How to Add a Tagged Post to an Instagram Story

Spotted yourself tagged in a great Instagram post and want to share it with your own audience? Adding another user's feed post to your Story is an incredibly effective way to cross-promote, shout out your community, and show off valuable social proof. This guide will walk you through the simple steps to share a tagged post, offer creative ways to customize it, and explain the strategy behind why this is a feature you should be using regularly.

What You Need Before You Start

Before you can share a post to your Story, a few things need to be in place. It's a straightforward process, but if you're ever unable to share something, it's usually because one of these conditions wasn't met.

• You must be tagged in the photo or video itself. Being mentioned in the caption with an "@" doesn't count for this feature. The original creator must physically tag your account on the visual media.
• The original poster's account must be public. For privacy reasons, Instagram does not allow a post from a private account to be re-shared, even if you follow them.
• The original poster must have story sharing enabled. Users have the option to prevent others from re-sharing their feed posts to Stories. If they have this disabled, the option won't appear for you.

When someone tags you in their post, you'll receive a notification about it. More important for our purposes, you will also get a direct message (DM) from that user which contains a special "Add this to your story" link. This message is your direct path to sharing the content.

How to Add a Tagged Post to Your Instagram Story: The Step-by-Step Guide

Once you've been tagged in a public post, sharing it is remarkably simple. Just follow these steps.

1. Navigate to Your Direct Messages (DMs). Tap the messenger icon in the top-right corner of your Instagram home screen.
2. Find the DM Notification. The message will be from the account that tagged you. It will show a preview of their post and clearly state, "@[username] mentioned you in their post."
3. Tap "Add to your story." Just below the post preview in the DM, you'll see this prominent blue-and-purple gradient button. Tap it.
4. Start Customizing. This will automatically open the Instagram Story editor with the feed post loaded in as an interactive sticker. From here, you are free to customize it just like any other Story.

That's it! Once you're done editing, you can publish it to your Story, and your followers will be able to tap on it to view the original post directly.

Making It Pop: How to Customize Your Shared Feed Post

Just adding the post to your Story is fine, but taking a few extra moments to customize it can dramatically increase engagement and reinforce your brand's presence. The tagged post acts as a sticker, giving you full creative control over the screen.

Choose Your Post Style

When you first add the post to the Story editor, it appears as a clean, rounded rectangle sticker. If you tap the sticker itself, you can switch between two different styles:

• The Default Style: A modern, minimalist format that displays the image or video with the creator's username at the top. This look is clean and puts the focus entirely on the visual content.
• The Classic Style: This style mimics the look of an actual feed post. It shows a larger preview of the visual media and includes the first few lines of the caption underneath. It's a great option if the caption provides essential context you want your audience to see immediately.

Resize, Rotate, and Reposition

Just like any other sticker in an Instagram Story, you have full control over its placement. Simply use two fingers to pinch and zoom, making the shared post sticker as large or as small as you like. Drag it around the screen to place it wherever it fits best with the other elements you plan to add. You can even angle it for a more dynamic look.

Change Your Background

Instagram creates a default two-tone color gradient for the background based on the dominant colors in the shared post. If this doesn’t match your brand aesthetic, you have several options to change it:

• Solid Color Background: Select the draw tool (the squiggly line icon) and choose a color from the palette at the bottom (or use the eyedropper tool to pull a color from the photo). Then, press and hold anywhere on the screen for about 1-2 seconds. This will fill the entire background with your chosen color.
• Add a Photo Background: You can add an image from your camera roll by using the "Add Sticker" icon and then choosing the photo gallery sticker. You can then resize this new image to fill the screen and hold it down to select "Move to back" so it sits behind the feed post sticker. This creates a more dynamic, textured look.

Use Text, Stickers, and GIFs to Add Context

This is where social media managers truly shine. A shared post with no additional context can feel a bit empty. Add your voice and guide your audience's reaction:

• Add Text: Use the text tool to add a comment like, "So glad you love our product, @username!" or "Amazing shot by the talented @[creator]!" This is also a perfect opportunity to thank the person for the tag, reinforcing a positive community connection.
• Tag the Creator Again: While the shared post automatically links to the original creator, tagging them again in a text box shows extra appreciation and makes your Story even more visible.
• Engage with Stickers: Use a poll ("Do you love this look?"), a quiz, a questions sticker ("What's your favorite part about this photo?"), or a simple slider emoji to encourage audience interaction.
• Use Brand GIFs: If you have branded GIFs, now is the time to use them! Searching your brand name in the GIF library and adding some motion can draw the eye and match your branding.

The “Why” Behind the Share: Strategic Advantages of This Feature

Sharing a tagged post isn’t just about filling your content schedule - it's a high-impact marketing tactic that can accomplish several key goals with minimal effort.

Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)

There is no marketing more powerful than a genuine recommendation from a happy customer. When a user tags you in a post featuring your product, service, or location, they are creating User-Generated Content for you. Sharing their post with your audience is the single easiest way to repurpose this authentic content. It serves as powerful social proof, demonstrating to potential customers that real people are using and loving what you offer.

Build an Engaged Community

Nothing builds loyalty like making your audience feel seen and appreciated. By sharing a user's post, you are putting a spotlight on them. It’s a public thank-you that acknowledges their effort and makes them feel like a valued part of your brand's community. This simple gesture encourages more people to tag you in the future, creating a positive feedback loop of engagement and content creation.

Establish Social Proof and Credibility

Seeing a brand share posts from real users builds trust. It shows that your company isn't just an anonymous corporate entity, it's a brand that people connect with and want to be a part of. Sharing collaborations with partners, photos from an event, or reviews from your community all work to build a more authentic and credible brand image.

Stuck? Troubleshooting Why You Can’t Share a Post

Ever found a great post you’re tagged in but the “Add to your story” button is missing? It’s a common frustration, and it's almost always a settings or privacy issue. Here’s a checklist to run through.

1. The Original Account Is Private

This is the most common reason. If a user's account is set to private, Instagram's privacy logic prevents their content from being shared more widely. You can't repost content from private accounts, end of story.

2. Post Resharing Has Been Disabled by the User

Instagram gives every user control over whether their feed posts can be re-shared to Stories. A user can disable this in their settings by navigating to Settings and privacy >, Tags and mentions >, "Allow others to add your post to their story" and toggling it off. If they've done this, the option won't appear for you.

3. You Were Mentioned in the Caption, But Not Tagged in the Photo

This small distinction is a big deal to Instagram's system. An @mention in the caption will send you a notification, but it will not trigger the "Add to your story" functionality. You must be explicitly tagged on the actual photo or video for the sharing feature to activate in your DMs.

Final Thoughts

Adding a tagged post to your Instagram Story is a simple action that delivers major benefits. It helps you source authentic content from your community, strengthens relationships with people who advocate for your brand, and provides powerful social proof that builds trust with new followers. Mastering this simple feature is a small step that can make a huge impact on your engagement strategy.

Effectively managing these interactions means staying on top of every mention, comment, and message. When you're managing multiple social media accounts, notifications can quickly become overwhelming across multiple apps, and it becomes easy to miss a great piece of content or a customer question. That's why we've built all our engagement tools at Postbase around a single, unified inbox. You can see and reply to comments and DMs from all your platforms in one place - making sure no valuable piece of community feedback gets lost in the shuffle.