If you told me one year ago that I would be invited to participate on a Hispanic PR conference panel featuring the “top guys in social media,” I probably would have laughed at you. Last May, I was at the beginning stages of getting my blog, RedBrownandBlue.com (RBB), off the ground. My face was absent from Facebook. And I had a hard time determining whether a person twittered or tweeted.
Social media was a scary and unfamiliar concept. However, I did have the desire to evolve and adopt new ways of communicating to the masses. After all, I was president and CEO of a Top 25 Hispanic advertising and public relations agency, but I was torn between the comfort of the status quo and the uncomfortable demands of progress. At 40, I was too old to evolve without some pain, but too young to become a dinosaur.
I chose pain, but it wasn’t so painful after all. At times, yes, uncomfortable, but not painful. In fact, what was more painful was the actual inspiration for RedBrownandBlue.com. During the presidential primary, there was no shortage of debate about the Hispanic vote and the future role of Hispanics in American politics, as well as the sometimes-divisive issues attached to the conversation, like immigration and healthcare reform. One problem: while Hispanics would be heavily impacted by the outcomes, often no Hispanics were in sight.
I was frustrated by the lack of multicultural perspectives in mainstream media and I was also keenly aware that my community at a grassroots level was largely uninformed on what was happening in American politics, especially the inner-workings of the area known as “inside-the-beltway.”
There was a disconnect that needed bridging – just my cup of tea. I had co-founded my firm Interlex – derived from “international lexicon” – 15 years earlier to bridge cultures by speaking the language of the world while focusing on the unique mission of making a positive impact on the lives of diverse audiences. In this case, the audiences happened to be my own. What we needed was a two-way bridge that created a dialogue between grassroots multicultural communities and the mainstream media and influencers who love to talk about Joe the plumber – or in this case, Jose the mechanic – from an ivory tower. Tired of only helping transform public policy into social action via my advocacy marketing agency, I set out to do the inverse: transform social action into public policy.
Joining me in my RBB journey was a young, fiery group of talented multicultural writers who also needed a platform to express their own frustrations and dreams. And so RBB was born. The platform and talent was no doubt there, but the questions remained, “How do we get our platform to become a stage and a forum that draws a major, growing audience yearning to see and hear themselves reflected in the political dialogue that’s shaping this country we so passionately believe in? How do we ensure our ideas are truly seen, heard and factored into viable solutions to the challenges America is facing?”
How about we create a RBB Facebook fan profile page? How about we get RBB writers to promote RBB’s Facebook page to their own extensive networks to grow the social media subscriber base? How about we offer up our commentary to media outlets who could cross-market RBB on their websites – those resource strapped Spanish-language media outlets that thirst for content and the general market ones that are in search for minority writers but can’t find any?
All of it worked. RBB became something more than I expected, faster than I expected and much of it had to do with utilizing the power of social media. The popularity grew and we were reaching folks in cities across America, of all races and on all sides of the political aisle, evident by our heavy influx of conservative leaning readers leaving passionate arguments to counter our commentary.
The blogger platform and the social media tools we used to make RBB a credible and widely read website led to opportunities to write for CNN.com, to become a “talking-head” on CNN’s The Rick Sanchez Show, to Skype about the controversial Arizona law on CNN en Espanol, to write commentary on Joe Wilson’s outburst in his hometown newspaper, and to see our team’s Op-Eds be picked up by major dailies and media sites – in both English and Spanish – nationwide.
You might think I reside in Washington, DC, but I don’t. I live in the often-overlooked city of San Antonio, TX. But in reality, San Antonio is not to be dismissed; it represents the demographic future of America – a vibrant and growing community with a large concentration of Latinos who love the Cowboys and the Spurs as much as mariachis and menudo, who have fought and died for the promise of America without relinquishing their cultural memory, who speak outside the beltway but dream of being heard inside the Capitol. And perhaps, with perseverance and a little luck, this growing chorus of Latino voices – will someday contribute to a richer – more inclusive – civil discourse because of the kind of work we are doing with RBB.
And it’s all made possible thanks to relatively new tools for spreading the word and expanding the inclusivity of democracy, concepts the Founding Fathers could have never imagined, like blogs, WordPress, Facebook and Twitter.
In fact, I just read an email where a reporter interested in my participation on that social media panel asked me whether I’ve met President Barack Obama. The assumption was kind of made that if I hadn’t, maybe someday I would.
My first thought was: “You know, I like where this whole social media thing is headed.”
–Rudy Ruiz is President and CEO of Interlex Communications. He is also the founding editor of RedBrownandBlue.com. He earned both his BA in Government and Masters in Public Policy at Harvard University.
