Engaging Spanish Speaking Consumers through Social Media – the March of Dimes Way

After years of fielding thousands of phone calls and emails from Spanish speaking mothers and parents to be, the March of Dimes realized the necessity to expand their outreach efforts. And while reports are now streaming in bearing statistics about how much more active Hispanics are on social media, it seems that the March of Dimes knew all along.

100% Comment response is the goal at NacerSano

The March of Dimes launched its Spanish-language site, nacersano.org, in 2004 as a response to the deficiency of trusted and accurate health information among Spanish-speaking women and their families. In 2007, realizing they needed to have an even bigger presence within the Spanish-speaking community; they kicked off a social media initiative with their Spanish-language blog, located at blog.nacersano.org. This blog enabled the March of Dimes to engage with their consumers in a more organic and informal setting.

Social Media is not new to the March of Dimes. Beverly Robertson, a National Director at the March of Dimes, who heads up social media efforts, has gained approximately 8,000 twitter followers to date (@marchofdimes). Their Facebook page has over 70,000 fans.  But what is quite noticeably innovative & impressive is the manner in which they are able to converse openly with their Spanish speaking fans.  To enable this, Miss Robertson’s Hispanic Outreach team, spearheaded by Lilliam Acosta-Sanchez, has established Spanish language Facebook Fan page and Twitter accounts, all linked through their Spanish-language brand “nacersano.”  The overall goals of the team are to use social media for health information outreach and to raise awareness of the March of Dimes and its mission among Spanish-speaking Latinos.

During our conversation in May, Mrs. Acosta-Sanchez noted that an average month will bring approximately 400 questions from consumers that need a response via social media.  They are proud that their team is able to respond to 100% of the questions that come in through their blog, Facebook Fan page and Twitter accounts. An impressive feat, considering the low or non-existent engagement levels of many large firms and organizations.

We at DK wanted to dig deeper, so we looked at the numbers to verify the March of Dime’s claims.  We found that they were indeed very active conversing with their fans and consumers.  The nacersano.org Facebook page is able to maintain a 335 Engagement Score, indicating a very high level of interaction with fans on their page.  This ranking (take a look at our ranking system) calculates how often a fan comments or ‘likes’ a posting, and evaluates all Facebook pages on a pound-for-pound scale.  The nacersano Twitter page obtains an equally high Engagement Score of 60, calculated by dividing mentions by nacersano by the times nacersano has been mentioned.

The team behind nacersano also discussed growth of their Spanish social media presence with us.  They explained that their growth to date is primarily viral and that their objective is less about growing and more about building relationships with their current fans/followers.  Based on their ability to engage their consumers thus far, we also believe their growth will come naturally.

nacersano’s web presence:
•www.nacersano.org – The March of Dimes Spanish-language Web site
•http://blog.nacersano.org – Spanish-language blog on pregnancy-related topics.
•www.twitter.com/nacersano – Pregnancy-related tips.
•www.twitter.com/nacersanobaby – Baby-related tips.
•www.facebook.com/nacersano – Fan page.