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If you're looking for a fight dog, googling "pitbull" can take you to a different place. Not only because the successful rapper will be at the top of the searches, but also because this stage English name can be misleading. Behind Pitbull, there's a Latino called Armando Pérez, the real name of this Cuban American artist.

As Latinos online continue to grow, this fight for identifying and targeting them is becoming more and more challenging. Reaching Latinos online can be, as the pitbull example, difficult or misleading.

Language as An Approach

Spanish language seems the obvious way to go. Either the language selected for tools used (browser, Twitter, etc.) or language in which the social conversation happens could help identify Latinos online. For example, Facebook allows people to select if they speak Spanish or Spanish and English. You could assume that those users, if living in the U.S., are Latinos. Unfortunately, most people either don't change or add these two options. By the way, did you know that Facebook users can select "Spanglish" as a language option?

Also, considering that 67 percent of Hispanics browse the Internet only in English, language preference might be very limiting. So what happens with English-preferred Latinos?

Broadening the Conversation

Social media monitoring tools experience the same limitations when identifying Latinos online. Identifying conversations in Spanish around a specific brand seems to be a good approach, but we've already discussed that language can be misleading.

Providing a context to where conversations are happening can help provide some light. Including specific terms that are Latino-relevant and/ or part of your Hispanic advertising campaign can help better understand which part of that social conversation comes from Latino consumers. READ MORE