A day in the life of a water droplet

Graphic:  GE

Twinkies come back to life

Thanks to a $410 million sale to turnaround firms Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co., Twinkies are being resurrected. But does anyone care? Just like a two-year-old toddler who suddenly finds an abandoned toy fascinating thanks to another kid's interest, Americans became obsessed with Twinkies when they thought that they were going away.

Before the announcement of the deal, sellers on eBay were trying to get as much as $250,000 for two boxes of Twinkies.

Not to worry, folks. Twinkies will be back on the shelves before the fall -- along with normal prices.

When Hostess Brands Inc. was given the approval in November 2012 to start winding down its operations, bankers thought that a sale of the company's brands could fetch up to $2.4 billion.

Then reality set in. The five major deals announced by Hostess totaled $860 million. Of those, the deal for the cake business assets -- including Twinkies, Ho Hos, Sno Balls and Dolly Madison Zingers -- was the largest.

Maybe people are realizing that Twinkies aren't as great tasting as we thought they were.

TurboTax troubles in Minnesota

It started strangely with an e-mail that I received from Bob Meighan, vice president of TurboTax, on March 6:  "Because you submitted a TurboTax return to the state of Minnesota prior to March 1, 2013, we wanted to alert you to an error that may impact your state tax return. . ."

What!?! Sometimes I do things far in advance, but I knew that I hadn't filed my taxes yet. Could this be a phishing e-mail? Rather than click on any links in the e-mail, I decided to call the 1-866 number for Intuit that was listed. After waiting on hold for 30 minutes, the customer service representative said that I didn't have anything to worry about because I had not filed my 2012 return yet.

Little did I know that I -- and thousands of other Minnesotans -- had a lot to worry about.

On March 8, Terri Steenblock, assistant commissioner of Individual Taxes at the Minnesota Department of Revenue, held a press conference outlining "completely unacceptable" issues with Intuit tax products including TurboTax. Besides assigning political contributions to the wrong party, the software also failed to give an education credit for multiple dependents and incorrectly calculated property tax refunds.

The e-mail that I received from Bob Meighan, TurboTax VP.

While the issues were resolved by the afternoon of March 11, I thought that it would be interesting to see how Intuit handled this crisis.

Last July, I attended a crisis communications seminar presented by Jack Yeo and John Brooks at the PRSA Midwest District Conference in Chicago.

According to Yeo and Brooks, there are eight laws of crisis communications:

1. Protecting reputation is not about the crisis, but rather how you handle it. Intuit spokeswoman Julie Miller was apologetic in a March 9 Star Tribune article:  "We deeply appreciate the state's concerns. We stand behind the accuracy of our tax product. We hold ourselves to a higher standard, as does the state, as do our customers, and we need to do better."
2. Be aware of the world around you. I heard about the extent of the issues through the news media. There are Twitter accounts for TurboTax, though (@TurboTax and @TeamTurboTax) -- and neither mentions the issues. The TurboTax Facebook page doesn't address it, either.
3. There is no excuse for not planning. I'm not sure if Intuit ever anticipated these "human errors" in coding, but hopefully they will work on assessing possible crisis situations in the future.
4. A swift response is required. Both Miller and Meighan were quoted in media articles. While the company has pledged to pay any tax preparation expenses for those who have to file amended returns as a result of the problems, what about the rest of the people in Minnesota who use TurboTax? I believe that Minnesotans will be rethinking whether to use TurboTax in the future; some sort of incentive would be appropriate to keep customers. (Perhaps a free Minnesota state e-file is in order?)
5. Understand the impact of today's digital democracy. I didn't see any response from Intuit in the social channels, even though there were hashtags such as #GetItTogether and #TaxFail.
6. Always operate with transparency. While Intuit responded to (and was quoted) in media articles, their communications to me only mentioned the political contribution software issue.
7. Never stand alone. Nobody stood up for Intuit and TurboTax. While people "love" the software, that's only when it gets things right.
8. Never forget to rebuild. To this date, the only communication I received directly from Intuit was the e-mail as well as a letter in the mail. Both items only mentioned the State Elections Campaign Fund" issue and didn't address the other (multiple) issues with the software.

So, if I were to grade Intuit's response to this issue, I would give them a "C." The company came across as levelheaded in media articles, but was nowhere to be found in the social media channels. In addition, it will be interesting to see what Intuit will do to keep its customers. I bet that there are many Minnesotans looking for tax preparation software alternatives for the future.

The Internet in a day

Courtesy of InternetServiceProviders.org

Social media stocks update

In Dec. 2011, I wrote about social media stock performance. Since that time, Facebook had its initial public offering. Let's take a look at how Facebook and the original stocks I mentioned have fared:

• Facebook, Inc. (FB) -- Closed on the first day of trading (May 18, 2012) at $38.23; now trades at $27.13.
• Zynga, Inc. (ZNGA) -- Closed at $9.50 on its first day of trading (Dec. 16, 2011); now trades at $3.19.
• LinkedIn Corporation (LNKD) -- Was trading for approximately $65 in Dec. 2011; now goes for $160.44 per share.
• Groupon, Inc. (GRPN) -- Traded at around $22 in Dec. 2011; now costs $5.72 per share.
• Pandora Media, Inc. (P) -- Was trading at just under $10 in Dec. 2011; now sells for $12.11 per share.

Clearly LinkedIn has done the best. Pandora Media has shown slight improvement; Facebook, Zynga and Groupon all have had varying levels of decline.

Inkybee review

After I expressed my frustration with the lack of depth for blog listings with the major media databases, a colleague of mine turned me on to something new:  Inkybee.

Billed as "Smarter blogger outreach...for busy PR pros," Inkybee takes one through all the steps of blogger outreach. It starts with discovering the appropriate blogs. Just enter up to three words or phrases that bloggers actually used in blog posts. Inkybee then gets to work. Within half an hour, Inkybee sends an e-mail listing appropriate blogs with a relevancy score and other metrics. The blogs can then be added to one's blog list. (Inkybee continues to work, sending e-mails every six hours. At this point, I am drowning in e-mails from Inkybee. It would be nice if there were a way to change the frequency of e-mails, such as daily or weekly.)

Inkybee provides statistics to evaluate blogs.

Inkybee provides a fine way to track blogger engagement. Based on the tips from the free guide "The Best Practice Guide for Effective Blogger Outreach," users can keep track of the bloggers with whom they have developed relationships. This includes actions such as following a blogger on Twitter, commenting on a blog, sharing a blogger's content and more.

Inkybee provides recommendations and ways to track blogger engagement.

Evaluation of a blogger outreach campaign also is included, with Inkybee keeping track of the blogs that mentioned one's client (based on appropriate keywords). Inkybee also can integrate with Google Analytics to measure visitor data tied to blogs. The reports then can be exported to Excel or downloaded as a PDF.

At this point, Inkybee is available as a free beta version. Many great improvements are expected in coming weeks, and pricing will be a "highly affordable monthly subscription" when officially launched. If you need to do blogger outreach on behalf of clients, I recommend trying Inkybee now.

Social news gathering

Social media is playing an ever increasing role in news gathering, according to Dennis Powell, senior producer at ABC News. Powell spoke at a recent Minnesota PRSA-Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul event held at Best Buy headquarters.

For its coverage of Hurricane Sandy, Powell said that ABC News went through 300 pieces of social media. One piece that ABC News used was "Hurricane Sandy 3 Trees Fall and Fire!!" from YouTube.

"HootSuite is a wire desk of sources for a particular beat," said Powell.

While tweets can be published without permission, Powell emphasized the importance of authentication for other social media posts. For instance, ABC News will not run a YouTube video on air until it has the real name, phone number and e-mail address of the person who posted the video. This ensures that nothing fake is aired.

"Social media is an addition to the other news gathering tools," said Powell. When a news event happens, the ABC News "1440 Social Media Desk" follows these tips in order to determine appropriate social media content:

• Put yourself in the place of the event.
• What would someone say?
• What would someone who knows someone say?
• Where would they say it?

Dennis Powell, ABC News Senior Producer

Sources that the ABC News team uses as part of the social media news gathering toolkit include:

• Twitter search
• Twipho.net
• OpenStatusSearch.com
• Topsy.com
• Reddit
• Facebook
• ABC News staff

Not every event has social media commentary, though. For instance, Powell noted that the Newtown school shooting was not a social media moment.