An Annual Update from William Higginson
Founder and Co-Admin of the Boise Christmas Lights Project
Author's Note - this is an Archived Version from our old blog - rest in peace, blog!
The 2018 Christmas season is behind us! It was a very successful year for us at BCL. We saw a tremendous amount of growth, both in audience numbers and in light display submissions. It's a true testament to how fast the Boise area is growing.
Anywho, we wanted to highlight some of the things we did and some of the milestones we hit for the 2018 season.
Here's what we did new for the 2018 Season:
Started this blog, boise.208christmas.com, to house all of our content in one place
Highlighted some noteworthy Halloween Displays on our Facebook page and map
Upgraded from a crap phone to a Galaxy S9 on Black Friday specifically for taking pictures of Christmas Lights π
Covered community Christmas Events/Tree Lightings via Facebook Live and blog posts
Created and maintained Driving Routes by popular demand
Did way more Facebook Live videos at displays
Covered noteworthy neighborhoods that had amazing Christmas Lights (Neighborhood Christmas Watch):
Meridian Greens
Bayhill Springs
Edna Street
Tumble Creek
Here are some of the milestones we hit for the 2018 Season:
Hit 1,500 Likes on Facebook
Hit 2,000 Likes on Facebook
Hit 2,500 Likes on Facebook
Drove the furthest distance to highlight Christmas Lights - Baker City, Oregon
We had 111 total pins on our 2018 Christmas Lights Map...
33 Light Shows Synced to Music
65 Static Light Displays
13 Community Events/Trees
7 Light Shows and 19 Static Displays from 2017 did not light up for 2018
Some insights from an Admin's perspective:
A lot of people who recently moved to Idaho from out-of-state contacted us this year to add their displays to our map listings. The huge positive here is that these folks are bringing some AMAZING Christmas light displays with them - both light shows and static displays.
As mentioned above, we hit the 2.5K Likes mark on our Facebook page. We started the 2018 season with just over 1,000 likes. That is a tremendous amount of growth in just a couple of months! We're finding a lot of people find and like our page when it is tagged in local community Facebook groups.
People really liked our Driving Routes... they were easily getting thousands of views and lots of shares around Facebook! But some people said they were a little too long or didn't think some of the homes on the route were worth the drive. This is valuable feedback we will take into consideration for the 2019 season.
- William @BCL