How to Allow Sharing on Facebook

Ever wonder why some Facebook posts get shared across the platform while an invisible wall seems to surround yours? Enabling the share button is a simple but powerful way to expand your organic reach, and it often comes down to one or two quick clicks in your settings. This guide will walk you through exactly how to allow sharing on your personal profile, business page, and in groups, turning your excellent content into something that anyone can share.

Why Does Sharing on Facebook Even Matter?

Before we get into the step-by-step instructions, it’s worth taking a moment to understand why you want people to share your posts. At its core, sharing is the ultimate form of organic marketing on social media. It serves a few powerful functions:

• Exponential Reach: When one person shares your post, they aren't just giving it a thumbs-up. They're broadcasting it to their entire network of friends and followers - people you might have never reached otherwise. One share can introduce your personal memory, brand, or message to hundreds of new eyes, instantly.
• Social Proof: A share acts as a personal recommendation. It’s someone saying, "This content is so good, funny, or important that I'm willing to attach my name to it and show it to my friends." This built-in trust makes new viewers far more likely to engage with your content than if they saw it as a paid ad.
• Community Building: Shareable content often sparks conversations. When people share your post, their friends comment on the share, creating new discussion threads that build buzz and bring more people back to your original page or profile. It’s how posts go from having a hundred views to having thousands.

In short, a share is more than just a metric, it's a testament to your content's quality and the fastest track to growing your audience without spending a dime.

How to Allow Sharing on Your Personal Facebook Profile

For personal profiles, your content's shareability is directly tied to its privacy setting. Only posts set to Public can be freely shared by anyone on Facebook. If a post is set to Friends, only your friends can see it, and they won't see a share button to broadcast it to their own network. Here's how to manage these settings.

Setting Your Default Audience for Future Posts

You can set a default privacy level for all your future posts so you don't have to think about it every time. If your goal is to grow a personal brand or be a public figure, setting this to Public is the way to go.

1. Navigate to your Facebook profile.
2. Click your profile picture in the top-right corner and select Settings & privacy, then click Settings.
3. In the left-hand menu, look for the Audience and Visibility section.
4. Click on Posts. You’ll see an option that says, "Who can see your future posts?"
5. Click Edit and select Public from the dropdown menu.

From this point on, every new post you create will default to the Public setting, making it shareable by definition. But what if you want to keep your default setting private but make specific posts public?

Changing the Audience for Individual Posts

Facebook gives you granular control over every single piece of content you share. You can make one post public and the next one private.

For a New Post:

When you're creating a new post, look for the audience dropdown menu directly below your name. It will show your default setting (e.g., Friends or Public). Click on it to open the audience selector. Here, you can choose who gets to see - and share - this specific post.

• Public: Anyone on or off Facebook. (This is the one you need for universal sharing).
• Friends: Only your friends on Facebook. (No share button will appear for them).
• Friends except...: Lets you hide the post from specific friends.
• Specific friends: Lets you show the post only to specific friends.

Select Public, compose your post, and hit the Post button. The Share button will now be visible to everyone.

For an Existing Post:

Did you already post something and realize you want people to be able to share it? No problem. You can change the audience after the fact.

1. Find the post on your timeline.
2. Click the three dots (...) in the top-right corner of the post.
3. Select Edit audience from the dropdown menu.
4. Choose Public.

The post will instantly update with a Share button, ready for your friends and followers to spread the word.

How to Allow Sharing for Your Facebook Business Page

If you run a business, a brand, or a public organization, you're in luck: managing share settings for a Facebook Page is much simpler. By their very nature, posts made from a Business Page are public by default. The “like, comment, share” functionality is a built-in feature of public-facing brand content. There is no privacy toggle to accidentally switch off sharing.

However, there are a few less-common settings that could inadvertently limit who can see and share your content.

Check for Page-Level Restrictions

Some pages - particularly those for products or services related to alcohol, tobacco, or other regulated industries - use audience restrictions. These settings can prevent your page and its content from being seen by people who don't meet the criteria, which also means they can't share it.

To check these settings:

1. Go to your Facebook Page.
2. Click Settings on the left-hand menu.
3. Under the General tab, look for Age Restrictions and Country Restrictions.
4. Make sure these aren't set in a way that would prevent your target audience from seeing your content. For maximum shareability, both should be set to "Page is shown to everyone" or left blank.

If you have a restriction active (e.g., only users in the United States or users over 21), anyone outside that audience will not be able to see or share your posts. Most businesses should keep these wide open unless required by law.

Managing Share Settings in Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups operate under different rules, and their sharing capacity depends entirely on the group's privacy setting. Understanding this distinction is fundamental.

Public Groups vs. Private Groups

The primary rule of group sharing is simple:

• Public Groups: Anyone, whether they are a group member or not, can see the members and the posts. Any post made in a public group is essentially a public post and can be shared anywhere on Facebook - on timelines, in other groups, or in messages. The Share button is always available.
• Private Groups: Only current members can see who is in the group and what they post. Content posted within a private group is intended to stay there for privacy reasons. While you can hit "Share," your options are limited. You can share it via direct message to another group member, but you cannot share a private group post to your personal timeline where the general public can see it. This is a deliberate privacy feature, and there’s no admin setting to override it.

Settings for Group Admins

As a Group Admin, you don't have a magic switch to make private posts publicly shareable. However, you should check your group settings to make sure you haven't accidentally disabled other forms of engagement that can encourage community growth.

If you run a public group and find sharing isn't as prevalent as you'd like, focus on fostering high-quality, valuable content that members feel compelled to share with their networks. Great infographics, helpful guides, funny memes, or inspiring stories are all highly shareable assets that can draw new members into your community.

Bonus: How to Encourage People to Share Your Content

Flipping the switch to "Public" is only half the battle. Now you have to give people a reason to hit that share button. Moving beyond the technical settings, here are a few content strategies to inspire more shares:

• Create Genuinely Valuable Content: People share things that make them look good. This includes content that is helpful, educational, or resource-rich. Think checklists, tutorials, industry insights, or recipes. If it helps someone solve a problem, they're likely to share it with others who have the same problem.
• Tell a Relatable Story: Humans are wired for stories. Posts that are personal, humorous, or emotionally resonant connect deeply with audiences. A vulnerable story about overcoming a challenge or a hilarious breakdown of a common frustration makes people feel seen, and that feeling prompts them to share.
• Use a Direct Call to Action (CTA): Sometimes, the easiest way to get what you want is to ask for it. A simple line at the end of your post can work wonders: "Found this useful? Share it with a colleague who might need it!" or "Share this if you can relate!"
• Run a Contest or Giveaway: This is a classic for a reason. Requiring a share as part of the entry criteria is a fast way to amplify your post's reach. Just be sure to check Facebook's promotion guidelines to make sure your contest is compliant.

Final Thoughts

Allowing sharing on Facebook comes down to mastering your audience settings. For personal profiles, "Public" is the magic word that turns on sharing for everyone. For pages and public groups, it's enabled by default, so your job shifts from technical setup to creating content that people genuinely want to share.

Once your settings are correct, the real work begins: consistently creating content worth sharing. To avoid the chaos of managing all your social platforms separately, we designed the visual content calendar in Postbase. It lets you plan and schedule high-quality content across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more, all from one clean dashboard, freeing you up to focus on creating posts that will get people talking and sharing.