In the last few years, bilingual social media content has emerged as a tool used to increase diversity and rights for minority groups. On Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and other social platforms, organizations such as Tide Pods by Unilever have released bilingual images that support diverse communities.
More recently, nonprofits have started to use bilingual social media content as a marketing tool and support communities by creating awareness and encouraging the involvement of people to take positive action. This is important because it gives back to communities that have been left out by mainstream culture for many years.
My guest today is Maria Ochoa, Founder and CEO at Emprender Creative, an agency helping organizations realize their vision by providing bilingual marketing services with content that is culturally targeted, impactful, and relevant to the Latinx community.
Maria has over 20 years of experience working with diverse populations in California and Illinois — advocating for individuals and groups. Her work in social media and content creation has allowed her to continue to serve and advocate for the most vulnerable members in our communities.
In this episode, Maria and I discuss:
About Maria Ochoa
Maria Ochoa is the founder of Emprender Creative, a bilingual social media agency dedicated to helping organizations bring their visions to life. With a focus on culturally targeted and impactful marketing services. Her goal is to help nonprofits engage effectively with the Latinx community. Maria holds a B.A. in Sociology from Aquinas College and a Master’s in Leadership Studies from North Central College. With over two decades of experience, Maria has advocated for diverse populations across the United States and Latin America. Through social media and Meet Maria Ochoa, the passionate founder behind Emprender Creative, a bilingual social media agency on a mission to bring organizations' visions to vibrant life. Maria's focus is all about crafting culturally targeted and impactful marketing services, with a special emphasis on helping nonprofits engage effectively with the Latinx community.
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn
Follow Maria on Instagram
Other links:
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
In the last few years, bilingual social media content has emerged as a tool used to increase diversity and rights for minority groups. On Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and other social platforms, organizations such as Tide Pods by Unilever have released bilingual images that support diverse communities.
More recently, nonprofits have started to use bilingual social media content as a marketing tool and support communities by creating awareness and encouraging the involvement of people to take positive action. This is important because it gives back to communities that have been left out by mainstream culture for many years.
My guest today is Maria Ochoa, Founder and CEO at Emprender Creative, an agency helping organizations realize their vision by providing bilingual marketing services with content that is culturally targeted, impactful, and relevant to the Latinx community.
Maria has over 20 years of experience working with diverse populations in California and Illinois — advocating for individuals and groups. Her work in social media and content creation has allowed her to continue to serve and advocate for the most vulnerable members in our communities.
In this episode, Maria and I discuss:
About Maria Ochoa
Maria Ochoa is the founder of Emprender Creative, a bilingual social media agency dedicated to helping organizations bring their visions to life. With a focus on culturally targeted and impactful marketing services. Her goal is to help nonprofits engage effectively with the Latinx community. Maria holds a B.A. in Sociology from Aquinas College and a Master’s in Leadership Studies from North Central College. With over two decades of experience, Maria has advocated for diverse populations across the United States and Latin America. Through social media and Meet Maria Ochoa, the passionate founder behind Emprender Creative, a bilingual social media agency on a mission to bring organizations' visions to vibrant life. Maria's focus is all about crafting culturally targeted and impactful marketing services, with a special emphasis on helping nonprofits engage effectively with the Latinx community.
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn
Follow Maria on Instagram
Other links:
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
You. This show is sponsored by Bloomerang, a solution that helps nonprofits like Shower up, which is a nonprofit providing mobile showers and personal care for those experiencing homelessness to efficiently manage their volunteers and donors in one place. And thanks to Bloomerang, Shower up increased their volunteer signups by 60% and first time donors by making it easy to give right on their site. Showerup's executive director, Paul Schmidt said Bloomering is an ideal marriage of volunteer and donor management. The deeper we get into it, the more we love it. And if you want to see how Showerup easily manages their volunteers and donors with Bloomerang, just go to jcsocialmarketing.com bloomerang. That's jcsocialmarketing.com bloomerang. Or visit the link in the show notes to learn more. All right, let's get to the show. Hello and welcome to Nonprofit NAtion. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience, and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people, and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hi everyone. Welcome and or welcome back to another episode, Nonprofit Nation. I am Julia Campbell. Our topic today is something that's really interesting. It's something that's very important and something that I think a lot of nonprofit fundraisers and marketers need to be paying attention to. And it's the power of bilingual content in nonprofit fundraising and social media marketing. And if you've been paying attention, in the last few years, bilingual social media content has emerged as a tool used to increase diversity and rights for minority groups on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, other platforms. Organizations such as Tide Pods by Unilever, just to name one, have released bilingual images that support diverse communities. And my guest today is an expert in bilingual content creation. Maria Ochoa. And Maria is the founder and CEO at Amprander Creative, an agency helping organizations realize their vision by providing bilingual marketing services with content that is culturally targeted, impactful, and relevant to the Latinx community. Maria has over 20 years of experience working with diverse populations in California and Illinois. Her work in social media and content creation has allowed her to continue to serve and advocate for the most vulnerable members in our communities. So, Maria, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Yes. I'm so excited to dive in. I want to know more about you and sort of your journey into working with nonprofits and then how you came to focus on the work you're doing today. Thank you. Well, as you mentioned, I've been working on nonprofits for over 20 years. It's always been my dream and career to be in the nonprofit sector. And I went into nonprofits really because I had this desire to share our stories, our community stories, to tell our experiences from our viewpoint. And it just became clear to me over the years, working in the nonprofit sector, the power of social media, and how the incredible potential it had to build connection between nonprofits and their community and supporters, and it would expand their mission and build momentum for campaigns. So this realization led me into this, leveraging communications and social media for nonprofits and how to best use it and serve our community, the latino community. Oh, that's fantastic. And you are listed on LinkedIn as a nonprofit, bilingual and bicultural social media strategist. I've never seen that before in LinkedIn, so I was really interested in that. So how did you come to focus on bilingual content creation? That journey started for me because my background is in fundraising and operations for nonprofits. And every time we would launch a campaign, I would always kind of do a promotion for creating bilingual content, because one we were serving. I mostly work with nonprofits that had a large audience or population that they served that were spanish speakers. So I would really try to get the nonprofits to create content in Spanish to outreach to those communities. So that's really how the work began for me, and it was just an opportunity to bridge the gaps and connect nonprofits with a broader audience and more diverse supporters. And that's really how it started. And then learning about social media, marketing strategies, effective storytelling, and that all kind of merged to what it is today. Yeah. And I think it's so important, and I see on your bio your goal is to help nonprofits engage effectively with the Latinx community. So it's so much more than translation. Can you talk, maybe about that misconception? So this is kind of, I feel like my life's work, and this is kind of the hill that I'm willing to die on, is that we. Do the Latinx community represent such a large group? We're the largest minority group in the United States. We comprise over 18% of the total population. We have latina women, have the highest spending power of all the different business women groups. And Latinx community really has a youthful population. We have large families, we have younger professionals. They're very much in the digital space. 76% are in the digital space from ages 18 to 65. And we're very much community centric. So we're using social media to engage and communicate with each other. So really, that's been kind of my flags I carry around and saying, hey, include us in this space, not just as a recipient of services, but also as we want to be able to elevate and promote nonprofits as donors, as professionals. So, yeah, that's the connectivity for me, it's not just providing bilingual content, it's really looking at it as a community in a holistic way, in a more impactful and long term way. Exactly. You call it culturally targeted. Can you explain a little bit about what that means to people that maybe are not. Lot of. Sometimes I see content that is translated, but one, they might not be using the correct Spanish. It could be Spanish from Spain. And you're predominantly, we're latin american countries. So that already disconnects your nonprofit from your intended audience, or you might be using a very niche form of Spanish. We're not a monolithic population, so we use language in different contexts. So we really look at who is this targeted for and how is this targeted, and are we using the proper terms for this particular population, and are we referencing the appropriate cultural nuances for this particular population? So it's beyond just doing a spanish post. We really look at are we taking into consideration what's happening in the world and the news for this particular region, that kind of thing? Yes, and I think unfortunately, some organizations, even some businesses, think that you can just put a post into Google translate and then have it come out perfectly, which is not the case. So what are some of the benefits that you've seen of creating and sharing bilingual and culturally targeted content? Oh, my goodness. The benefits are, think, you know, it broadens your reach as a nonprofit, as an organization or business. It allows you to connect with a wider and more diverse audience. And who doesn't love that? It increases your visibility and engagement. Inclusivity. It demonstrates your organization's commitment to inclusivity, making and prioritizing everyone regardless of their language preference. I think that's important. Cultural sensitivity is a big one for us. It's something that we're always kind of checking, even ourselves as we're creating content. Is creating bilingual content that shows cultural sensitivity, respecting backgrounds and identities of everyone, supporters and beneficiaries and to me, I think that's a huge. Where I spend a lot of time is making sure that we're not tokenizing the use of our own language or images or anything like that. So we really try to be mindful of that. It enhances donor relations. It strengthens relationships with bilingual supporters. Believe it or not, we have big donors that come from latin american countries that are successful business people here, and they just love when we are able to send communications or communicate with them in their love language and their heart language. And of course, I think the global impact of nonprofits, I've had the opportunity to work with some nonprofits that will do campaigns in Mexico or in other countries, and just to see that bridge, excuse me, and to see that come to fruition. And I think that's a great way for nonprofits to expand to an international audience, to be honest. Wow. So building reach and deepening relationships and providing that level of just deepening that connection with your audience, those are some huge benefits. So when we talk about creating this content, like going to the nuts and bolts. So what do you recommend? So are these different posts? Does it depend on the platform, or is it sort of English and Spanish in the same post? I think it's important to really take a time to decide. How do you want to structure your bilingual content? We do different forms. We either do separate posts where we create a separate post in each language, ensuring that your entire audience sees the content and it's tailored to them, or we do two languages in the same post that also work, and it's to include both languages within the same post. And then for video content, we do closed captioning and subtitles in both languages. In that way, you address both all your viewers or the viewers that you're trying to reach. So it really depends on both the platform and what kind of content you're doing. But it's really looking at everything individually. I think social media for nonprofits, we really look at the work that the nonprofit is doing and which platform is the best to maximize the work that they're trying to elevate. What are your favorite platforms? Which ones are you seeing that get the most reach right now? I'm a big fan of Instagram. I live on Instagram. I think it's a very safe space for a lot of nonprofits for various types of programming and communications and just really reaching out that audience. I know that the Lanx community lives on Facebook. They love Facebook and LinkedIn. Obviously, if you want to engage to B two B's or donors or your larger donor base. So I feel like those are my three. But if you're working in advocacy and political campaigns, I think X or former Twitter is probably the place to be at. Exactly, yes. So it does depend on your goals, which is always what I say and always what I teach. It depends on your audience, your target audience, and what you're trying to achieve. But no, that's really good insight. So who's doing this well? Do you have examples? You feel free to shout out clients or any work that you've done, but I'm looking for, like, if I can send my listeners and get them to see this in action, who's doing it well? You mean as agencies or nonprofits that are doing it well? Yeah, either nonprofits or businesses that are using this kind of content and these principles. The Latino Community foundation is doing great. They're based out of Los Angeles. They actually have a bilingual donor page, which I love. Mom's rising is another one that really tailored their content in Spanish and English. And mom's rising was the first nonprofit that I received a targeted like ask in Spanish, and I have been a supporter of them since then. And that was like, five years ago. And really it was that postcard that they sent. So that was a postcard? It was a postcard and it was in Spanish. And it was like, our community needs you. They were doing this voting campaign, and they wanted people to help write postcards in Spanish. And I think I signed up and they immediately sent me this envelope with 100 postcards to do. It was a community drive ask type of thing, and I just love everything that they do. Honestly, they do so much work in the spanish speaking. For spanish speaking, not just donors, but community and engagement. Yeah, no, that's a great point. So what about direct mail appeals? What's your advice on direct mail? It still works. I know people want to think that. No, but it still works. I still work in fundraising. I still do some fundraising. Probably not as I still like to be active just because it's always changing. And mail campaign still works. It still rings even post pandemic. Yeah. Do you recommend sending them in both languages or targeting it like the postcard was targeted? I think targeting is and segmenting your audience. To me, it's like, first get to know your audience. Segmentation is key, but to me, that's an effective, really, if you want to target a very niche group and you really want to see, I would say, doing targeted outreach. Hey there. I'm interrupting this episode to share an absolutely free training that I created, that's getting nonprofits of all sizes big results. Sure, you've been spending hours on social media, but what can you actually show for it? With all this posting and instagramming and TikToking, does it really translate into action? In my free training, I'll show you exactly how to take people from passive fans to passionate supporters. And I'll give you specific steps to create social media content that actually converts head on over to nonprofitsconvert.com. Again, that's nonprofitsconvert.com. And start building a thriving social media community for your nonprofit. Right now, without a big team, lots of tech overwhelm, or getting stuck on the question, what do I do next? Let me show you how it's done. I can't wait to see what you create. How would you know? And for me, I'm just thinking of when I was a development director, I wouldn't even know where to start segmenting based on the preferred language or based on whether someone is bilingual or not. How would we even start? What's the first step? So I want to say, one of the things that I think it's really beneficial is when you're collecting emails, it's providing that newsletter page sign up, provide one in Spanish. Just build one in Spanish and see who signs up for it. Promote it, of course, is another. But you get to know through your volunteers events. I think when even smaller nonprofits, if you're doing events, try to include two languages, even if it's a small portion of the event, just to start getting to know whether this is something where you should be targeting or not. If, for example, you do an event and you have a sign up in Spanish and you see a lot of people signing up, then you know that there's a need out there for your organization to maybe do more outreach in other languages, whether it's Spanish or any other language. And I think email sign ups, creating a simple sign up page where you promote, that's super easy to do, to do a bilingual sign up page. So that would be for anyone that goes on the page, it would be in both languages on the one website. Okay. And the donation page probably as well. Yes. I think the donation page is a big one. I think social media is a big one. I think sometimes nonprofits hesitate because they're like, oh, I don't know who's going to respond, but you're not going to know until you actually post a couple of times in Spanish if that resonates or not with your audience. Okay. No, I think just experimenting and trying it out. If this is something where, I mean, like, you live in Los Angeles, and I'm thinking, like, I work. Do some work with Boston public schools. And when we do big outreach efforts, we often create flyers and postcards in multiple languages. And it does get a lot of reach, and people really like it, I think. Because at the end of the day, it's like you were saying, people want to be seen, they want to be heard, and they want to be validated and valued. And if you're reaching out to them, speaking their language metaphorically and literally. Figuratively and literally, they will respond so much more. It's almost like your example you gave of mom's rising, where you felt seen and you felt heard, and you felt like they understood you. Yeah. And I felt very much part of their community. I don't even think that they asked for a donation. When I first got engaged, it was like, can you help us do postcards? And then it just became I wanted to help them in any way I could. What would you say to a board member or maybe a board or an executive director that is a little bit skeptical about doing bilingual or culturally targeted content? You know, I usually, if I come across a nonprofit or board members that are just not, I always tell them the numbers don't lie. Go into your data, go into your database, depending on the nonprofit and the type of work that you're doing, and look at your numbers, who are really be realistic about, who are you serving? Who are the recipients of the services? And I think we do a disservice in the nonprofit sector if we're not addressing our recipients and we're not thinking of them as long term donors as well. So it really is an internal work of each organization, and it's a decision that they can embrace or they can ignore. It really just comes down to that. But when I tell them, well, if we're looking at things that we're trying to, I think in fundraising and nonprofits, we're always trying to look at different ways of engagement and reach and say, for example, you're like, well, this year we only had, I don't know, 5% engagement on this particular campaign, and we want to raise to 30. Well, how do we get there? It's really looking at your population group. Absolutely. I really think that people need to start thinking of marketing and fundraising in a more holistic way and not just sort of something to check off a checklist or something that is sort of put in a silo and assigned to someone and then you never see them again, and you never hear what happened again. But I think what you're making a really good point. Like, the numbers don't lie. And for me, in my work with my clients, I do a lot of social media audits and social media campaign plans and digital marketing plans. And the number one, number one goal is always, we would love to reach a younger population. We would love to reach a more diverse population. We would love to reach brand new people who have not heard of us. And this seems to be a really good solution to those problems. And we're it. Honestly, we're a younger demographic. We're an engaged demographic. Latina women are graduating from four year colleges at a higher rate than any other ethnic group or racial group. So if you want to expand your reach, it's just really looking at this population. But it's looking at it beyond just the numbers. It's really looking at it as how do we engage with this community? And is this community, would they want to engage with us, and how do. We do that in terms of short form videos? Are you experimenting with reels, with TikTok, and how does that work? And what tends to be more? I mean, I think if you're in social media and you're not creating reels and TikToks or videos, you're missing out. Honestly, this is a great platform of short storytelling, and it could be content that's fun and engaging, or it could be educational, or you could really use short video in so many ways. I love creating content and short video for nonprofits because I think it's a very useful and engaging way. Most people are not spending a whole lot of time reading post, or at least right now that tends to be the case. So they're really just scrolling through five to ten to 30 seconds of video maximum. And a lot of people are really looking at these platforms not only as an entertainment, but as a delivery of news and services. We're spending a lot more time in social media platforms. Absolutely. I think so, too. And I think that the way that we're using them is definitely changing and that younger generations are using them more for entertainment and media and less for social connections. Do you see that as well? I do. I see a lot of young people, a lot of young influencers, a lot of young advocates using TikTok in a very effective way as a form of engaging and doing storytelling. I also want to kind of give credit and space to those younger content creators that are advocating in our communities because they really are creating content in such a different and fun way that I would encourage anyone to create space for those young content creators, art advocates, community advocates. How do we find people online? Like you're saying, influencers or advocates that we can work with? How do you recommend approaching them? Honestly, it's community engagement. That's how I collaborate with some of the younger content creators that are bilingual. My work is really around language and Spanish, so I follow a lot of a few really amazing content creators. One of them, for example, is Maestro Felix, who's a mentor, and he has a large following, and he does a lot of work around college readiness for youth, and he does speaking engagement. There's another Gabriella Mc who I follow on Instagram who does a lot of speaking engagement. So really, it's being on social media and engaging and connecting. I think if you're not spending time to connect with your community via social media, you're missing out. And I think that's the power of real social media and organic community engagement. So tell me about your agency and some of the services that you provide. So we do content creation, bilingual content creation for nonprofits, and we work with specific campaigns, so they might just hire us to know a rollout of a particular service or program, like cover California or something like that. And the nonprofit's trying to reach out to a diverse community, so we'll do a campaign for them, like a six month campaign. We do fundraising campaigns, binding will fundraising campaigns for nonprofits, advocacy events that they're trying to get more community to be engaged. So, yeah, we really try to maximize social media for different nonprofits, but we really work mainly in the advocacy space. So we have a very active community in social media, on social media, and also on WhatsApp. It's a big one for the Latinx community. I'm involved in three different groups, and one of them is probably 700 young Latinx professionals who are really involved in fundraising and advocacy, at least in California. Oh, wow. I didn't even think about WhatsApp. Yeah, we live in WhatsApp as. Yes. So that's another place. How about ads? Where do social media ads, or maybe Google Ads fit into this content? Know, I run ads for nonprofits, and that's something that I had to really look into and delve into, because that's another way of targeting your community, of creating ads in a targeted and a strategic way. So, yes, we do use ads for fundraisers, for advocacy. It's. I think if you're not using Facebook ads as a. That's been, I think that's a conversation that I always have with all the nonprofits I work with. And it's not a one time conversation. It's like we bring it up again and again, and I don't know why, but that seems to be like a point of resistance for a lot of nonprofits because they tend to think as Facebook ads as well. We're not selling whatever, but it's no, if you want to promote and have a higher reach, you need to do targeted ads for know regions or for particular demographics. So, yeah, we also work with nonprofits in doing Facebook and Google Ads. Yeah, we were sold a bill of goods when social media came out, so people still think it's free. But to really have an impact, whether it's time or a staff person or a consultation or an agency or whatever it is, there needs to be some kind of budget behind it. And ads, I think, are getting more expensive and more. It's definitely harder to reach people now, but still effective. It's still one of the most effective ways they are. And one of the things I always tell nonprofits or tell people is marketing and social media strategy and communications is not a one time, it's not a one pillar thing or you really have to have. It's kind of like you have to juggle different balls all the time and different seasons, different times of the year might require you to focus on something else, but it's a constant. It's a 365 day work. Fundraising doesn't start in November. On giving Tuesday. No, absolutely. It's a year round thing. And building that community when you're not fundraising and deepening those connections is so vital to the success of your fundraising campaign, as you know. And if you just show up and do one post in November, it's not going to really get you very far. And I work with nonprofits that they'll do like a bilingual strategy, and then they've never done one, and it's three months out into the campaign and they're like, well, we're not seeing the numbers we want. And it's like, no, this is a long term commitment. I think it's also a thing to really be honest and straightforward about. If you're deciding to delve into it, I highly encourage you, but I also encourage you to think about that. This is a long term strategy and commitment. Absolutely. It's like exercise, it's like eating healthy. It's like any other commitment that you make to see results. You have to be very consistent and you have to maintain it and you have to do it for at least probably six months, a year. And then once the momentum starts snowballing, it's a little bit easier to sort of see the ROI. But that is the challenge with social media, with any kind of digital marketing. It's not as straightforward as a post. And then money rolls in. It really is raising awareness, reaching new donors, and building your community that will sort of go with you wherever you set up a shop online. So that's a good point. Yeah. So, Maria, where can people find you, get in touch with you and connect with you? I live on Instagram, so you can find me at imprinter creative on Instagram. I'm also on LinkedIn, so just Mario Choa for impender creative on LinkedIn. But yeah, I pretty much live on those two spaces. So feel free to dm me or message me anytime there. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. This has been really interesting, eye opening, I think, really helpful for a lot of my listeners. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you for the opportunity. Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to, and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell 77. Keep changing the world, you nonprofit unicorn. Samuel.