How to Cross-Post on Instagram

Sharing your content across multiple platforms shouldn't be a tedious copy-paste routine that takes hours out of your week. You’ve already poured your creativity into a great post, Reel, or Story for Instagram, and now you want to extend its reach without sacrificing quality or breaking your workflow. This guide explains exactly how to cross-post from Instagram the smart way, covering Meta’s built-in tools for Facebook and proven strategies for adapting your content for platforms like X, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

What Exactly is Cross-Posting?

Cross-posting is the practice of sharing the exact same piece of content across multiple social media platforms. For example, publishing an Instagram Reel and having it automatically appear as a Facebook Reel. It’s a powerful tactic rooted in efficiency - publish once, appear everywhere. This approach is excellent for saving time, maintaining a consistent brand message, and ensuring your accounts stay active even when you're busy.

But there's a simple truth about social media: every platform has its own personality. What works on Instagram might feel out of place on LinkedIn. An image that gets tons of love on Facebook might fall flat on X (formerly Twitter). Blindly cross-posting everything without any adjustments can sometimes make your brand look disconnected or lazy. The real goal isn't just to be present everywhere, but to be present effectively everywhere. That means knowing when to use automated cross-posting and when to take a few extra minutes to adapt your content.

How to Automatically Cross-Post From Instagram to Facebook

Since Meta owns both Instagram and Facebook, they’ve made it incredibly straightforward to connect your accounts and share content between them. This is the simplest and most common form of cross-posting. Setting it up only takes a few minutes through your Instagram app’s settings.

Linking Your Instagram and Facebook Accounts

Before you can automatically share content, you need to tell Instagram where to send it. You do this by linking your Facebook Page in the Accounts Center.

1. Open the Instagram app and go to your profile.
2. Tap the three horizontal lines (the hamburger menu) in the top-right corner.
3. Select Settings and privacy.
4. Tap on Accounts Center. This is your central hub for managing all your Meta accounts.
5. Under Account settings, tap on Accounts.
6. If your Facebook account isn't already listed, tap Add accounts and follow the prompts to log in and connect your Facebook profile.
7. Once connected, make sure your Instagram account and Facebook Page are linked by going to Sharing across profiles in the Accounts Center. Select your Instagram account and then choose which Facebook profile or Page you want to connect it to.

Setting Up Automatic Sharing for Posts, Stories, and Reels

Once your accounts are linked, you can decide what kind of content you want to share automatically. You have separate controls for your feed posts, Stories, and Reels.

In the same Accounts Center hub:

1. Navigate to Sharing across profiles.
2. Select your Instagram account to manage its settings.
3. Under Automatically share, you'll see toggles for:
   • Your Instagram stories: Turn this on to have every Story you post on Instagram also appear on Facebook Stories.
   • Your Instagram posts: Turn this on to have your feed photos and video posts also publish to your Facebook Page's timeline.
   • Your Instagram Reels: Enable this to share your Reels to Facebook. You may also see an option to "Recommend on Facebook," which gives Meta permission to show your Reel to a wider audience on Facebook, even to people who don't follow you. For maximum reach, this is usually a good option to enable.

You can also control this on a per-post basis. When you're creating a new post, Story, or Reel, look for the "Share to Facebook" toggle on the final screen before you hit publish. This gives you the flexibility to cross-post some content but not others.

The Smarter Strategy: Repurposing Content Beyond Facebook

Direct, automated cross-posting is fantastic for Facebook, but it’s not an option - or a good idea - for platforms like TikTok, LinkedIn, or X. Each of these networks has a unique audience, format, and communication style. Instead of cross-posting, thriving on these platforms is all about repurposing.

Repurposing means taking the core idea or asset from your original Instagram post and tailoring it to fit its new environment. It’s slightly more work than a one-click share, but the payoff in engagement is always worth it.

From Instagram Post to a LinkedIn Conversation

LinkedIn is a professional network where text often leads and visuals support the narrative. Directly posting a trendy Instagram graphic with minimal text can feel out of touch. Instead, repurpose your content with a career or industry focus.

How to Adapt It:

• Expand the Caption: Take your short, witty Instagram caption and turn it into a short story, a lesson learned, or a thought-provoking question for your professional network. What business takeaway can you extract from the original post?
• Focus on Value: A behind-the-scenes photo from your office might work on Instagram, but on LinkedIn, frame it with a caption about company culture, a recent team achievement, or a challenge your team overcame.
• Switch Up Hashtags: Ditch broad, trendy tags like #InstaGood. Use industry-specific hashtags like #DigitalMarketing, #Leadership, #ProjectManagement, or #PersonalBranding.

Relatable Example:

• Original Instagram Post: A quick photo carousel showcasing your team at a company offsite with the caption: "Amazing time with the team this week! So refreshed. #TeamBuilding #WorkLife"
• Repurposed LinkedIn Post: Use the best photo from the carousel. Write a longer caption like: "We just got back from our annual company offsite, and it was a powerful reminder that culture isn't built in spreadsheets - it's built in person. One exercise we did was X, which led to a breakthrough in Y. A great reminder that investing in your team is always the best investment you can make. What's one non-work activity that has significantly improved your team's collaboration? #CompanyCulture #TeamLeadership #EmployeeEngagement"

From Instagram Visual to X Snippet

X is all about speed, brevity, and conversation. While visuals perform well, the context provided by pithy text is what drives retweets and replies. A high-resolution image from Instagram can look great, but it needs an X-native "hook."

How to Adapt It:

• Write a Genuinely Interesting Headline: Your caption on X should act as a headline for the image or video. Pull out the most surprising stat, the core opinion, or a compelling question from your original post.
• Tag Relevant Accounts: Unlike Instagram, where tagging is often limited to a few collaborators, X is perfect for tagging other brands, influencers, or individuals you’ve mentioned to pull them into the conversation.
• Format for Scannability: Use line breaks and emojis to make your text easy to read in a fast-moving feed.

Relatable Example:

• Original Instagram Post: An infographic about 5 tips for improving productivity.
• Repurposed X Post: Post the infographic image. The caption would read: "My productivity tripled when I started doing #3 on this list. It sounds simple, but it's a game-changer. Which one resonates with you most? #ProductivityHacks #WorkSmarter"

Reimagining Your Instagram Reel for TikTok

While Instagram Reels and TikTok videos share the same vertical format, their cultures are distinct. TikTok prioritizes trending sounds, native text effects, and a more raw, less-polished feel. Simply uploading your finished Reel to TikTok can feel like showing up to a casual party in a formal suit.

How to Adapt It:

• Remove the Instagram Watermark: First things first. Platforms penalize content that has a watermark from a competing app. Use a service like Snapinsta or save your video without the audio *before* posting to Reels, then add sound natively in each app.
• Use Trending TikTok Sounds: The single biggest factor for virality on TikTok is the audio. Find a trending sound that fits the vibe of your video, even if it’s different from what you used on Reels.
• Use TikTok’s Text and Effects: Re-create your text overlays using TikTok's native text editor. Its fonts and styles are instantly recognizable and make your video feel more at home on the platform. Add a relevant sticker or effect if it makes sense.

Relatable Example:

• Original Instagram Reel: A slick, edited video of "a day in my life" with a cinematic, royalty-free background track.
• Repurposed TikTok Video: The same raw video clips, but edited inside TikTok. Add a trending comedic voiceover to narrate the day's events, pointing things out with TikTok's text-to-speech function and placing bold text on screen to highlight funny moments.

Golden Rules for Making Cross-Posting Work for You

Whether you're automating shares to Facebook or creatively repurposing content elsewhere, follow these fundamentals to get the best results.

1. Always Customize Your Captions

Even a small tweak makes a big difference. At a minimum, check for "@" mentions that won't work on other platforms and adjust your hashtags.

2. Double-Check Tags and Links

Tagging your business partner on an Instagram post works seamlessly. That same tag, when cross-posted to Facebook, might not link correctly if their handles are different. Also, remember you can’t put clickable links in Instagram captions, but you can on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X. Add them where appropriate!

3. Respect the Format

Keep dimensions and video lengths in mind. A square (1:1) photo is perfect for the Instagram grid but may look awkward on X, where 16:9 performs better. A 90-second Reel is fine for Instagram, but a sub-15-second TikTok might get more traction.

4. Engage Everywhere You Post

Cross-posting doesn’t end when you hit "publish." A comment left on your Facebook post is just as valuable as one on Instagram. Make sure you’re checking your notifications and responding to your community on every platform where your content lives.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, cross-posting is about working smarter, not harder. By using built-in tools to connect Instagram and Facebook, you can instantly double the reach of your content with zero extra effort. For other platforms, taking a few moments to repurpose - not just repost - allows you to meet each audience where they are, creating content that feels native and authentic every single time.

We've spent years managing and building brands on social media, so we know firsthand how time-consuming it is to manually customize a single piece of content for every platform. We built Postbase to solve this very problem. Our platform lets you write your post once, then easily tweak captions, adjust hashtags, and tag different users for each network - all from one clean, simple interface. It's the efficiency of cross-posting but with the smart customization that actually drives engagement.