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An Insta-famous photographer taught us how to gain thousands of followers on Instagram
It’s called the ‘rule of three’ and it has nothing to do with aesthetic
A lot of people are convinced aesthetic is the most important factor when it comes to growing a page on Instagram. There have been hundreds of articles centered around which aesthetics grow pages the fastest, and which keep people’s interest the longest.
But most of us writing these articles are writing them because our Instagram ratios are less-than-aspirational, and we’re working out how to change that. So I decided to turn to a professional — the creator of New York Instagram, which has amassed 111K followers in 26 weeks — and here’s what he told me.
Aesthetic is not the most important thing when it comes to Instagram
Apparently, aesthetic can only build a page to a certain point, and after that it will plateau — it’s not sustainable. There is one factor that is far, far more important; we’ll call it the ‘rule of three’.
But the ‘rule of three’ is
And by this, I don’t mean the rule of thirds. The rule of three can be explained as such: When you think about posting Instagrams, you are meant to think of them in series of six, as shown below:
Think of your photos in sets of six
Color is one of the most important factors here
When you post a series, you need to think about them in terms of color, and how they work together.
A good rule of thumb is squinting when you look at the photos, and noticing which ones seem to blend together. I’ve circled in the red the ones which should.
In every series there needs to be at least one outlier
When you look at two series placed together, the outlier(s) in one should match the outlier(s) in the other.
For example, in the series below, the teal-blues in both match only each other.
This is the way the human eye is attracted to colors, especially when scrolling through a page. It allows for fluidity between the series, while still offering the viewer a collection of photos in one mass that look like they belong together.
Watch how it works again here
The light in the three circled bring them together when you squint (You can imagine the series above this one, his next series, will be black and white because that is the one outlier at the top).
But, in the series blow, we can see which photo brings them together, and that one is the common denominator.
The common denominator is key
In this case, the two bench photos with a similar purple-orange light is that common-denominator.
It’s true thinking of posts in this way takes a lot more effort than just considering aesthetic, but that’s why they leave it to the professionals. If you want to up your Insta-game, apparently you’re going to have to commit.