How to Let People Repost Your Instagram Post

Seeing your Instagram post shared by someone else is one of the best forms of organic marketing you can get. It’s digital word-of-mouth, expanding your reach to new audiences and building serious social proof for your brand. This article covers the exact settings you need to enable and the content strategies that make people genuinely want to share your work.

Why Encouraging Reposts is a Game-Changer

Before we get into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." When someone reposts your content, it’s not just a vanity metric. It's a powerful endorsement. This user-generated content (UGC) accomplishes several things at once:

• Builds Social Proof: A repost acts as a testimonial. It shows that your content is valuable, trustworthy, or entertaining enough for someone to put their own name behind it and share it with their followers.
• Extends Your Reach Exponentially: Your content breaks out of your immediate follower base and gets introduced to entirely new networks of people. This is how you find new customers and fans organically.
• Fosters a Strong Community: When you encourage and acknowledge shares, you make your audience feel seen and appreciated. This transforms passive followers into active brand advocates who are invested in your success.

The Technical Setup: How to Enable Sharing on Instagram

Instagram gives you specific tools to make sharing easy. If people tell you they can’t share your posts to their Stories, it's likely a setting is turned off. Here’s how to check and fix it.

1. Turn On Story Resharing

This is the most common and important setting. It allows anyone to take a public feed post or Reel and share it as a sticker in their own Instagram Story. When they do, the story will show your username and link back to your original post, driving traffic and new eyes to your profile.

Here’s how to enable it:

1. Open your Instagram profile and tap the three horizontal lines (the "hamburger menu") in the top-right corner.
2. Go to Settings and privacy.
3. Scroll down to the "How others can interact with you" section and tap on Sharing and remixes.
4. Under the “Story sharing” section, make sure the toggle for Allow sharing post to Story is turned on (it should be blue).

That's it! Once enabled, when someone taps the paper airplane (share) icon on your post, they will see the option to "Add to story." If this setting is off, that option won’t appear for them.

2. Know About Sharing Your Reels

For Reels, the options under Sharing and remixes are even more detailed. You have control over who can share, use, and download your content.

Key Reels Sharing Settings:

• Allow sharing reel to Story: Just like with posts, this lets people add your entire Reel to their Story. This is a must for visibility.
• Allow sharing post to guides: Lets people include your Reel in their Instagram Guides, which is another form of valuable, curated sharing.
• Allow people to use your reels: This is huge. It lets other creators use your Reel's audio or use your Reel as a template for their own. When they do, your handle gets credited as the original source of the audio or template, leading to massive potential for viral reach. For maximum exposure, you'll want this on.
• Allow others to remix your reels and feed videos: Remixing lets another user create a side-by-side video with yours. It's a fun way to react to, respond to, or build upon your content. This is another feature that, when enabled, encourages interaction and credits your original post.

For a brand looking to grow, keeping these sharing and remixing settings turned on is almost always the right move. You’re giving your audience more ways to engage with and amplify your content for you.

3. Use the Instagram Collab Feature Strategically

The "Invite Collaborator" feature is a different kind of sharing - it's co-authoring. When you invite a collaborator to a post, the post appears on both of your profiles simultaneously. It shares the same set of likes and comments, essentially merging the audiences for that single post. This is perfect for partnerships, influencer campaigns, or collaborations with other brands.

When to use the Collab feature:

• You’re working with an influencer to promote a product.
• You’re partnering with another business on a giveaway or announcement.
• You are featuring a photographer, model, or artist who contributed to the content.

How to invite a collaborator:

1. Create a new post or Reel as you normally would, right up to the final screen before publishing.
2. Tap on Tag people.
3. Select Invite collaborator.
4. Search for and select the user(s) you want to collaborate with (you can invite multiple).
5. Once you share the post, the collaborator will receive an invitation in their DMs. The post won't appear on their profile until they accept.

The Creative Strategy: How to Make Content People *Want* to Share

Just because the "share" button is available doesn't mean people will use it. Your next job is to create content so good, so helpful, or so relatable that sharing it feels natural. Here’s how you do it.

1. Create Highly Valuable "Saveable" Content

Content that educates or helps people solve a problem is ripe for sharing. Think about what your audience struggles with or wants to learn. Turn that expertise into a visually appealing format.

Great examples include:

• Checklists and To-Do Lists: "5 Things to Check Before You Publish a Blog Post"
• Mini-Tutorials and How-Tos: A carousel post showing "How to Style a Bookshelf in 3 Easy Steps"
• Frameworks and Infographics: A graphic that breaks down a complex business concept into simple shapes and text.
• Resource Lists: "My Top 5 Free Tools for Content Creators"

When you create content that makes someone else look smart and helpful by sharing it, they will. People love sharing resources that benefit their own audiences.

2. Be Relatable, Funny, or Inspiring

Emotion drives shares. Memes, relatable quotes, funny videos, and inspiring stories connect with people on a personal level. If a post makes someone say, "That's so me," or "Wow, I needed to hear that," there's a strong chance they'll share it to their Story.

Don’t be afraid to show personality. A perfectly curated feed is nice, but it's often the behind-the-scenes, humorous, or human moments that get the most shares.

3. Post Stunning Visuals

Sometimes a share is driven by pure aesthetics. A breathtaking travel photo, a beautifully styled product shot, or a slickly edited Reel can earn a share simply because it’s a piece of art that someone wants to display on their digital "wall" (their Story).

Invest in good lighting, learn basic photo editing, and focus on creating a strong visual identity. People are more likely to share content that reflects well on them and aligns with their own aesthetic.

4. Include a Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

Don't be afraid to ask for the share! Sometimes people just need a little nudge. You can bake this into your caption or even add text directly on your image or video.

Effective sharing CTAs include:

• "Share this to your story if you agree!"
• "Know someone who needs to hear this? Send it to them!"
• "Share this to help spread the word."

This simple act can dramatically increase the number of shares you receive, especially on posts designed to connect with a specific viewpoint or emotion.

5. Run a UGC Campaign or Contest

An excellent proactive strategy is to build a campaign around reposting. The concept is simple: ask your audience to post about your brand or product using a specific hashtag for a chance to be featured on your page.

Here’s how it works:

1. Choose a Goal: Do you want photos of customers using your product? Or maybe content related to a specific theme?
2. Create a Unique Hashtag: Something like #YourBrandChallenge or #YourBrandInTheWild.
3. Promote It: Announce the campaign and the rules. Make it clear that you will be reposting your favorite submissions.
4. Engage and Repost: As submissions come in, engage with them! Like, comment, and repost the best ones to your Feed or Stories, always remember to tag and credit the original creator.

This creates a win-win: your audience gets a shot at recognition from a brand they admire, and you get a steady stream of authentic, powerful customer content to share.

Reposting Etiquette: Doing it Right

Finally, it's just as important to model good behavior. When you ask others to share your work, make sure you're respecting the creator community when you share theirs.

Always. Give. Credit.

This is non-negotiable. If you are reposting a photo, Reel, or Story from a customer or another creator, you must give them clear credit. Don’t hide their handle at the bottom of a long caption or bury it in a sea of hashtags. Tag them in the photo/video itself and mention their username prominently in the first line of the caption (e.g., "📸 Photo by @username"). This fosters goodwill and encourages more people to share content with you in the future.

Make Your Handle Easy to Find

To make it easier for others to credit you, consider adding a subtle watermark of your @username to your photos or videos. This ensures that even if your content is shared without a proper caption, the source is still visible.

Final Thoughts

Enabling others to repost your Instagram content is a powerful growth strategy. By combining the right technical settings with a creative approach that produces share-worthy posts, you turn your audience into an active and enthusiastic marketing force. It's about making it effortless for people to share and giving them amazing content they're proud to amplify.

Planning and executing a content strategy that consistently produces that "repost-worthy" material is the toughest part. Seeing your content calendar visually helps immensely when trying to build educational carousels, schedule inspiring moments, or plan a full UGC campaign. At Postbase, we built our visual planner and scheduler to solve this exact problem, helping you see the big picture and schedule out all your different content types - from shareable videos to helpful carousels - across every platform, without feeling overwhelmed.