How to See Who Shared Your Instagram Story

Curiosity strikes every time you post a great Instagram Story: you see the views ticking up, but you're wondering who loved it enough to pass it along to their friends. You want to know not just that your Story is resonating, but who it’s resonating with. This guide walks you through the exact methods to see who has directly reshared your story in a public way and offers some clever strategies for uncovering clues about private shares.

Understanding the Two Types of Instagram Story Shares

First, it's important to know that Instagram treats sharing in two very different ways. The type of share dictates whether you can see who did it.

• Public Reshares: This happens when someone is tagged in your Story and uses the "Add to Your Story" sticker to repost it to their own audience. This is a public action, and Instagram makes it easy to track.
• Private Shares: This is when a viewer taps the paper airplane icon on your Story and sends it directly to another user via a Direct Message (DM). This action is considered private, and Instagram does not provide creators with a list of who has shared their Story this way.

While you can't get a neat list titled "Shared By..." for those private DMs, don't worry. There are still smart ways to get a sense of who your best advocates are and when your content is being passed around. Let's break down the methods for both scenarios.

Method 1: How to See Public Reshares (When You're Tagged)

This is the most straightforward way to see someone sharing your Story. If you create a Story and @mention another account, a notification is sent to them allowing them to add that Story to their own. When they do, you can see it.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Check your notifications: When someone you've tagged reshares your Story, you usually get a notification. It's the simplest way to catch it in real-time.
2. Look at their Story: If you follow the person you tagged, their Story ring will light up when they've posted. You can tap on it and see your original Story reposted, usually with a link back to your profile.
3. Swipe Up on Your Original Story: While your Story is live (within 24 hours), go to your own Story, and swipe up to see the viewers list. If it has been publicly reshared, you'll sometimes see accounts who viewed it "via" the person who reshared it. However, this is not always explicitly clear, and the best confirmation is seeing the reshare on their profile.

This method works perfectly for collaborative content, shouting out partners, or featuring customers. It’s a direct and trackable way to see your content's public amplification.

Method 2: Using Engagement Stickers to Uncover Private Shares

Here's where we get into some organic social media detective work. Since you can’t get a direct report of who shared your story in DMs, you can embed an interactive element that encourages engagement from the people it's shared with. This creates a trail of data back to you.

The best tools for this are the Poll, Quiz, and Question stickers. When someone shares your Story via DM, their friend watches it and has an easy, low-effort way to interact. You get notified of that interaction, even if the user doesn't follow you, giving you a powerful clue.

Strategy in Action: The Poll Sticker Workaround

Let's imagine you run a small bakery and post a beautiful photo of a new croissant. You want to know if people are sharing it.

1. Craft a Compelling Story: Post that fantastic photo or video of your new croissant. Make it look irresistible.
2. Add a Poll sticker with broad appeal: Instead of a niche question, ask something simple and engaging. For example:
   • A poll saying "Should we make this a permanent menu item?" with options "YES 🤤" and "ABSOLUTELY YES". This is playful and easy to answer.
   • Or something fun like "Sweet or Savory Breakfast?" with your croissant as context.
3. Publish and Monitor: Post your Story. Now, pay close attention to the list of people who vote on the poll. To do this, swipe up on your story to see the Viewers list and the Poll Results.
4. Look for Unfamiliar Faces: Scroll through the voters. Are you seeing usernames you don't recognize? People who don't follow you? This is your strongest clue. Someone they know and trust shared your Story with them, and they liked it enough to cast a vote. You might not know the original sharer, but you now know your content reached a brand new audience organically.

This strategy transforms your Story from a passive piece of content into an active engagement tool. It doesn't give you a name of the sharer, but it provides proof that sharing is happening and shows you the extended reach of that share.

Method 3: Diving into Your Instagram Insights

For those with a Business or Creator account, Instagram Insights are your best friend. They won't name names, but they will show you the ripple effect of shares through cold, hard data. Spikes in performance metrics that can't be explained by your typical followers' activity often point to your content being shared.

What to Look for in Your Story Insights:

To access Story insights, open your live Story, swipe up, and tap the graph icon (bar chart icon) on the left. If the Story has expired, you can find it in your Archive and still view the insights.

• Reach vs. Impressions: Reach is the number of unique accounts that saw your Story. Impressions are the total number of times your Story was seen. If your Impressions are significantly higher than your Reach, it means people are re-watching your Story, which is a great sign. But a surprise spike in Reach is more interesting for shares - it means a lot more unique accounts saw it than usual, pointing to it reaching beyond your follower base.
• Follows: Did you get a burst of new followers right after posting that Story? That is a very strong signal. It suggests your Story was shared to non-followers who then liked your content so much they decided to follow your account.
• Profile Visits: An unusually high number of profile visits from a single Story indicates that new viewers discovered you through that Story and tapped your profile picture to learn more about you. Again, this is a classic sign of private shares extending your reach.
• The "Shares" Metric: In your Professional Dashboard under "Insights," Instagram provides aggregate data that sometimes includes a "Shares" metric for permanent posts. For stories, this is less direct, but watching overall trend-lines helps. If one Story's Reach and profile discovery metrics are 10x higher than your average, you can be confident it was heavily shared.

By analyzing the data, you start to build a picture of what kind of content triggers a share, even if you don't know who did it. This is more powerful for shaping your future content strategy. Does a behind-the-scenes video get shared more? A user-generated content feature? A funny meme? Insights help you answer these questions.

Putting It All Together: Why Do You Care Who Shared It?

Discovering who shares your content is more than just a vanity check, it's a valuable part of building a brand organically.

• Identify Superfans: The people who consistently share your work are your most valuable advocates. Knowing who they are gives you a chance to engage with them, thank them, or maybe even collaborate in the future.
• Understand Your Content: Noticing what gets shared tells you precisely which content resonates most deeply with your audience. This helps you move beyond assumptions and create more of what works.
• Spot Organic Champions: What if another brand or an influencer with a large following shares your Story? You'd want to know! Tracking reshares helps you catch these important promotions so you can express gratitude and build professional relationships.

A Quick Warning: Stay Away from Third-Party Apps

You may come across websites or apps that promise to show you a definitive list of people who have shared your Story. Be extremely cautious. These services are nearly always scams. Instagram's API does not provide this information to third-party developers for privacy reasons.

Using these apps typically requires you to give them your Instagram login credentials, which poses a massive security risk to your account. Stick to the official methods and strategic insights within the Instagram app itself. It's not worth compromising your account's security for a metric that isn't even truly available.

Final Thoughts

While you can't see a simple list of every single person who sends your Story to a friend in a DM, you're now armed with clever ways to get the big picture. You can definitively track public reshares, use engagement stickers to find evidence of private sharing, and leverage your professional insights to see the powerful impact those shares have on your account's growth.

At the end of the day, understanding your content's performance is what allows you to create more of what your audience loves and shares. I used to spend hours bouncing between a half-dozen apps, trying to piece together a clear picture of what was actually working on social. At Postbase, we wanted to fix that. We designed our analytics dashboard to give a clear, simple view of performance in one place, so you can easily see which Stories are driving follows and engagement, helping you refine your strategy without drowning in spreadsheets.