When Hispanics Share, Others Click

February 25, 2014

ShareThisMindshareUnilever-Hispanics-Sharing-Propensity-Influence-Feb2014A recent study released by ShareThis in partnership with Mindshare and Unilever contains some intriguing data regarding Hispanics’ propensity for social sharing, as well as the influence those sharers have. While it’s probably not too big a surprise to find that Hispanic consumers share content more often than non-Hispanics (another example of that here), the extent of the difference – along with the influence the shares carry – is noteworthy. In fact, based on an analysis of online social behavior data from more than 42 million unique users across nearly 70 million sharing events over a 4-month period, the study determines that Hispanics are twice as likely to share content than non-Hispanics, with each user sharing 5 times more often. (The study defines a share as “the specific act of posting a piece of web content on a social channel, such as Facebook or Twitter.”)

While the results indicate that Hispanics generally consume the same type of content as non-Hispanics on a category-level (arts and entertainment and sports being most popular), they tend to be more active sharers of content surrounding family and parenting, culture and religion and food and drink.

One of the standout findings concerns the influence of Hispanics’ sharing. To determine this, the researchers looked at click-backs per share across the different categories, comparing Hispanics to non-Hispanics. (A click-back is “a page view triggered by clicking on content shared by someone in your network.”)

On this measure, the study found that shares by Hispanic users are more likely to be clicked on than shares by non-Hispanic users across each of the 14 content categories measured. That was particularly the case for food and drink (68% more likely), style and beauty (55% more likely), and politics and government (50% more likely). On average, content shared by Hispanics was 35% more likely to be clicked on than content shared by non-Hispanics.

Also intriguing: the platforms by which Hispanics share differ from non-Hispanics. Although Facebook is the dominant sharing channel for both groups (at about 61-62% of shares for each group), Hispanics are 95% more likely to use email (11.4% vs. 5.9% of total shares) and 43% more likely to share via Tumblr and Blogger (7.6% vs. 5.3%). (Data released a couple of years ago by Nielsen found that at the time, among the top social networks in the US, Tumblr had the highest concentration of Hispanic visitors.)

While Hispanics over-index in the use of email and blogging platforms for sharing, they under-index in their use of Pinterest (index of 72) and Twitter (index of 66).

Those gaps tend to narrow among younger groups, though: Hispanic Millennials appear to use much the same social channels as their non-Hispanic counterparts, even over-indexing in their use of Twitter. That’s also the case in terms of content consumption and sharing activity, in which Hispanic Millennials closely mirror non-Hispanic Millennials.

Why is it important the extent to which Hispanics share? There are likely many reasons, but one important one outlined in the study concerns the correlation between sharing behavior and purchase behavior. Looking at purchase data from 33 leading retailers selling more than 250 brands (approximately 60% of all products sold in the US), the study indicates that there’s a significant lift in purchase rate among frequent sharers of related content across a variety of product genres, and that’s especially the case for Hispanic sharers.

Other Findings:

  • Hispanics tend to rely more on mobile devices to consume content than non-Hispanics, but they are almost 50% less likely on average to share content via mobile.
  • In terms of sharing on mobile, Hispanics are much more dependent on Facebook than non-Hispanics, and much less likely to use Twitter and Pinterest.
  • Among younger generations, though, Hispanics’ sharing activity closely resembles non-Hispanics in terms of percentage of content shared on mobile and the types of content shared.
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