slide their hands upward to grasp each other’s thumbs.
Many Mexicans are ‘touch oriented.’ This means they may linger over a handshake, they may touch the forearm or elbow, or they may even casually finger the lapel of the other person’s suit. All these touches merely signify a willingness to be friendly nothing more.
If a man stands with his hands on his hips, it suggests hostility.
Deference is shown to the elderly, so give way to them in public and don’t object if they are waited on first.
Never visit churches or religious sites while wearing shorts, tank tops, or cut-off shirts or shorts.
The national drink in Mexico is tequila. To drink it properly, here is the procedure: place a pinch of salt in the depression of your left hand between thumb and forefinger; then lick the salt and quickly take a drink of tequila; follow this by sucking on a lime wedge.
You can call attention to yourself or call a waiter by lifting your hand above your head or maybe a bit lower with the index finger extended upwards and adding a “Pssst!” or “Pshhh!” sound. This is not considered rude and it also applies to other cultures such as Haiti, Argentina, and Spain.
Patience is important; avoid showing anger if and when you encounter delays or interruptions.
people may not tell you how they feel about you but they always show you
https://hispanic-marketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/body-language-in-Mexico.jpg348638Havi Goffanhttps://hispanic-marketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/targetlatino-enfold-logo1.pngHavi Goffan2011-04-06 15:02:472018-03-28 23:59:02Body language: the meaning of gestures in Mexico
When comparing the Press Releases the Pew Hispanic sent out on October 5, 2010 and on November 3, 2010, one cannot but wonder. What is exactly the Latino vote? And do people really understand this Latino vote?
The Pew announced prior to the Congressional Elections that their research indicated that “65% of Latino registered voters say they plan to support the Democratic candidate in their local congressional district.” The findings pointed towards the prediction that in a year when support for Democratic candidates has eroded, the party’s standing among one key voting group—Latinos—appeared as strong as ever.
The latino vote and immigration reform principles. Photo Credit: www.truthdig.com
One month later, for Tuesday’s midterm elections, Hispanic vote makes history. For the first time ever, three Latino candidates – all of them Republicans – won top statewide offices. In New Mexico, voters elected the nation’s first Latina governor, Republican Susana Martinez. In Nevada, Republican Brian Sandoval won the governor’s race and became Nevada’s first Hispanic governor. And in Florida, Republican Marco Rubio won the U.S. Senate race.
How much does this research predict what Latinos think in politics or who they will support? Everybody seems to believe that immigration is at the forefront in the Hispanic agenda. This survey shows that immigration does not rank as a top voting issue for Hispanics. Rather, they rank education, jobs and health care as their top three issues of concern for this year’s congressional campaign. Immigration ranks as the fifth most important issue for Latino registered voters and as the fourth most important issue for all Latinos.
Among the report’s other findings:
-Majorities of almost all demographic groups of Latino registered voters say they will vote for the Democratic Party candidate in their local congressional election Nov. 2. Only among Republican Latino registered voters does a majority (74%) say they will support the Republican congressional candidate.
-Some groups of Latino registered voters are more motivated than others to vote this year. More than six-in-ten (62%) of those who are ages 50 to 64 are absolutely certain they will vote, as are 61% of those who have at least some college education, 58% of those who are English dominant and 58% of Latino registered voters ages 65 or older.
-Fewer than four-in-ten (38%) of Latino registered voters who are Spanish dominant say they are absolutely certain to vote this year. This is lower than any other demographic group of Latino registered voters.
-Some six-in-ten (59%) Latino registered voters are dissatisfied with the direction the country is headed, down from 70% in July 2008 (Lopez and Minushkin, 2008a).
-Two-thirds (66%) of Latino registered voters say they talked about the immigration policy debate in the past year with someone they know. The report, based on a national survey of 1,375 Hispanic adults, including 618 registered voters, looks at Latinos’ partisan preferences in the congressional elections; their party identification; their level of voter motivation; and the issues they identify as important in the upcoming elections.
I believe that people should stop looking at Hispanics as one whole block where they all vote the same. Latinos are as varied as they come and their political preferences match their upbringing, the current situation, their education level, their country of origin’s political history and how it affected them and their acculturation levels.
Any company that comes in contact with online Hispanic consumers would be negligent not to include them on its social media marketing strategy. The focal point should be the identification of the technologies and social media channels that are a strategic fit.
By Havi Goffan
Any company that comes in contact with online Hispanic consumers would be negligent not to include them in its social media marketing strategy.
U.S.-based Hispanic consumers are significantly more likely to participate in online social media than their non-Hispanic counterparts, making a social media strategy a must for any marketer wanting to reach this group online, according to a new report from Forrester Research Inc.
The research findings are as follows:
Online Hispanics are more involved and likely to listen to word-of-mouth
69% of 3,000 online Hispanics are Spectators, meaning that they watch, read or listen to what others have created online.
Only 42% of non-Hispanics online are Spectators
Online Hispanics are more active
40% of online Hispanics have the highest level of online activity and are characterized as Creators, meaning that they take part in such online activities as blogging, publishing web pages and uploading audio and video.
Only 12% of non-Hispanics online consumers participate in these activities.
Online Hispanics have a higher level of “Influentials”
77% of online Hispanic adults take part in some sort of online social activity: Forrester characterized this group as influential, reporting that on average 60% tell friends and family about products that interest them.
more than 70% of all Hispanics surveyed said they stay with brands they like, suggesting that marketers who successfully build relationships with them now will have advocates for the long term.
Why are Hispanics more predisposed toward online social networking?
First, Hispanics are customarily early adopters of entertainment technologies, and this corresponds online to the use of video, audio and other related social media technologies such as blogging.
Second, Hispanic culture emphasizes the group over the individual, therefore Hispanic consumers tend to look to others for advice or agreement on product choices.
Third, according to research, “even though many U.S.-born Hispanic consumers prefer to use the Spanish language, many media publishers and marketers in the U.S. don’t offer this option. Social networking provides Hispanics with opportunities to fill that online gap by contributing their own Spanish-language content”, Forrester says.
Hispanics social media marketing strategy – a must
Any company that comes in contact with online Hispanic consumers would be negligent not to include them on its social media marketing strategy. The focal point should be the identification of the technologies and social media channels that are a strategic fit.
https://hispanic-marketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/box.jpg350400Havi Goffanhttps://hispanic-marketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/targetlatino-enfold-logo1.pngHavi Goffan2010-01-20 11:33:382018-03-28 04:33:31Hispanics social media marketing strategy – a must
How do we measure the effectiveness of your brand’s social media marketing campaigns?
Social media has evolved into an every day way of interaction and communication for a large part of the population. And this evolution started in the last century when social media commenced amidst the original chats in chatrooms and blogs. The first blog was created in the late 1980’s: http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/ and it is still alive and well today. Online dating sites, also a part of social media, started with online chats and became famous in 1988 with the movie “You’ve Got Mail”. In 2008, one out of nine couples that got married that year, actually met online. It is expected that the U.S. online dating market will reach $932 million in 2011.
Companies are starting 2010 with sparkling new social media campaigns and everybody knows it’s about the engagement, right? So, how do we measure the effectiveness of your brand’s social media marketing campaigns?
The ultimate approach to social media marketing campaign measurement will look at the things that really matter: sales, profits, customer satisfaction and loyalty. But that may take some time and you need to know how to gage the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign to see if you are headed in the right direction in order to meet those objectives. Therefore, I wanted to share with you 25 social interaction metrics of key performance indicators to use with your social media marketing campaign. This is not an exhaustive list neither it is listed by order of importance and each social media marketer needs to identify the ones that are most suited for them.
I hope you find them useful and that you feel free to share additional ones with us and with our readers.
CTR
Re-Tweets/Mash-ups/Re-posting
Bookmarks
Comments
Downloads
Email / newsletter subscriptions
Number of Fans/Followers
Feedback
Forward to a friend/Invite / Refer
Amount of Group activity/interaction
Number of downloads or widget installations
Key page post-activity
Ratings
Onsite Messaging
Posts
Number of Registered users (new / total / active / dormant / churn)
Report spam / abuse
Reviews/ Testimonials
Social media sharing / participation (activity on key social media sites, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc)
Tagging (user-generated metadata)
Time spent on key pages
Time spent on site (by source / by entry page)
Total contributors (and % active contributors)
Uploads (add an item, e.g. articles, links, images, videos)
Views (videos, ads, rich images)
https://hispanic-marketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Measuring_SocialMedia.jpg269450Havi Goffanhttps://hispanic-marketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/targetlatino-enfold-logo1.pngHavi Goffan2010-01-10 23:18:182018-03-28 04:35:1825 social interaction metrics or how to measure your social media marketing campaign
Winner of the Publisher’s Multicultural Award Category: Best Multicultural Awareness Article
What is life like in America for Hispanic Americans? What are their thoughts and concerns about family, employment, education, religion, opportunities, and healthcare? We asked Claudia Goffan, founder of Target Latino, an Atlanta based marketing and consulting firm specializing in the Hispanic market, to provide “The College World Reporter” readers with her own views from inside Hispanic America. Here is our interview:
Claudia “Havi” Goffan – Hispanic Marketing Expert and CEO of Target Latino
Q.Could you give us an inside look at Hispanic or Latino life?
A. To fully understand the Hispanic market, you need to analyze it by country of origin, level of acculturation, age, sex, marital status and educational level. Although some generalizations can be made, they have to be understood as such and not as an answer to comprehending the culture.
Let’s talk about some of the generalizations about the Hispanic culture. The very first one that comes to mind is about family being the first priority, the children are celebrated and sheltered and the wife usually fulfills a domestic role. Hispanics have a long Roman Catholic tradition and this usually implies quite a fatalistic outlook where destiny is in the hands of God. Latin American educational system is based on emphasis on the theoretical, memorization and a rigid and very broad curriculum. It follows the French schooling system and it translates into people who are generalists and look at the big picture as opposed to specialists, like in the U.S. Hispanics are highly nationalistic, very proud of long history and traditions.
Hispanics have difficulty separating work and personal relationships and are sensitive to differences of opinion. Hispanics fear loss of face, especially publicly and shun confrontation, where truth is tempered by the need for diplomacy. Title and position are more important than money in the eyes of Hispanic society. Etiquette and manners are seen as a measure of breeding and it follows an “old world” formality. Dress and grooming are status symbols whereas in the U.S. appearance is secondary to performance. The aesthetic side of life is important even at work.
Q. Tell us about the purchasing power of the U.S. Hispanics?
A. According to the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth in 2004 the nation’s largest minority group controlled $686 billion in spending. The community’s purchasing power comprises the world’s ninth biggest economy and it’s larger than the GNP of Brazil, Spain or Mexico. Hispanic purchasing power is projected to reach as much as $1 trillion by next year (2010) being the main drivers of the surge in Hispanic consumer influence the increasing education levels, labor force composition, household characteristics and accumulation of wealth. The fastest-growing occupational categories for Hispanics are higher paying managerial and professional jobs.
Q. What about Hispanics’ Healthcare Access?
A. I will quote a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center that indicates that six-in-ten Hispanic adults living in the United States who are neither citizens nor legal permanent residents lack health insurance. According to this same study, the share of uninsured among this group (60%) is much higher than the share of uninsured among Latino adults who are legal permanent residents or citizens (28%), or among the adult population of the United States (17%). Hispanic adults who are neither citizens nor legal permanent residents tend to be younger and healthier than the adult U.S. population and are less likely than other groups to have a regular health care provider. Just 57% say there is a place they usually go when they are sick or need advice about their health, compared with 76% of Latino adults who are citizens or legal permanent residents and 83% of the adult U.S. population.
Overall, four-in-ten (41%) non-citizen, non-legal permanent resident Hispanics state that their usual provider is a community clinic or health center. These centers are designed primarily as “safety nets” for vulnerable populations and are funded by a variety of sources, including the federal government, state governments and private foundations, as well as reimbursements from patients, based upon a sliding scale (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008).
Six out of 10 Hispanics are U.S.-born – Inside Hispanic America
The study also reports that some 37% of Latino adults who are neither citizens nor legal permanent residents have no usual health care provider. More than one-fourth (28%) of the people in this group indicate that financial limitations prevent them from having a usual provider – 17% report that their lack of insurance is the primary reason, while 12% cite high medical costs in general. However, a majority (56%) say they do not have a usual provider because they simply do not need one. An additional 5% state that difficulty in navigating the U.S. health care system prevents them from having a usual provider. According to Pew Hispanic Center estimates, 11.9 million undocumented immigrants were living in the U.S. in 2008. Three-quarters (76%) of these undocumented immigrants were Latinos.
Regarding health status, the study reports that the Latino population in the U.S. is relatively young, and Latino adults who are neither citizens nor legal permanent residents are younger still. Some 43% of adult Latinos who are not citizens or legal permanent residents are younger than age 30, compared with 27% of Hispanic adults who are citizens or legal permanent residents and 22% of the adult U.S. population. The youthfulness of this population contributes to its relative healthiness.
About the Hispanic experiences in the Health Care System, the Pew reports that three-fourths (76%) of Latino adults who are neither citizens nor legal permanent residents report that the quality of medical care they received in the past year was excellent or good. This is similar to the proportion of adult Latino citizens and legal permanent residents (78%) who express satisfaction with their recent health care. However, when asked a separate question – whether they had received any poor medical treatment in the past five years – adult Latinos who are neither citizens nor legal permanent residents are less likely (16%) to report any problems than are Latinos who are citizens or legal permanent residents (24%).
Among those Latinos who are neither citizens nor legal permanent residents who report receiving poor medical treatment in the past five years, a plurality (46%) state that they believed their accent or the way they spoke English contributed to that poor care. A similar share (43%) believed that their inability to pay for care contributed to their poor treatment. More than one-third (37%) felt that their race or ethnicity played a part in their poor care, and one-fourth (25%) attributed the unsatisfactory treatment to something in their medical history.
Q. What is the difference in viewpoint between young Hispanics or Latinos born and raised in the United States, and their older parents or grandparents who migrated to the U.S. from other countries?
A. The one difference that applies to all Latinos existent between non and semi-acculturated Hispanics and fully-acculturated or U.S. born Hispanics (young or old) is that whereas the non and semi-acculturated Latinos are trying to learn how to navigate the American culture, the U.S. born Hispanics or fully-acculturated know how to navigate the American culture and “learn” to navigate the Hispanic one from their family.
Q. Who are people on the rise in the Hispanic or Latino community that may become corporate leaders, or the next Sonia Sotomayor?
A. There are many Hispanics on the rise in every walk of life in the United States. Some people may not even notice of their Hispanic background because it usually comes to light when there are political issues at stake. For example, a currently retired doctor that was the Director of Cardiology of the St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta was originally from Argentina. The creative that many years ago came up with the successful campaign for a drug that put the country to sleep is a Nuyorican (Puerto Rican born in New York).
Regarding known Latinos on the rise, you may want to keep an eye on Christine Arguello, Judge, U.S. District Court, Colorado; Emiliano Calemzuk, President, Fox Television Studios; Ignacia Moreno, Counsel, Corporate Environmental Programs, General Electric Company; Esther Salas, U.S. Magistrate Judge, District of New Jersey; Thomas Saenz, President and General Counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor; Rosa Gumatatotao Rios, United States Treasurer; Elena Rios, President & CEO, National Hispanic Medical Foundation; Enrique Conterno; President, Eli Lilly, USA and Edward Chavez, Justice, the State of New Mexico Supreme Court, among many others.
Q. What should everyone know about Hispanics or Latinos?
A. The first thing that comes to mind is the very little known fact that 6 out of 10 Latinos are U.S. born. The second one is that the younger the generation, the higher the percentage of Hispanics in it. It is imperative to understand the new U.S. demographics when developing business strategies, city planning, new products, etc.
About Claudia Goffan: Recognized as an expert in Latino Marketing by CNN en Español, Claudia has been featured in Adweek, Hispanic Business, Univision, Telemundo and other national and international media.
A native from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Claudia has been very influential in the Hispanic markets in the U.S. and Latin America – both from a business and a community standpoint – always with outstanding results. Claudia has contributed to companies such as, The Occasions Group, The Taylor Corporation, El Banco de Nuestra Comunidad (A division of SunTrust Bank), XEROX, AT&T, BellSouth, Citibank, Papa John’s, Liberty Mutual, British Telecom, Gold’s Gym, Sherwin Williams, and Verizon, among others.
A motivator, strategic and hands-on, innovative, creative and resourceful. It has been said that her humor and presence immediately captivate audiences. She has an MBA from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and more than 20 years specializing in Marketing and Strategic Planning both internationally and domestically. She is bilingual and bicultural in English and Spanish and fluent in Portuguese, French, and Italian.
About Target Latino: Target Latino was founded in 2003, with a vision unparalleled at the time – to show American companies the importance of the U.S. Hispanic market – not by preaching but by acting. Target Latino is a marketing consulting firm specializing in the Hispanic market and inbound strategies. Target Latino has a long standing experience of driving results in tough economic times. Target Latino is minority owned, and a percentage of its proceeds go to different charity causes.
Great quote
https://hispanic-marketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/six-out-of-10-hispanics-are-us-born.png276396Havi Goffanhttps://hispanic-marketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/targetlatino-enfold-logo1.pngHavi Goffan2010-01-07 10:04:592018-03-27 01:40:47Inside Hispanic America
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