Hispanic Heritage Month is coming up from September 15th to October 15th, recognizing the culture and contributions of Hispanic and Latinx/a/o Americans and acknowledging the independence days of many Latin American countries. Are you planning to do anything for Hispanic Heritage Month? If you are a content creator, entrepreneur, or business owner, there are countless ways to get involved and add your contributions this year. Here are 9 ways to prepare for Hispanic Heritage Month.

Add your business to Support Latino Business Directory

Support Latino Business (SLB) is a nonprofit community-led coalition working to uplift, champion, and resource Latinx/a/o businesses to scale and thrive for generations. Get involved with SLB by adding your business to the Support Latino Business directory, a free community resource to discover and shop for Latino Businesses. Also, kick off Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month with SLB by celebrating Support Latino Business Day on September 14th. SLB provides a complete media toolkit for SLB Day, including banners, logos, and sample posts for your website, email newsletter, and social media.

 

Follow and Use Hispanic Heritage Month Hashtags

You can follow hashtags on most social media platforms, which means you can see all content published with this hashtag. For Hispanic Heritage Month, you can follow #hispanicheritagemonth, #latinxheritagemonth, #latinxowned, and other relevant hashtags to discover potential partners, grant & submission opportunities, events, and recommendations. In addition to following relevant hashtags, use the same hashtags in relevant posts to be potentially discovered.

 

Monitor Hispanic Heritage Month news with Google Alerts

Google Alerts allows you to monitor any keyword or keyword phrase. You’ll get an email notification if it appears in Google’s search engine results. You can set how often you’d like to receive notifications from as-it-happens, once a day, to once a week. You can also set the region and language. Go to Google Alerts and add “Hispanic Heritage Month” and “Latinx Heritage Month” to your keywords to get notifications about upcoming events, articles, earned media opportunities, and more.

 

Create a Speaking Engagement Booking Post

Get booked for Hispanic Heritage Month speaking engagements by creating an engagement post with your expertise. Include your intro and what you are available for, for example, workshops, keynotes, panels, IG Lives, event emceeing, and performances. Also, include expertise topics you feel confident speaking about and share your contact information. In addition to posting on all your marketing platforms, ask your network for speaking opportunities. This speaking engagement post was inspired by Cindy Rodriguez’s booking post.

 

Partner with other Latinx/a/o businesses for Hispanic Heritage Month

A partnership is between two or more people to do business together, and Hispanic Heritage Month is a perfect opportunity to join forces for a bigger outreach and impact. Every partner has something unique to bring to the table. For example, if you have a storefront, you can invite makers and creators to do a pop-up shop or have their products in-store. You can co-promote the partnership between your marketing channels and see how it performs. Marketing partnerships take some time to develop but are worth the investment.

 

Use Instagram Collaboration Tools

Image Credit: Nadi Marketing IG Live featuring @xulahandmade

New to 2022, Instagram introduced collaboration tools that encourage businesses and content creators to collaborate. For Hispanic Heritage Month, you can partner with other Latinx/a/o businesses and create IG Lives, posts, and reels. For IG Lives, you can partner with up to 3 other accounts to amplify your reach by 3x. For example, you can organize a panel-style live on a specific topic for service-based businesses or create a virtual pop-up event where everyone can showcase a few products for product-based businesses. Remember to announce your IG Live and have every partner contribute to the promotion to maximize the reach and views. The other Instagram collab options are posts and reels. The collaborative post and reel will appear on both users’ profile grids, and each partner can access organic insights.

 

Create an event celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

Create a virtual or in-person event to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. You can decide how many people you are trying to target, from webinars to networking events to a summit. Choose the platform or location, for example, LinkedIn Live, Zoom, or a local Latinx/o/a coffee shop to host your event. If you can choose to support Latinx/a/o-owned businesses via your vendors, even better!

 

Actively look for Hispanic Heritage Month Earned Media Opportunities

Image Credit: @melissaadan

Earned media is not your own marketing channels or media you pay for; it’s free third-party media, for example, TV mentions, guest blogging, and guest podcasting. Use Google Alerts to search for opportunities, and also reach out to your local media outlets to see if they are highlighting Latinx/a/o businesses for Hispanic Heritage Month. On social media, you can start following reporters and podcasts and see which ones have highlighted Hispanic Heritage Month in the past. Don’t be afraid to reach out on direct messages to pitch a story idea, some reporters encourage it.

 

Create a Press Kit For Hispanic Heritage Month

In preparation for Hispanic Heritage Month partnerships and earned media opportunities, create a press kit to help streamline your efforts. A press kit is a pre-packaged set of materials in a folder or page on your website to share your business information with journalists, reporters, the media, and partners. A complete press kit should include the following:

  • Logos
  • Business description
  • Contact information (website link, social media links, email, phone number, setting up a meeting/interview link (calendly).
  • Examples of media coverage
  • Awards, recognition, & certifications
  • Founder short & long bio
  • Minimum of 2 headshots (one horizontal and one vertical)
  • Pictures of any signature programs, events, & products/services
  • Brand guidelines

 

What will you do now that you are prepared for Hispanic Heritage Month? Let me know in the comments below, contact me via email, or share it with me on Instagram or LinkedIn.