They just won the European Cup, and they’re not far from “winning” social media use in Europe.
Just last month, I returned to the U.S. after spending my spring semester in Madrid, Spain. Without doubt, it was an enlightening and invigorating experience. But being the communications geek that I am, I undoubtedly made some observations about Spain’s social media use.
So how does the Spaniard’s use of social media compare with that of an American? The use is not drastically different, but there are certainly notable differences.
Social media is definitely thriving in Spain. According to 101Cientouno Agency one quarter of the nation’s just-under-50-million population uses Facebook alone. Facebook now has more members than local social network “Tuenti” in Spain, but by a very narrow margin. I hadn’t even heard of Tuenti until I saw my host sister using it daily—but that’s because it is a private, secure social communication platform that is joined by invitation only. Known as the “Spanish Facebook,” Tuenti, like Facebook, has mobile apps and a mobile site. What is possibly the best part of Tuenti? The company opted out of “noisy clutter”—otherwise known as advertising—that Facebook has focused on increasing in the past several years.
The most popular social media activity in Spain is YouTube. Sharing video content on such sites is the most popular social activity in Spain, and it’s thanks to a pretty high level of mobile Internet. I saw it first hand—I don’t remember a single minute that my host sister wasn’t clicking away on her Blackberry and uploading videos of her and her friends onto YouTube.
Blogging is also popular in Spain, and Spaniards are often influenced by blogs in the U.S. Back in 2007, Chris Anderson of Wired wrote an article sharing the list of PR people who were spamming him. This prompted two prominent bloggers in Spain (Manu Contreras and Eduardo Arcos) to create a wiki of PR companies in Spain that were not following engagement guidelines. Both articles were harsh yet useful pieces of advice for PR pros who just didn’t get it.
Oh, and who would think of snapping a photo of a QR code while riding in a cab? Spaniards do it all the time. In Madrid, you can hail a cab and then grab a business card for the cab company before you leave. The card has the usual telephone number and name of the company, but it also has a QR code that can be used by customers with smartphones.
Sure, they’re great at soccer. But Spain is scoring just as many goals in social media as they are on the ‘futbol’ field.
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Deniz Sonmez-Alpan is an intern for WordWrite Communications.
