There are more than 200 million business accounts on Instagram globally that users visit every day. These business accounts are more than just sharing company content; they’re also driving sales. A recent study found that 50% of Instagram users are more interested in a brand when they see ads for it on Instagram.
But here’s the kicker, you don’t have to pay for ads on Instagram to make your followers more interested in your company. You can be posting content organically to grow your online presence. 90% of Instagram users say they are more likely to buy from a brand by just simply following them.
This isn’t just Instagram either. In fact, more than 80% of Facebook users follow at least six brands on Facebook. Businesses are everywhere on social media! From Twitter to LinkedIn to Tik Tok, your favorite brand probably has some sort of presence on social media. (Well, obviously because we are on everything!)
Our point is businesses are everywhere on social media, even right here in Boise, Idaho. If you aren’t focusing a part of your marketing on social media, you are missing out on sales and potential customers. Creating a social media strategy and growing your social media presence can seem daunting at first, but we’re here to offer some advice for our beloved local businesses here in the Treasure Valley.
In this blog post, we have handpicked our favorite social media accounts we think are a MUST follow in Boise, Idaho.
Without further ado, let’s have a look.
10 Boise Businesses that are Killing It on Social Media
As a business owner, you know that social media is a powerful tool to reach new customers and grow your brand. But not all businesses are created equal when it comes to social media. Some Boise businesses are killing it, while others could use some improvement. The businesses below are drenching their followers in value and providing entertaining and informative content. If you’re looking to take your social media game up a notch, be sure to take some pointers from these local businesses!
We have picked these Boise Businesses based on the following criteria. Some of these accounts have all five, and others do a few really well.
- High-quality photos
- Awesome engagement
- Large Following
- Trending Content
- Overall Social Media Strategy
Let’s have a look at each of these accounts one by one.
1. Guru Donuts
Guru Donuts is a local donut shop in the heart of Downtown Boise. They serve handcrafted donuts and are always coming up with new seasonal sweets. Their Instagram is one of our favorites because they do a phenomenal job of creating a cohesive brand identity throughout all of their social media platforms.
They combine native iPhone content with high-quality food photography to present a fun and colorful brand image. This is a great example of how you can create an aesthetic Instagram page that instantly gets your brand message across to your customer.
Guru Donuts also does an awesome job of posting Instagram and Facebook stories. They post almost every day to their stories highlighting a new donut or something fun happening in the store. A great story strategy is a great way to interact with your community every day.
2. Edwards Greenhouse
Next up on our lists of local businesses is Edwards Greenhouse. Edwards Greenhouse & Flowershop is a family-owned business serving the Treasure Valley since 1930 and operates year-round. This place is our first stop in the Spring when it’s time to plant a garden.
Although their peak season is in the Spring, these guys post all year round. Their content is simple but effective as they have accumulated over 12.4 thousand Instagram followers since starting their account. However, our favorite content by them has to be their reels. They only have a few, but we love seeing them pop up every time. We are loving Reels these days because Instagram favors them in the algorithm, they get more impressions, and they can show a different side to your business! If you arent filming Reels (and Tik Toks!), you need to! And if you need some help with Reels, read our blog post on How to Use Instagram Reels for Digital Marketing in 2022.
3. Western Collective
I don’t know who runs this Instagram account, but they are hustling because Western Collective posts every day! We love the commitment to social media. Western Collective is a dog-friendly brewery and taproom that is located just outside Boise in Garden City, and as I said before, they are killing it on social media.
Posting every day is HARD. Do you know that means that you have to have around 30 new images a month? The only way your business can post every day on social media is by planning way in advance. This means you need to know what you are posting for the Fourth of July in May! I know it might sound crazy, but Western Collective is proof that posting every day works if you have tons of content.
Our biggest tip for getting tons of content like this is to have consistent content days. Redfox does tons of social media content days for our clients, so they have a backlog of images and videos in their back pocket they can post. We also recommend asking your customers for user-generated content. So that you constantly have people tagging your business and sending you even more content. Posting every day is hard, but you can do it if you have a dedicated social media team and lots of content to work with!
4. Idaho Steelheads
This local sports team makes a big impact on social media. The Idaho Steelheads are a mid-level professional ice hockey team located right here in Boise, Idaho. They meet this list not only because they have an awesome social media presence but also because they know what kinds of posts go on different platforms.
Since the Idaho Steelheads are a bigger business than some of the other ones on this list, they have almost every social media platform. One of our favorites is their Twitter. Not only do they post industry news, but they also post funny memes and tweets related to game day. One of our favorites is the types of posts like the one below. This kind of post may not do well on LinkedIn, but on Twitter, it can thrive. Knowing what type of content goes on each social media platform is vital to any social media strategy.
5. The STIL
Did you know that STIL stands for the Sweeter Things In Life? We didn’t know that until we followed them on Instagram! The STIL is a growing ice cream shop in the Treasure Valley with delicious small-batch ice cream from Idaho dairy with non-dairy and alcoholic options. (YUM!) They are another great example of a food and beverage brand making waves with its social media marketing.
The STIL’s engagement is through the roof! On a simple image of a spoon in ice cream, they get an average of 200 likes and five comments. For their social media, they obviously have a great social media strategy. Every time they come out with a new flavor of ice cream, they post a variation of the same picture on their feed to announce it. This may seem repetitive, but these posts, like the one below, are some of their highest-performing posts.
A consistent strategy like this makes it easy for social media managers to keep up with new product launches and company announcements. For a business like The STIL, their social media manager knows exactly what to post each time a new flavor comes out, even though they may not know exactly what day these flavors are released because they don’t have to. If you have products and updates that are always changing or need your social media manager to be able to post content on the fly, creating a consistent structure or social media template makes it easy for social media experts to post at the drop of a hat.
6. Paddles Up Poké
Ok, this business we are super excited to highlight. Paddles Up Poke is dominating the poke market in Boise; why? Their marketing team is the bomb. Everything from their social media to their public relations efforts is very intentional making them one of the most well-known Boise businesses.
Paddles Up Poké is a local poké restaurant and the official poké shop of the Boise State Broncos and Idaho Steelheads, specializing in poké bowls and sushi burritos. The post we want to highlight is not necessarily one of their most visually appealing posts, but one that really showed the company’s character.
In short, a local Boise restaurant called the Hyde House suddenly went bankrupt and went out of business. Upon further investigation, the former employees had not been paid for their work for weeks. That’s when owner Dan Landucci aimed to make things right and covered the loss of all Hyde House former employees’ final checks, taking the term “Boise Nice” to a whole new level. Check out the full story on IdahoNews!
Now we are not suggesting that every brand needs to develop a publicity stunt to get more page likes by any means. However, we do encourage that when your company does something good for the community, don’t be shy about it! Giving back to the Boise community at large and showing your company’s character is a great way to create loyal customers for life. Social media should never just be one giant company advertisement but a community of people who support your business.
7. Bogus Basin
Did you think we weren’t going to talk about Tik Tok? Ok, so Bogus Basin doesn’t have an official Tik Tok account, BUT the Bogus Basin hashtag has over 15 million views on Tik Tok. Bogus Basin sometimes shares these videos to their various platform accumulating over 45.8K followers on Instagram.
Bogus Basin is Boise’s local non-profit ski resort and recreational mountain area. If you haven’t heard of Bogus Basin yet and live in Boise, you must be living under a rock. Bogus Basin manages its social media extremely well.
They have fantastic videos of snowboarding and skiing that are so epic! The pond skim video is one of my favorites.
8. BACON
Next on the list is BACON. If you are looking for a good southern breakfast and are a bacon lover, this is the place to be. There is a reason this place always has a line out the door and part of in may because of their awesome social media and, of course, their food.
BACON is an awesome foodie page posting high-quality pictures of high-quality food, but by far, my favorite part about their social media is their captions. They easily reflect their brand as being light-hearted and hilarious. I would expect nothing less from a brand that sells “eat me” stickers.
Having a cohesive brand identity across all of your social platforms is a must. You have to ensure that your social media channels are just a branch of your overall brand. This makes it so easy for your customer to feel like they actually know your brand, owner, and employees. If you are a restaurant in Boise, check out BACON’s Instagram for inspiration.
9. Boise Juice Co
Ok, we are really impressed with Boise Juice Co.’s social media because they do something that not a lot of other food and beverage brands are doing.
Boise Juice Company was the first cold-pressed juice bar in the Treasure Valley and now operates in three locations in the community. This locally owned business is loved by college students all over the Treasure Valley and has a strong presence on social media.
What we love specifically about Boise Juice Co. is that they combine organic content with high-quality photoshoots. As a beverage company, it can be very easy to have your feed be one study stream of your product, and no one wants to see the same image but slightly tweaked each week in their Instagram theme. So what did they do? They had a content day. At redfox visual we love content days and recommend them to all of our new clients. Content days are the best way to batch social media content in advance and get stellar high-quality photos. What Boise Juice Co. did is they gathered some models that are in their target age demographic and went do one of the best sunset spots in the Treasure Valley and shot loads of content. Their content featured all their products, people, and a few dogs! After they shot the content they now have a backlog of spring and summer images that can be used for months to come.
If you aren’t doing regular content days for your business you are constantly doing to be trying to shoot content on the fly and it can be hard to plan your social media in advance. The best way to have a strong social media strategy is to plan your content in advance and have high-quality content. Content days and photoshoots are a way that you can manage to do both.
10. Riverence
Last on our list is Riverence. Riverence is a land-based fish farm located just outside of the Treasure Valley in Twin Falls, Idaho. They are doing awesome things in their industry. Their goal is to make aquaculture as sustainable as possible and encourage others to eat more seafood.
We really love their accounts because they have adopted a four-pillar content strategy. This is the strategy that we do at redfox, where we come up with four pillars of content ideas for your brand so that your overall content subject matter is diverse. This helps greatly when looking at your social media presence on a larger scale. It allows you to see what type of content you have been posting and what kind of content you have been neglecting.
This does not mean that your content should sound like one big advertisement but rather just have a different subject matter. There is always room for a joke or a holiday post here or there. The goal is that your customers see a wide variety of content from your brand to be able to see your bigger picture. Take a look at Riverence’s Instagram to see if you can figure out their four pillars.
Boise has a lot of incredible small businesses that are also doing well on social media. If you’re a local business in Boise, Idaho, we’d love to help you with our social media needs! Contact redfox visual today to learn more about our social media services.
Other blog posts you might be interested in:
How to Build a Fool-Proof Social Media Strategy for Your Boise-Based Business
