U.S. Latino Online Audience Is Growing Fast, How This Can Benefit Your Real Estate Business

By Bill Arce http://www.realestatelatino.com/

On a recent study published by conScore, shows that online Latino audience grew 50% faster than the overall Latino population on 2008. In February, the Latino online audience surfing the Internet hit 20.3 million, up 6 percent from a year ago. Hispanos, now accounts for 11% of the total U.S. online market creating many opportunities for bilingual real estate professionals to expand theirs business on a new whole way.

If you still believe on the myth that Latinos are not online or that Latino don’t own computers, here are some facts that will help you better understand this segment of the online real estate market.

Latinos outpaced the general Internet population grows in total minutes spent while surfing the net, total pages view and total unique visits.

Latinos are embracing the Internet very quickly, with 78% users going online 3-5 times per week
According to the first annual U.S. Hispanic Cyberstudy, Latinos spend 43% more time online at work (13.5 hours) and 13% more time online at home (9.5 hours) than the overall online population
Real estate agencies looking to expand their market share are looking at the Internet as the ideal place to meet potential clients

There very simple tools that a bilingual real estate professional can add to his or her arsenal that will help them effectively market Latinos online, here are some of the tools that I have used over the years with success.

1-bilingual real estate website: Studies shown that Latinos prefer to communicate in Spanish when they are transacting important business like buying or selling real estate, especially those who are first generation of immigrants, having a bilingual site, can help you accomplish this.

Allow your site visitors to interact with you without disclosing much of their personal information. You can accomplish this by creating tools like Q&A section, comments on your informative articles and videos; have downloadable educational guides, etc

2-ve a blog in Spanish: Blogs are great sources of information; it allows you the opportunity to demonstrate to your Spanish speaking readers that you are a real estate expert. Google “Spanish Real Estate Blogs” in your area to see how many they are, I can assure you that not many if any will come out on your search.

If you like to set up your own blog, you can use some easy formats for free like Blogger.com and Wordpress.org. Just follow the instruction and you could be blogging tonight.
Social Media En Español:

3- you are already a member of Facebook or LinkedIn this is great but it probably won’t help you interact with potential Latino clients, for that you must socialize where la “pachanga” is. Check out Univision.com and QuePasa.com these sites along with Yahoo En Español and Telemundo.com could help you mingle with Latino.

It is important that you DO NOT sell your services, instead offer your professional experience and answer as many questions as your time allows, this strategy should produce results very soon.

When you are promoting your brand online, do it from the hart do not try any hard sale, as the online market place can help you build reputation and leverage more business, it also can ruin your real estate career. If you are there helping others, business will come soon enough, you’ll see.
If you have any comment or question feel free to drop me a line @ bill.arce@realestatelatino.com