Guest Post

Store review company Yelp is not profitable and it hasn’t made money since it was founded eight
years ago, yet social media was aflurry with positive responses when Yelp announced that it would go
public. On the day of the IPO, Yelp’s stock price rose almost 60%, from $15 to almost $25. Was this a
result of social media buzz, and how can other companies use social media to create and benefit from
similar buzz? Find out in this episode of Future of Engagement!

Highlights

• Yelp’s IPO got almost entirely positive social media coverage…
• And its stock price rose 60% over the day of the IPO…
• Even though Yelp isn’t even profitable.

Graphs courtesy of Alerti Social Media
Monitoring and Management

This is a guest post by Murray Newlands, CEO of Influence People.

Sacha Baron Cohen was expected to show up in-character as Aladeen from his upcoming movie The Dictator, but nobody expected him to spill what Aladeen said were Kim Jong Il’s ashes onto interviewer Ryan Seacrest. In this episode of Future of Engagement, host Murray Newlands looks at how social media responded to Cohen’s stunt, and whether stunts like this work in general.

Highlights:

• The media knew Cohen would go to the Oscars as Aladeen beforehand…
• …So he already had a lot of cameras on him…
• …But he got almost as much negative response as positive response on social media.

Graph by Alerti Social Media Monitoring and Management:

This Alerti graph looks at what and where people were sharing about the terms “Sacha Baron Cohen” and “Dictator”

This is a guest post by Murray Newlands, CEO of Influence People.