If you’ve ever thought, “I know I should be posting on social media more often but I have 500 other things to do… and I also hate it,” you’re gonna like this story.
Ampersand Studios has rolled out a new offering: the Ready to Post Content Subscription. It’s done-for-you social media content designed for businesses that want high-quality, strategic social media… without having to become content creators themselves or commit to full-service social media management.
Ampersand is a full-service branding agency based in Boise. “We specialize in helping small businesses define their voice and visuals through social media content, photography, graphic design, and branding services,” said founder and CEO Frannie Wilson.
What Ready to Post actually means
The Ready to Post subscription is a monthly flat-rate service that includes a shoot and 12–15 ready-to-post reels per quarter.
Ampersand does pretty much everything; clients just show up for the shoot and then post the content on their own timeline.
At the first kickoff shoot, the team produces both photos and video. After that, it’s all reels. Each quarter, clients meet with Ampersand for a 90-minute to two-hour shoot, and the team comes prepared with research, scripts, and clear direction to get everything done as efficiently (and painlessly) as possible.
“We tell them exactly what to do,” Frannie said. “Then we do all the editing including the text on screen, editing to sounds, beats, lip syncs… whatever it is. All of it is ready for them to just click publish.”
This new subscription isn’t really a pivot for the company – it’s a distillation of everything Ampersand has learned over the last 15 years about branding, storytelling, small businesses, and the mental block social media creates for a lot of smart, capable people.
The problem they kept hearing (over and over and over)
Frannie told me she’s had hundreds of discovery calls with business owners who all say some version of the same thing:
They know social media works. They know it’s important. They absolutely hate doing it.
Not because they don’t care – but because they care too much.
They want it to look good. They want it to be thoughtful. They want there to be an actual ROI. And instead of posting imperfectly and figuring it out as they go, they freeze and post nothing at all.
“Most of the clients we work with have seen the power of organic social,” Frannie said. “They just know that in order to do it to the standard they have for themselves, they don’t have the capacity.”
Ampersand’s approach gives people permission to let go of that pressure.
“The quality is going to be great, but it’s not like a high-production, cinematic masterpiece. It’s designed to look and feel organic,” said Frannie.
Simple on the surface, strategic behind the scenes
Clients commit to a quarterly shoot where Ampersand batches content all at once. What looks and feels simple on the outside is backed by a lot of behind the scenes strategy.
Ampersand handles:
- Idea development
- Industry, audience, and client research
- Script writing
- Wardrobe, set styling, and props
- Coaching during shoot
- File organization
- Editing the footage
- Adding hooks and on-screen captions
After the quarterly shoot, they send the client a streamlined content guide with links to each video complete with Instagram sounds. When they say “ready to post” they mean it.
This subscription works for business owners starting from scratch, teams that already have someone capable of posting and responding to comments, and founders who still want to be involved in their social presence – without having to make all the content themselves.”
This “ready to post” model keeps control in-house while removing the biggest friction point.
Frannie described it using a meal-planning analogy: Ready to Post is like planning out your dinners for the week. You’ll still come up with something to eat for breakfast and lunch (stories, comments, quick posts), but the hardest part is already taken care of.
It works for way more businesses than you’d expect
Ampersand’s current Ready to Post clients run the gamut. There’s a Boise-based supplement company for giant breed dogs, personal brands and CEOs, health and wellness clinics, a payment processing company serving high-risk businesses, a wedding planner, even an out-of-state marketing agency.
“We get to learn a lot about businesses. We do a ton of research and have them fill out a really extensive questionnaire. We also do a lot of research on their industry and adjacent industries. Maybe there’s another industry that isn’t a competitor but they have the same audience, so we find out what kind of content is working well for them,” said Frannie. “It changes month to month. It’s super fun.”
Frannie’s favorite proof-point: her husband’s restaurant.
Before Ready to Post, the restaurant’s social media was what she lovingly calls a “proof of life account.” They were active – if you saw the page you knew the restaurant was open – but the account wasn’t really growing or bringing in a new customer.
“We decided to test this offer with them because I was like, you guys would be the perfect type of business that I want to attract for this,” said Frannie. “And they immediately started going viral. I’d say almost half of the reels we’ve created for them have gotten over a million views.”
What type of clients are they looking for next? Anyone that could use their help, of course! But Frannie is especially excited to work with more brick-and-mortar local businesses – businesses that might not think Ready to Post Content would be for them, like a car dealership, or a landscaping company or a dentist.
Ampersand is built for this
What makes Ready to Post work isn’t just the idea; it’s the team behind it.
Ampersand Studios is a multidisciplinary studio with a small team spanning expertise in brand strategy, messaging and voice, graphic design, photography, short-form video production, editing, and web design.
Frannie joked that Ready to Post “created a monster” internally because executing it well requires a real assembly line of handoffs and specialized skill sets.
But Ampersand can do it (and do it well) because they’ve been quietly building toward it for years.
Ampersand Studios started in 2009 as a graphic design studio launched straight out of college. Frannie and her co-founder Nichole went to BSU together for graphic design and photography. They had internships at local ad agencies, but they graduated during the recession when companies were actively laying people off – not hiring new grads.
The final project for their major was the senior portfolio show. The idea is to spend a semester putting a portfolio together and getting it ready to apply for jobs. The department hosts a show and invites all the local marketing agencies to come out and look at all the students’ work, the idea being to make connections for potential hires.
“Since we already knew that our internships weren’t hiring on and nobody was really looking for students to hire, we decided to pool our portfolios together and spent that whole semester branding ourselves as business,” said Frannie. “We spent the semester creating Ampersand, designing the logo, our website, and all that stuff during class.”
They launched Ampersand Studios at the senior portfolio show. While other students were handing out resumes, they were handing out business cards.
Ampersand got a handful of design jobs. But what they were getting asked to do a lot was photograph weddings.
“We started shooting our friends’ weddings and that just snowballed,” said Frannie. “We accidentally became wedding photographers. It was not the plan.”
That led to invitation design which then led to designing paper goods, selling and delivering paper, design and photography workshops, and more. They even operated a super cute retail store out at the Village at Meridian called Paperie + Pen, which they ran for seven years before closing it in 2019.
Around that time, they were hired to do a lifestyle shoot for a local magazine. They had never really done a lifestyle shoot for a business before.
“We kind of got thrown in the deep end on that because we did like 30 businesses that year,” said Frannie. “But we were like wait, this is rad. We love this. And we can do these shoots on like a Tuesday at noon.”
Frannie and Nichole both had families with young kids, so a mid-week, mid-day shoot vs wedding weekends were obviously more compelling. But it was more than just the timing.
“We fell in love with it,” said Frannie. “We love business. We obviously love talking business. We love growing businesses. We love branding businesses.”
In 2019, they made the major shift away from weddings and went all-in on branding and business clients. When COVID hit shortly after, Ampersand leaned even harder into branding, voice, and helping business owners market themselves online.
“That just became our bread and butter. And here we are,” said Frannie.
Ready to Post, and beyond
Ready to Post might be the shiny new thing, but Ampersand remains a full-service branding studio. Clients can also work with them on:
- Brandstorming workshops and consulting
- Brand identity design (logos, color palettes, visual systems)
- Photography for brands and teams
- Social media management (à la carte or full-service)
- Monthly Headshot Day (every second Wednesday, walk-in)
- Custom headshot sessions for teams and offices
You can start with Ready to Post and layer on more support, or use it as a strategic foundation while keeping things in-house.
Ready to Post may be built for the internet – but it’s very much a product of Boise.
If you’re interested in working with Ampersand Studios, you can learn more here.
Thanks for reading!
With love from Boise,
Marissa
