How to Allow Reposts on Instagram

Wanting others to share your Instagram content is one thing, but making it easy for them is a whole different ballgame. If you've ever wondered why some accounts' Stories and posts are easily shareable while yours aren't, the answer is usually tucked away in your settings. This guide breaks down exactly how to allow reposts on Instagram, covering everything from Stories and feed posts to the viral power of Reels remixes.

Why You Should Actively Encourage Reposts

Before we get into the "how," let's quickly touch on the "why." Allowing reposts isn’t just about giving your content legs, it's a core component of building a strong brand and community organically. When someone shares your post, it acts as a personal recommendation to their audience, which is far more powerful than any ad.

• It Builds Social Proof: Every share is a vote of confidence. When new people discover your page and see that others are regularly reposting your content, it builds instant trust and credibility. It shows them that your content is valuable enough to be shared.
• It Amplifies Your Reach (For Free!): Reposts are the engine of organic growth. Your content breaks out of your immediate follower bubble and gets placed in front of new, relevant audiences. This is essentially free marketing powered entirely by the people who already love what you do.
• It Strengthens Your Community: When you allow and encourage sharing, you create a two-way street. You enable your audience to champion your message, and when you re-share their tagged content, you make them feel seen and appreciated. This feedback loop is the foundation of a loyal and engaged community.

Enabling Story Reshares: The Easiest Way to Get Seen

Stories are often the easiest and most common way users share content on Instagram. There are a couple of scenarios to consider, and the settings control who can share what.

When Someone @Mentions You in Their Story

This is the most direct form of a repost. When another user tags your @username in their Story, Instagram automatically sends you a notification in your direct messages. That notification will include a clickable button that says "Add to your story."

The best part? You don't need to turn anything on for this to work. It's an automatic feature. Your job is to encourage people to tag you in the first place by creating engaging content or running campaigns that involve user participation.

Once you tap that button, you can resize their Story, add your own text, GIFs, or other elements, and post it directly to your own Story. It's a fantastic way to showcase user-generated content (UGC) and shout out your community members.

Allowing Viewers to Share Your Public Story

This is the setting that most people are looking for. It allows anyone viewing your Story to share it with their own friends via DMs or even (sometimes) to their own Story. This applies to your regular posts shared to your Story as well.

Here’s how to enable it. Remember, your account must be set to Public for these sharing features to be available to people who don’t follow you.

1. Navigate to your Instagram profile and tap the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) in the top-right corner.
2. Tap on Settings and Privacy.
3. Scroll down to the "How others can interact with you" section and select Sharing and Remixes.
4. Under the "Story sharing" heading, locate the toggle for Allow sharing story to messages. Make sure this is turned on.

Turning this on means that when someone views your Story, they will see a "Share" icon (a paper airplane) at the bottom. Tapping this allows them to send your Story directly to another user. On some accounts in certain regions, an additional option "Allow sharing to stories" may appear, which is an even more powerful sharing feature.

Letting Your Audience Share Your Grid Content

When it comes to your regular feed posts - static photos, carousels, and videos - the concept of a traditional "repost" gets a little different. Instagram doesn’t have a native one-click "Retweet" or "Share to Feed" button like some other platforms. Instead, sharing from the feed primarily happens through Stories.

Enable Your Posts and Reels to be Shared to Stories

This is the single most important setting for making your feed content shareable. When enabled, it allows anyone to take your grid post and blast it out to their Story for all their followers to see.

The steps are nearly identical to the Story settings:

1. Go to your Profile > Hamburger Menu > Settings and Privacy.
2. Scroll down and tap on Sharing and Remixes.
3. Under the "Content sharing" section, make sure the toggle for Allow others to share your posts to their stories is switched on. You can also turn this on or off for individual posts if you need more precise control by tapping the three dots on that piece of content and selecting "Turn off sharing."

When an audience member discovers your post, they can now tap the paper airplane icon and will see an "Add to story" button. This will pull your post into their Story editor, where it becomes a tappable sticker that links directly back to your original post and shows your username. It’s a beautifully clean and effective way to drive a new audience directly back to your profile.

The "Old-Fashioned" Repost Methods

Even without a native "repost to feed" button, dedicated fans will find a way. The traditional method for years has been screenshotting a post and then sharing that image or video to their own feed, usually with a credit in the caption (e.g., "📸 via @yourusername").

While you can't control screenshotting, you can encourage it!

• Create highly-quotable images or carousels. Think inspiring quotes, powerful stats, or helpful checklists. These are prime candidates for being screenshotted and shared.
• Add a "Share if you agree!" CTA. Sometimes, all people need is a direct invitation to share.
• Embrace a watermark. A subtle watermark with your username or logo at the bottom corner ensures that even if someone forgets to credit a screenshot, your brand attribution travels with the image.

Lastly, there is a whole ecosystem of third-party "Repost" apps. While they make the process of downloading and re-uploading content easier, always be mindful of copyright and permissions. The golden rule is simple: always ask for permission and always give prominent credit.

Unlocking Viral Potential: Enabling Reposts and Remixes for Reels

Reels are, without a doubt, the most powerful content format on Instagram for organic reach, and their sharing features are a huge part of that. Beyond just sharing to Stories, Reels have remixes.

Enable Remixing for a Wave of User-Generated Content

A "Remix" is Instagram's version of a duet or stitch. It allows another user to record a video that appears right alongside yours. This is the ultimate form of creative reposting, as their creativity helps propel your original Reel even further. Someone can react to your Reel, add their own perspective, or build on your joke.

To enable this across your account:

1. Head back to Settings and Privacy > Sharing and Remixes.
2. Look for the section titled "Allow others to remix."
3. Here, you'll see toggles for Allow remixing of Reels and Allow remixing of feed videos. Make sure these are turned on.

Once enabled, other users will see a "Remix" option when they tap the three-dot menu on your Reels. This is how trends are born and content goes massively viral.

Make Your Reels into Templates

Have you ever seen a button that says "Use template" on a Reel? This allows users to create their own Reel using the same audio and clip timings as the original. It removes the guesswork and makes it incredibly easy for people to jump on a trend or recreate your format with their own photos or videos.

You can't manually turn this feature on. Instagram's algorithm automatically makes a Reel into a template if it meets certain criteria, usually involving specific audios and a certain number of short clips timed to the music. The best way to encourage this is to create Reels that are conducive to being templates: use trending sounds and feature several quick cuts. When people use your template, your original Reel is credited and your reach explodes.

Best Practices for a Repost-Friendly Strategy

Flipping the right toggles is just the first step. To truly get traction from reposts, you need to bake shareability into your content strategy.

• Create Content Worth Sharing: This is the foundation. Is your content informational (checklists, tips), inspirational (quotes, success stories), entertaining (memes, funny Reels), or visually stunning? Content that triggers a strong emotional response or provides tangible value is far more likely to be shared.
• Use Strong Calls-to-Action (CTAs): Don't be afraid to ask for the share. Phrases like "Share this with someone who needs it" or "Tag a friend who would love this" are simple but effective prompts.
• Showcase Your Community: Create a culture where sharing is rewarded. When someone tags you in a great Story or post, reshare it! This user-generated content acts as powerful social proof, and acknowledging your audience makes them feel valued, encouraging them and others to share more in the future.
• Double-Check Your Account is Public: This is the most basic step, but it's an easy one to overlook. Content from private accounts cannot be shared by non-followers, drastically limiting its potential to spread.
• Give Credit and Encourage Others To Do So: Lead by example. When you share someone else's content, tag them in both the image/video and the caption. Fostering a culture of proper attribution builds a healthier, more collaborative community for everyone.

Final Thoughts

Enabling reposts on Instagram isn't about pushing a single button, it's about activating a series of small but powerful settings for your Stories, Feed Posts, and Reels. By making your content technically shareable in your settings and strategically compelling in its creation, you turn your audience into an engine for organic growth and build a more dynamic community.

We know that managing all of this shareable content - planning it, scheduling it, and then tracking what resonates most with our audience - can quickly become a lot to handle. We've found that using a visual calendar to see our entire content strategy at a glance is a game-changer for creating more of the content that people actually want to share. That’s why we built Postbase. Being able to schedule Reels and Stories reliably, manage all our direct messages in one unified inbox and see the analytics without ever leaving our planning hub helps us work smarter, not harder.