Latino Blogger Trends 2014 [INSIGHT]

Latina Mom Bloggers and The Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University (The Center) released the results of a national survey on blogger trends among Latinos. The findings identify attitudes toward blogging as a business and opportunities currently influencing blogging as a profession among Latina bloggers.  

According to the survey completed in March, the most popular topic covered by Latino bloggers is ‘Parenting.’ Parenting tops the content production list with 16% of time allocated to writing about it, followed by food (14%), lifestyle (11.6%), product reviews (11.3%), and Beauty (11.2%). The highest percentage of Latina bloggers live in the Southeast (e.g. FL, AL, GA), and these Southeast bloggers dedicate the most time to their blogs.

The research is being presented by Dr. Sindy Chapa, Associate Director of The Center and the Partners, Co-CEOs of Latina Mom Bloggers: Piera Jolly, Angela Sustaita-Ruiz and Cristy Clavijo-Kish for Hispanize 2014 attendees. More than 250 Hispanic bloggers, ranging from 25 to 50 years old, participated in the online survey. The vast majority of respondents mirrors the blogger community at 97% female. Participants were categorized by level of experience in the blog industry.

Other key findings include:

Paid Campaigns: 97% of Latino bloggers accept sponsored, paid campaigns. 25% of the bloggers are hired more than 24 times a year and 57% of them at least once a month. Most participants consider their blog their business, but only 41% consider their blog their main source of income.

-Non-Paid Campaigns: When bloggers accept non-paid campaigns, the primary focus of the campaign is most often “Social Causes” (46%), followed by education (19%) and health (12%).

-Product Reviews: 41% of participants review products on their blogs.

-Social Media Traffic: The top social networking site referring traffic to the respondents’ blogs is Facebook, accounting for 47% of the referrals, followed by Pinterest (22%) and Twitter (19%). In the last 12 months, the most significant growth in traffic comes from Instagram.

-Benefits of Paid Campaigns: Latina blogger attitudes toward monetization are highly positive. Participants feel sponsorship opportunities empower blogs in many forms. The top benefits resulting from paid campaigns include: increased social media traffic, more visitors, increase in quality, increase in editorial content, and easier site navigation.

-Language: Not surprising, bloggers are English-dominant. When both languages are used the average distribution is 60% in English.

-Main Obstacles: 47% of participants listed “Financial” challenges at the main obstacle. No Business Partners/Networking (31%) and Cultural/Language Issues (22%) followed.

“Understanding the trends and mindset of Latino bloggers helps marketers and communicators better plan and connect with blogs as viable platforms for their messages,” said the Latina Mom Bloggers Network partners. We appreciate the work completed by Dr. Chapa’s team and look forward to continue analyzing the results to report added findings in the coming months,” they added.

For a copy of the survey results, send your requests to Dr. Chapa at the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at FSU at sc****@fs*.edu