I’m going to cover for you today why it matters to have a niche in 2023 to grow quickly on Instagram and social media and HOW to pick a niche for Instagram. It’s not as hard as you think! This is the number 1 way to grow on Instagram is to figure out your niche. It will make creating content easier and making getting followers happen faster. Picking a niche on Instagram will allow you to have a system on Instagram to grow and better refine the type of content that goes viral for you, builds your audience and authority.

What is a niche?

So the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a niche as “a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted“.

But in social media and Instagram land, this is your primary content topic or category you share about, or what you are known for. A niche can be many things, here are a few examples:

• gen-z sustainable skincare
• millenial living in NYC
• slow-living family + gardening
• neutral home decor
• couples luxury travel
• girlie affordable fashion

This is either the topic you share about, your personality, or your aesthetic/vibe/lifestyle. It can also be all of them together, but we’ll dive into that later.

Why a niche is important on Instagram

It’s a lot easier to pick a niche that works for you on Instagram if you understand WHY it’s important and how the algorithm works. The most important thing to remember is that it’s easier to be known for just ONE thing than to be known for 15-20 things.

I know, you might be thinking, “I want to share about many different things I love, but I don’t know how/don’t want to narrow it down.”

So how do we transition from sharing our personal life, to building a personal brand?

First, we must let go of the idea that we must share every aspect of our life when building a personal brand. Being known for one thing actually increases your authority in that area. Both users AND the Instagram algorithm like predictability and consistency.

Examples of why a niche is important

Think about it – you go to Starbucks or Chick-fil-a because you KNOW what you’ll get. Imagine you went to starbucks and they suddenly stopped selling coffee? After they got REALLY good at their coffee drinks, they started adding more items to sell. Chick-fil-a is KNOWN for it’s chicken sandwich – then their waffle fries – then slowly added more. All top businesses KNOW to focus on ONE thing and then they add more.

Now think of creators, influencers, or brands you follow. Why do you follow them? You probably first think of just 1 or 2 reasons WHY – it’s not many. It might be that you relate to them, it might be they share affordable outfits, it might be because you love their skincare products. Whatever it is, you probably thought of one or two things immediately.

The more focused the content you post about is, the easier it is to grow at a faster rate (and your STYLE and PERSONALITY can be your niche) because people can binge your content. If someone finds a post of yours, likes it, and then goes to your profile, it’s because they want to see MORE of the same thing. You want to create content in the same stream that they can binge.

Do you need a niche?

The short answer is NO, you don’t NEED a niche. But here are 3 reasons why you would WANT to have a niche:

1. to have more focus on what you need to create (and not create overwhelm)
2. to grow faster and make it easier for your ideal (engaged) audience to find you
3. to be able to work with brands or sell to your customers more easily (and CONVERT!)

How a niche helps you grow on Instagram

The accounts that I see growing the fastest in 2023 are posting the exact same type of content only – they are sticking to a very specific niche, and even repetitive style of content. I’m seeing accounts growing hundreds of thousands of followers just by repeating the same type of content in the same topic.

This is because it makes their page and content SUPER binge-able.

How a niche helps you with the Instagram algorithm

This also helps you with how the algorithm categorizes you and shows you to more of the same people with that interest! The Instagram algorithm now even will recognize if you like and engage with a specific type and format of a post from someone, and not others, and will specifically only keep serving you that type of post on your feed.

For example, let’s say you follow a fashion blogger. You just so happen to only engage on her posts that are a video reel of her getting ready and showing the final outfit. She posts other things, but that’s the one that keeps popping up on your feed. Another example, is maybe you follow a blogger and business coach who is also a mom, and really you only engage on her content that includes her kids – Instagram recognizes this, and so therefore starts to only show you her posts that include her kids.

So you can see here how the algorithm works, and why it benefits us to focus on ONE topic if we want to maximize growth. Let’s take a look at a few examples of accounts that have grown very quickly (mostly using Instagram Reels) because of sticking to a niche.

Instagram Niche Case Study Examples

Why we need a niche on social media and Instagram?

People follow for a REASON so they like to continuously see that SAME REASON they followed you. This might feel repetitive, but we go to the same coffee shop every week because we know what to expect.

Instagram needs to know and understand WHAT you post about so they can show it to people who WANT to see that content

The clearer your content is (and who it’s for) the easier it will be for Instagram to show it to those users. Being “repetitive” is GOOD.

How having a niche builds your authority

It’s easier to be known for one thing than to be known for 15-20 things. Having a niche allows YOU the following:

• Gives you focus
• Creates consistency
• Builds authority in one area

Every social media platform’s goal is to keep users on the platform.

If you don’t provide the reason they came, they won’t stay. You’re missing out on giving potential followers more of what they want.

Why to have a niche as a business owner

If you are a business owner, think of this. Imagine you need to find a new salon for your hair. Now, you could just find anywhere, but you are a natural brunette and color your hair blonde. Not only would you look for a hair colorist instead of a stylist, but you would also look for someone who specializes in blonde hair coloring. Why? Because you want the best results possible. This is an example of “niching down” and specializing!

We do this all the time in our life. When you have an injury, let’s say on your shoulder, you might go see a doctor, but what’s better if you see a doctor who specializes in shoulders! When you are specialized and “niched down”, you get people coming to you that know and want exactly what you offer.

How to pick your niche on Instagram

The different types of niches on Instagram

There are 3 parts to niches and you can have just one or combine all 3 for a unique niche.

Topic Niche

This is the traditional niche based on a specific topic or subject. This works well for educational content or content to support your business. These are things like skincare, beauty, fashion, home decor, lifestyle, family, travel, business, photography, etc.

Personality Niche

This is a newer type of niche that leverages your personality to shine through in the content – this works best for video and skit type/entertaining/meme format content. This is the “you are your niche” method – your voice, your personality, how you speak and overall presentation in a video will be a specific “way”. A great way to leverage this is more original content that showcases who you are when you speak, but this can also be acted as out as well in “skits”.

Aesthetic Niche

This is the type of niche that originally emerged BECAUSE of Instagram – this works best for inspiration content in photos or videos or that showcases a specific style. Your content really needs to have a certain “look” or “vibe” – like dark filmed city videos + photos or light and bright and beachy videos.

How to choose your niche as a personal brand and creator/influencer on Instagram

When someone comes to your page, they should be able to quickly understand what it is about and what you post about. Give value, information, and resources for free to demonstrate your expertise, knowledge, and abilities.

So you need to answer these questions:

• What are you most passionate about?
• What are you most knowledgeable about?
• What could you share about, talk about and create content about for FREE?

Also take a look at – what types of posts are you saving of others? What types of accounts do you mostly follow? This will direct you towards your main interests. The most important thing when picking a niche is you want it to be EASY for you to create content about. If it’s something you can only create about a few times a year, it will be really hard to make enough content to grow your account!

The best thing to do is to shape it around your current lifestyle or interest, but hone in a specific topic!

How to narrow down your niche

Otherwise known as “niching down” this is when you can get more SPECIFIC about your topic, or get more SPECIFIC about your audience. For instance, skincare for 20-something women is going to look different than skincare for 40-something women! Wrapping your target audience into your niche is a great way to “niche down” with your content.

This is a really good idea to grow even faster and have even more specific, unique content to you (which makes you stand out!).

How to get specific to create a unique niche

• Narrowing down a broad category into a more specific category builds authority
• Being specific (or “niching down”) is more memorable

Here are a few examples of narrowing down your niche – taking just travel and turning it into ‘Luxury Travel’. We can go a step further and get really specific and just focus on ‘Luxury Tropical Travel’.

Combining Categories to create a unique niche

Another way to create a unique niche is instead of getting super specific, we can combine two things: like instead of travel, combine travel with family, or travel with couple, or maybe sustainability and travel. So a specific niche might be natural beauty but a combined niched might be natural beauty and wellness.

How having a niche on Instagram will benefit you

Getting clear on your niche on Instagram will make it so much easier for you to grow, easier to land brand deals and paying clients, and stop you from having post paralysis. With a clear niche, you’ll no longer be staring at your phone trying to figure out what to post.

Creating content for your niche

The fastest way to grow on Instagram is by creating reels about your niche following a few simple frameworks I cover in this blog post here. And I’m also hosting a FREE training and workshop where we will walk through nailing down your niche and the type of content to create in order to grow your first 10,000 followers and make your first $10,000 from Instagram!

I dive into this strategy even more in depth in my 60-minute FREE Instagram Masterclass Training – so sign up below and i’ll walk you through exactly how to implement this strategy. And if you’re feeling lost exactly about what your niche is – we cover exactly how to narrow this down in the training too! If you want to see follower growth and grow your account using reels (and not just get the eyeballs on your page!), nailing your niche is really going to be a big part of it, but we’ll cover this in the training. Click here to sign up for the FREE Instagram training!