News & Notes

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.

Facebook is changing how businesses can use it’s platform. Starting on March 30, 2012, all active Facebook business pages (Fan pages) will be changed over to a new design called Timeline (which has been rolled out to most individual users already). Facebook is also creating guidelines and rules on how businesses can use their new pages.  Here are 5 resources to help you stay ahead of the changes and leverage them for to help your business:

1. 7 New Facebook Changes Impacting Businesses (Social Media Examiner)
2. 5 Tricks that Every Marketer Needs to Know to Exploit the New Facebook Page Design (Duct Tape Marketing)
3. The Complete Guide To Facebook Timeline Pages (All Facebook)
4. The Complete Guide to Setting Up the New Facebook Page Design (HubSpot)
5. 14 Ways New Facebook Betrays Small Business (Convince & Convert)

How are you handling the new Facebook changes to Timeline for businesses?

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.