The Diary Of A Digital Marketing Apprentice: Should you niche down on Instagram and if yes; how?

This is a question posed often, most especially by influencers on Instagram who claim to have made themselves a living by posting on a very niche topic. It’s really not a simple question to answer. It requires some thought, so that’s exactly what I’ll be delving into today, so sit back; relax and read on.

Hello and I am Ed, Destination Digital’s newest hire and working through a Digital Marketing Apprenticeship here in Bakewell. As part of learning the ropes on content creation, I’ve written a few blogs about a number of topics that you can click through and explore below:

• Exploring the world of SEO,
• TikTok reposts versus Instagram Notes.
• Social media trends for 2024

 In this update, I’m going to talk to you about ‘niching down’.

Hang on a minute… what is ‘niching down’?

Niching down is the process of focusing your content solely at just one specific and defined topic. But don’t stop reading there; there is plenty of useful and practical information in the rest of this blog you can apply to your socials!

So, should you niche down when setting up and running an Instagram account?

The simple answer to this question is that it’s not a simple answer! So, it can be answered with both yes and no, but this depends on a few factors, such as how long your account has been up and running and how established it is.

For example, if the account has been running for a while and is bringing in consistent views, likes and followers; then it may be a good idea to not completely niche down and be dead set on posting very specific content for this niche.

Now you may be wondering why this is the case, I say this because if you do decide to niche down and not diversify into other niches or post other types of content, you may be limiting your growth potential. This is because quite a substantial number of niches on Instagram have capped amounts of exposure, so by niching down you aren’t accessing other Instagram users you could have otherwise.

However, if the account is fairly new, I definitely would recommend niching down. I see so many new Instagram accounts under a thousand followers not niching down and struggling because of it. One of the reasons why they struggle so much is because you cannot compete with larger accounts and you need to establish a USP in order to grow.

When you digress too much and become too broad in the subjects you cover on your accounts, your account usually just looks spammy and unprofessional.

One of the most important steps to getting initial growth is to create meaningful connections between followers.  You do this by getting good quality fan interactions in areas of social media such as messages, story mentions, comments etc. If the account looks spammy and what niche they are in is unclear, it is very hard for Instagram users to create connections with your account. Although everyone is playing an algorithm game, people still want to connect with people and so you will do much better on social if you choose a specialist subject area and stick to it.

Now I have explained why it is important to niche down when you first start growing your account, now let’s talk about how to.

How to niche down

The first step to niching down on Instagram is to pick a suitable username that shows obviously what niche you are in, for example if you had a page in the boxing niche a suitable name would be something like BoxingClips.

This username makes it very obvious what the account holder posts about and in what niche.

The next step would be to create a suitable profile picture, as this will be the first thing someone would see when they come across your account.

After these first two steps you need to optimise your bio, this is also very important as that is what people see when they take the first step into creating a connection with your account.

The last step and most important step is to post suitable content for your niche, you can do all of the above and still be unsuccessful in niching down without good content.

Thank you for reading – Ed Hazelhurst

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If you’d like to talk to us about this news, about Ed, or about anything in the digital marketing sphere, then please email us on info@destination-digital.co.uk or give us a call on 01629 810199.