Instagram… to most of us known as a full-time hobby. Next to flay-laying and focussing on creating an interesting feed, it’s about who’s following you, who’s not and who you want to follow you - right?

After discussing endless insta-topics with our social media panel during the interactive CHAPTER FRIDAY Insta Class, we came to one conclusion: to make a difference in the existing Instagram landscape, you need to pick a theme or niche and stick to it.

The three things people look at
People who’ll visit your feed will judge you from three things: your profile picture, your bio and the twelve most recent photos in your feed. Do these twelve pictures match? Is there a clear message? Are the colour schemes the same? Are they original? Does the lifestyle appeal? A few important questions to ask yourself.

To create unity and an inviting profile, most successful Instagrammers work with a solid theme. They do not simply post a picture that falls completely out of place in terms of color, theme or style. That’s their strength.

A hand full successful Instagrammers who have found their niche and maintain a strong feed are:


@ihavethisthingwithfloors
An Amsterdam curated feed started in July 2014 by Pien van Wijmen, Josha Jansen and our very own Edith Beurskens. The feed is filled with selfeets from all over the world with amazing floor designs and the account has gained over 568.000 followers in less than two years. The famous hashtag #ihavethisthingwithfloors has over 212.000 pictures.

@symmetrybreakfast
Started by accident, photographing a meal in the plane, Mark started taking pictures of the breakfast he made for his boyfriend Michael. In July 2013, he began posting them on Instagram. The feed filled with symmetrical pictures of not so average daily breakfasts - full blown happy meals by now! - is followed by 488.000 people.

@plantsonpink
A page with cacti and leafy plants on a pink backdrop from all over the world. Safe to say this is a concept you could have thought of too! Lotte van Baalen took the idea to Instagram and has grown a large following since the summer of 2015. On this day, Plants On Pink is followed by 18.300 people.

@wildfiresss
A collection of beautiful girls combined with beautiful quotes, simple as that. Since the last time we spoke to the anonymous founders of Wildfires back in September, their number of followers has grown with 63.000 people (!) - they just hit the quarter of a million mark.

All of these instagrams have a super clear concept and it’s often quite the mystery who runs them (sometimes that an extra selling point!). Accounts gain more followers because people like consistency. If you are sticking to a niche and want to continue to grow on it, you should not let yourself get carried away posting random selfies or suddenly obsessing over your new kitten on Insta. People who have followed you for your niche will quickly unfollow you if they think you are straying away from it, so make sure you and your niche are a solid team.

Do you have a clear planning for your feed or do you just go with the flow?

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