YouTube and Twitter have become established instruments in Hispanic investors' repertoire of communication skills and capabilities. Both social media channels receive more engagement from Hispanic investors than investors of any other ethnicity, confirming Hispanic Americans' love affair with social media.

Eighty percent of Latinos have social media accounts, surpassing the general population's 72 percent. Hispanics beat out non-Hispanics in the use of YouTube and Twitter for shopping, not to mention its use for personal, observational and professional purposes.

Spectrem's Ethnic Segmentation Series study, "Using Social Media and Mobile Technology in Financial Decisions," examined the social media behaviors of African-Americans, Latinos and Asians. The report suggested Hispanic investors once lagged behind non-Hispanics with social media use but currently practice greater usage than whites.

In fact, 62 percent of affluent Hispanic investors use Facebook, while just 57 percent of the "non-ethnic population of affluent investors uses Facebook." And Hispanic investors lead on other social media sites as well: 26 percent of Hispanic investors compared to 14 percent of white investors are on LinkedIn; 38 percent compared to 28 percent are on YouTube; and 16 percent compared to 6 percent are on Instagram. And when it comes to Instagram and Twitter, Hispanic investors overwhelmingly outnumber affluent Asians and Hispanics as well.

"This is one group that tends to be a bigger user to get its information, and our advisers should be more attuned to that," said George H. Walper Jr., president of Spectrem Group.

At least once a day, 57 percent of affluent Hispanic investors visit Facebook, and 18 percent of affluent Hispanic investors report that they visit at least five times a day, 12 percent higher than non-ethnic investors. Twenty-three percent of Hispanic investors admitted to sharing and communicating with others on Twitter, higher than African-Americans (21 percent), Asians (13 percent) and the national average (13 percent).

Twitter's 140-character rapid communication system has lured only 14 percent of total affluent investors to Twitter. At the same time, 26 percent of Hispanic investors, 24 percent of African-American investors and 15 percent of Asian investors have opted to take advantage of Twitter's terse and quick style of news delivery. Twenty-three percent of Hispanic investors reported that they were regularly active on the site, and 43 percent occasionally share information on Twitter. Only 21 percent of African-Americans are active, and 48 percent drop an occasion tweet.

Forty-seven percent of investors simply use Twitter for observational purposes, not engagement. That said, just 33 percent of African-Americans and 30 percent of Hispanics are non-participatory on the site. Rather than engage, these individuals follow financial commentators (24 percent compared to 20 percent of the general investor population), political commentators (50 percent of Hispanics compared to 36 percent), other community investors, newspapers, magazines, athletes, actors and musicians, in order to fill their 'feed' with the latest news and insights.

Easily the most enthusiastic lot of investors, Hispanic investors also want to communicate with their advisers using technology. Twenty-five percent of affluent Hispanic investors said they wanted to be able to text their financial advisors about financial decisions. That's compared to 24 percent of African-Americans, 16 percent of Asian-Americans and 14 percent of whites. Also, 19 percent of affluent African-American investors, 15 percent of Hispanics and 14 percent of Asian investors already communicate via text messages. That's compared to the 12 percent of the general population of affluent investors.

In addition, 6 percent of affluent Hispanics investors and 5 percent of African-American investors have made contracts with advisers through Facebook, pioneering investor-adviser communications through social media. Also, 5 percent of Hispanic investors connect with advisors on LinkedIn. While these numbers are low, they are scales above the general population of investors' use of LinkedIn for similar purposes.

Hispanic and African-American investors are also interested in communicating with advisors using video chat, using FaceTime and Skype.

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