Alexander and Associates Inc.

Below are podcasts of the Social Media Yak radio show, broadcast on KIDO 580 AM in Boise from 7:30 to 8 p.m. on Saturdays.

These podcasts are free for personal use. If you are a radio station and would like to purchase a license for public broadcast, we offer very reasonable syndication terms that will allow you to make a decent profit by selling time to your own advertisers. Contact martin@alexanderandassociates.com for details.

Feb. 18: Social Media Yak 02-18-12

Feb. 11: Social Media Yak 02-11-12

This page will have an updated schedule of our guests on the Social Media Yak radio show, along with a description of the highlighted topics. Of course, features like the Facebook Agitation Report will be a standard part of each show, along with a balanced discussion of business and personal uses of social media. All Social Media Yak shows run from 7:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. on KIDO AM 580.

Saturday, March 3, 2012: Personal branding with Justin Foster, a brand strategist with plenty of lift-the-top-of-your-head-off-and-expose-your-brain concepts. Branding isn’t just for soda and cars; each of us is a brand and others judge us on our relevance . His book “Oatmeal vs. Bacon” should be required reading for all humans.

Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012: Social media and legal issues Can you really get sued for shooting off your mouth on social media? And what can your boss do if you say something bad about the company on Facebook? Is it really legal for employers to monitor your social media use? We get the facts from Saundra McDavid, who teaches classes on law, technology and business strategy at several universities.

Saturday, Feb.18, 2012: Facebook for small business How can you make your Facebook business page relevant, grow your fans, deal with customers and use your page to conduct business?  Doug Metzgar, owner of Meshwork Marketing, provides some answers. Doug helps businesses get the most out of social media tools, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and others. For the Facebook Agitation Report segment, he’ll provide some advice on Facebook’s new Timeline feature.

Thanks to the following businesses for sponsoring Social Media Yak! If you are interested in sponsoring, please contact Martin Johncox at 208-658-9100 or martin@alexanderandassociates.com. We have some short-term, low-cost sponsorships, as well as more elaborate ones.

• Clothesline Cleaners of Boise and Meridian. Find them on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.
• YMC Inc. of Meridian. Find them on Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media Yak brings ideas, tips and advice to Treasure Valley radio market beginning Saturday, Feb. 18
Idaho public relations company teams with Peak Broadcasting for Saturday morning talk radio show dedicated to social media

For more information:
Martin Johncox, Alexander and Associates, 208-658-9100
martin@alexanderandassociates.com
facebook.com/alexandermarketing
twitter.com/alexandermktng

Jan. 31, 2012

Listeners can find radio talk shows about politics, relationships, finance, cars, health, gadgets, dogs, firearms and cigars. Starting Saturday, February 18, they’ll have a radio show dedicated to social media.

“About half the population of the U.S. uses Facebook and millions more use Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and others, so the time is right for a radio talk show about social media,” said Martin Johncox, host of Social Media Yak, which will run from 7 to 7:30 a.m. on KIDO 580 AM, covering Idaho’s Treasure Valley.  “Social media are fundamentally changing the way people relate to each other and there’s a huge desire to learn more about it.”

The show will cover the best practices for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, GetGlue, MySpace, Yelp!, Foursquare and others, with an emphasis on how-to tips. Topics will include personal branding, bullying, privacy, security, business pages, social activism, apps, new research and more. Guests will include experts in various aspects of social media, as well as local businesses and individuals who successfully use it. The show will be geared toward individuals as well as businesses. Social Media Yak features will include the “Facebook Agitation Report,” a regular update on the ever-changing format and privacy settings of the most popular social media site.

Recently, the Treasure Valley ranked in the top 20 most socially networked cities and Johncox said it is likely Idahoans in general rely on social media – and radio – more than most Americans due to the state’s dispersed population.

Social Media Yak will be nested inside the show of Kevin Miller, a popular Treasure Valley radio show host. Johncox will appear as a guest on Miller’s show at 7 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 11, to introduce Social Media Yak.

Dave Tester, KIDO sales manager, said encouraging development of promising new shows is one of the duties of local broadcasters.

“We are pleased to have someone with Martin’s experience and enthusiasm,” Tester said. “Social media is obviously an area of high public interest and we are proud to be among the first stations to provide listeners with advice and discussion about it.”

The show has several sponsors lined up. The show is somewhat selective, because sponsors must be using social media to effectively promote their business and must refer to at least their Facebook page in the ads. Johncox said sponsors should want to reach listeners who value businesses that use social media.

Listeners will be invited to call in with questions. Parallel discussions will take place at www.facebook.com/category/social-media-yak and on Twitter @socialmediayak. The current Web page for the show is at www.alexanderandassociates.com/category/social-media-yak.

A recurring topic will be the best use for each social medium.

“I like to say that Facebook is the backyard barbecue of social media, LinkedIn is the business meeting, Twitter is the cocktail party and MySpace is the smokers in the alley,” Johncox said. “The goal of Social Media Yak show is to stay on top of – and ahead of – what’s changing, and which medium is best for what part of your life.”

Johncox is a former Idaho newspaper journalist and holds a B.A. in Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Oregon. Since 2001, he has been public relations director for Alexander and Associates Inc. in Boise. His social media work has won industry awards and he regularly makes presentations to chambers of commerce and business groups on getting started and moving forward with social media. Since 2009, Johncox has voiced sponsor spots for Boise State Public Radio.

Since 2009, I’ve been doing voiceovers for Boise State Public Radio sponsors. I’ve listened to public radio for some 25 years and I it’s really an honor to volunteer my time to helping. I’ve never had any professional voice training; I was attending a public meeting with some BSPR people and they said they liked my voice and invited me to volunteer for them.

As a shameless plug for myself and BSPR, here are some recent voiceovers.
UW Thank You- Western Capital Bank
UW Thank you – Givens Pursley, PFCU, INL
University of Idaho – Idaho Shakespeare Festival 2011
The Cat Doctor 2011-Ira Glass Sponsor Message
Thank You – FBI, JAC, ULH
Taco Bell Arena Trans-Siberian Orchestra November 2011
St. Luke’s Heart November 2011 Cut 2 Five Alive
Solar Concepts – Solar Star Attic Fan
Opera Idaho Pirates of Penzance October 2011
Northwest Nazarene University Cut 2
New Website Promos-Cut 3
Morrison Center – MOMIX Botanica January 2012 CUT 1
Meuleman Mollerup-Generic April 2011
Magic Valley Symphony-October 2011
Lee’s Candies Easter 2011
Intermountain Medical Imaging 2011 Cut 1
Idaho Shakespeare Festival Early Bird 2012 Cut 3
Pledge Drive Thank You – Locavore
Idaho Rangeland Resource Commission Stories from the Hitching Post
Idaho Preferred Cut 1
Idaho Humanities Council Distinguished Humanities Lecture Calvin Trillin 2011
Idaho Humane Society See Spot Walk 2011 Cut 1
Idaho Forest Products Commission – April 2011
Idaho Dept Commerce
Idaho Botanical Garden Fall Harvest Festival 2011
Ernest Hemingway Symposium 2011 Cut 1
Eat, Drink and Be Healthy
CSI-Mark Edwards Cut 2
City Club of Boise Cecil Andrus November 2011 Martin
Boise Baroque Orchestra Gonzalo Ruiz February 2012
BCT- Off The Record April 2012
Bank of the Cascades
Ballet Idaho -The Nutcracker 2011
Atkins Mediation Services

There’s a lot of emphasis on automating the public relations process and there’s almost daily a new program platform, trick or app with a funny name that guarantees more followers or better notoriety for clients. But there are some time-honored principles for cultivating your brand, whether your use hieroglyphics or Twitter to communicate: Do good deeds, find allies, use what you have an discreetly toot your horn. Because there’s no way to automate relevance.

We have a track record of delivering news media coverage for our clients and it’s worthwhile to examine how it happens with a good case study.

KTRV and KTVB interview a Boise Rescue Mission resident about the clothing drive with Clothesline Cleaners

There are no secrets to getting news media coverage and several good principles include: Make yourself relevant, do something good for the community, make it easy for journalists to do their job and stand back and let them work.

In September, we hooked up Clothesline with Dress For Success Treasure Valley, which collects professional clothing for disadvantaged women and was holding a clothing drive in conjunction with Office Team. In addition to collecting many women’s suits, several people donated men’s suits and Clothesline Owner Gary McCracken wanted to give them to a worthy cause.

A and A looked for another charity and found Boise Rescue Mission Ministries, which has a program to help homeless and other disadvantaged men enter the workforce, and this program often needs good quality professional clothing. After some work with the Mission’s media staff, we arranged to have clothesline collect men’s clothing for the month of November and we drafted news releases to publicize it. With the cooperation of the Mission, we got some coverage in the Idaho Statesman and KTRV 12 at the kick off and during the clothing drive. We set up an event for Dec. 1 to hand the clothing over to the Mission and requested Mission representatives and a Mission resident attend to answer media questions (so often, news conferences and events have officials and leaders, but no one from the group that’s actually the recipient of the assistance).

With some judicious and persistent follow-up, we were able to persuade KTRV and KTVB – Idaho’s largest news source – to attend the handover, with KTVB devoting more than two and a half minutes to its broadcast. We finally collected about 750 items of clothing, providing a great backdrop at Clothesline’s Boise shop.

We started a parallel social media campaign in November, while Clothesline used its emailing list of several thousand customers to help get the word out. Clothesline also brought in Steve Reeder of the local Tom James haberdashery to publicize the drive to his clients. The Mission distributed to the release and assisted with getting publicity. Each party had some kind of publicity assets and put them to work.

We took our own video and will put that up on Clothesline’s YouTube page. Between the last few days of November and December, our weekly Facebook page visits increased by 10 percent and wall comments increased by one-third, and we believe it is attributable to the social media and news media push.

McCracken reported that about a dozen customers that hadn’t used his services in a while called his store on Dec. 2, saying they saw TV news program that morning, or the night before, and that reminded them they needed to get some stuff cleaned.

Sometimes putting the hustle on things gets results with traditional news media. Metro Express told us a day before they were going to host a tour of industry leaders at the Boise, Meridian and Nampa car washes. After a quick news release and some follow up, KTRV 12 came out and did a terrific story on Wednesday, Sept. 21.

Car wash owners from across the U.S. to visit local Metro Express washes Wednesday, Sept. 21
Automated, computer-controlled car wash attracts national attention in close-knit industry

For more information:
Martin Johncox, 208-658-9100 Bill Martin, 208-331-1301

www.facebook.com/metroexpress www.twitter.com/metroexpress www.youtube.com/metroexpresscarwash www.metroexpresscarwash.com

About 20 car wash moguls from across the US will tour Metro Express car washes in Boise, Nampa and Meridian on Wednesday, Sept. 21, to check out innovations at a chain known nationally as being an industry leader.

“The car wash industry is still close-knit enough to where we will still tour each others’ washes to learn about best practices,” said owner Bill Martin, a former president of the International Car Wash Association. “I am honored to host a peer group representing some of the best-known players in the industry nationally.”

Martin is being rather modest, though. His washes have won awards for his design, social media practices, environmental protection and use of technology. Martin will be giving tours to car wash operators (some of them much larger than Metro Express) from New York, Florida, and other states on Wednesday afternoon.

“Bill Martin seems to be at the forefront of all technological advances and he recently was named Innovative Operator of the Year from us,” said Bill Carbonel, a California car wash owner and president of the Western Car Wash Association. “Bill is very well known in the industry for his beautiful facilities, for his ability to reach out with social media to attract new customers and for adopting the latest practices and technology, so it is natural other operators would want to tour his washes.”

Martin has more than 40 years of experience in the industry and considers Metro Express to be the apex of the automated car wash, combining the thoroughness of a hand wash with the speed and low cost of an automated wash. His three car washes are highly computerized, with imaging software tracking the movement of each car on the property and up-to-the-minute reports on productivity accessible from his iPhone.

The City of Meridian has honored Metro Express for its water reclamation. And car wash operators aren’t the only people taking tours – in April, public works officials from throughout Idaho toured Metro Express to examine its storm water treatment methods.

Metro Express has a demonstrated commitment to local causes. Since 2010, Metro Express has raised about $11,500 for nonprofits by offering free car washes for a donation. Beneficiaries have included the Valley Crisis Center, Terry Reilly Health Services and ArtFaire Inc. The company has given away hundreds of car wash passes to nonprofits for use as door prizes and is constantly running public service announcements on its downtown Boise electronic billboards.

The death of traditional PR and traditional media hasn’t arrived yet, if ever. This is a good example of how traditional public relations, combined with local partnerships and public service, result in good publicity when the media are listening.

Thanks again to KTRV for a couple of great stories on our clients Metro Express Car Wash and Clothesline Cleaners.

KTRV news story on Clothesline Cleaners

KTRV story on Metro Express Car Wash

I recently ran across this 2008 column that was published in the Idaho Statesman. The original Statesman page is no longer available, but the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho has kept it up (see Statesman reader comments here). While we clamor for more transit, cities like Boise simply haven’t required the kind of development style that transit needs.

Growth of the past 15 years is not conducive for transit
READER’S VIEW: Public Transportation
Idaho Statesman, January 23, 2008

By Martin Johncox
I’ve been following the discussion of local-option taxation and transit in the editorial pages of The Statesman. While I support local-option taxation and transit, there’s been little discussion if cities have been preparing their built environment to support transit.

From what I can tell, cities have a spotty record on enforcing the kind of development needed to make transit feasible. This lack of transit-oriented development undermines the cities’ otherwise good arguments in favor of local option taxation.

Transit lacks point-to-point flexibility. To make up for that, people must bridge, on foot or bike, the distance between the transit stop and their destination. To get people to do this, you must build a human-scaled environment, where buildings come right to the sidewalk; things are stacked on top of each other to conservedistance; and homes, offices, shopping centers, schools and other destinations are directly connected with sidewalks.

The best examples of this kind of development locally are from a century ago: the historic neighborhoods and the downtowns of Treasure Valley cities, developed when cars were scarce and the locations of tracks and train stops determined what got built and where. Transit friendly is necessarily pedestrian friendly.

But we’ve built just the opposite in the past 50 years. Giant parking lots, absent of sidewalks, encourage people to drive from one parking lot to the next; subdivisions are fenced from each other and neighboring shopping centers; and very long blocks and cul-de-sacs lengthen pedestrian trips.

In such an environment, people will not walk to the nearest transit stop, even if they could find it. If a train dropped off people by the mall, they would be in the middle ofsome of the most pedestrian-hostile development in Idaho. Could we expect a rider to catch a train or bus stopping 100 feet from their home, when it’s in a shopping center on the other side of a fence and the only other way is a half-mile walk out of the subdivision? No amount of local-option taxation flexibility will fix this.

To be fair, it’s been less than 15 years since Boise and other cities awoke to the need to build for transit. Indeed, for most of the past century, transit-friendly Main Street America was illegal to build under zoning codes. Only relatively recently have local governments become receptive to Smart Growth principles.

Yet in those past 15 years there’s been precious little progress toward enforcing transit-friendly development. Boise’s 1997 comprehensive plan was a visionary statement of urban planning that, unfortunately, has not been followed diligently enough to improve opportunities for transit. There are very few examples of shopping centers built in Boise in the past 10 years, for example, that are truly
transit-friendly. Shopping centers still have huge parking lots between the stores and the street. Cul-de-sacs are still common and many subdivisions still have just one or two ways in and out. Pedestrian- and transit-friendly development styles are mandated downtown only.

We’ve made some improvements, like mico-pathways in subdivisions and pedestrian networks inside parking lots. But from a practical, on-the-ground perspective – and compared to the examples people a century ago bequeathed us – transit remains a vestigial part of our built environment. (See “The Next American Metropolis” by Peter Calthorpe to learn how transit oriented developments can work in modern times.)

I fully support the vision for transit in the Treasure Valley and I believe local-option taxation authority should be granted. But we should realize that for more than a decade, we have had the local mandate to require transit-friendly development and have made little apparent progress.

Martin Johncox is a former Statesman reporter who covered local government and
urban planning. He is currently a public relations consultant at Alexander and Associates, focusing on land use and public policy.

One of our clients, Dr. Errol Fife at  Harrison Dental, has stopped taking Medicaid patients and has decided to direct his charitable efforts in other directions. Given the news media coverage about Idaho’s ongoing difficulties with its state budget, and its Medicaid program in particular, this is worth reading.