A new survey has found that although most PR professionals consider social media as an effective means of reaching the Hispanic market, only half of PR professionals actually use social media to do so. Hispanic-focused company TeleNoticias and LatinoWire surveyed PR professionals along with the Hispanic Public Relations Association, Hispanicize and Survey.com. The results came in that 69 percent of respondents found social media to be somewhat or very important in reaching both Latino and mainstream markets.

All this is well and good, but when asked how many actually use social media to target Hispanic audiences, only 45 percent of PR professional respondents actually used social media to reach out to the Hispanic market. That’s compared to 92 percent who say they use social media to reach mainstream markets. Out of the PR pros who use social media to reach Latino audiences, 84 percent use Facebook and 62 percent who use Twitter. That’s also compared to 92 percent who use Facebook and 83 percent who use Twitter to reach mainstream audiences. The percentages for marketing through Linkedin is 46 percent targeting mainstream and 21 percent targeting Hispanic audiences, which is a very small percent compared to the other social networks used to target the same market. Mobile is the only tool that’s used to reach more Hispanic audiences than mainstream audiences.

But the good news is that due to the rise of social networking, budgets for its use for public relations purposes are growing - for both mainstream and Hispanic markets. 58 percent of survey takers expect social media budgets to grow for mainstream markets this fiscal year, while 60 percent believe that social media budgets will increase for Hispanic markets.

It’s not surprising that there’s becoming more interest and investment in multicultural markets online. Hispanic consumers are becoming more and more prominent online and wield a lot of spending power, significantly helping to drive the U.S. economy. PR professionals and marketers should reflect on this trend and act accordingly - by increasing interaction with Hispanic markets online and increasing the budgets to do so.