How to Share a Collection on Instagram

You can now share your curated Instagram Collections with friends, making it easier than ever to collaborate on mood boards, plan trips, or just pass along your favorite saved posts. This feature transforms a personal bookmarking tool into a collaborative workspace. This guide will walk you through exactly how to share a collection, offer creative strategies for using the feature, and explain why it's a powerful tool for creators and brands alike.

What Are Instagram Collections, Anyway?

For years, the little bookmark icon under an Instagram post has been a handy way to save content you want to revisit. Collections are simply the private folders you use to organize those saved posts. You might have a "Recipes to Try" collection, a "Dream Vacation" collection, or an "Apartment Decor" collection. Historically, these have been for your eyes only - a personal library of inspiration and ideas.

However, Instagram has rolled out collaborative collections, which change the game entirely. Now, you can invite others to view, and even add to, a collection. What was once a solo activity is now a shared, dynamic mood board directly within the app.

Why Sharing Collections Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think

This update is more than just a minor convenience, it unlocks new ways to plan, connect, and create. It feels small, but its impact is significant for personal and professional use.

• Better Collaboration: Instead of sending a dozen individual posts to a group chat, you can centralize all your ideas in one clean, visual space. It's perfect for teams planning a project or friends organizing an event.
• Simplified Planning: From brainstorming travel itineraries to curating wedding inspiration with a partner, shared collections make planning visual and interactive, all without leaving Instagram.
• Community Building: For brands, it offers a new way to interact internally. Imagine a group collection for your community manager and content creator to house an inventory of the best user-generated content (UGC), all ready to be repurposed.
• Streamlined Curation: It provides a simple "swipe file" for your team to collect market research, competitor analysis, and content ideas in an organized way, removing the chaos of screenshots and messy spreadsheets.

How to Share an Instagram Collection: A Step-by-Step Guide

Getting started with shared collections is straightforward. The process involves creating a collection (or using an existing one) and then inviting people to join. Let’s walk through the exact steps.

Part 1: Creating and Adding to a Collection

Before you can share a collection, you need to create one. If you already have collections you'd like to share, you can skip to the next section.

1. Find a Post to Save: Scroll through your feed, Reels, or the Explore page until you find content you want to save.
2. Tap the Bookmark Icon: Located at the bottom right of any post, tapping the bookmark icon will save it. The first time you save a post after a fresh install, a small pop-up appears at the bottom of the screen.
3. Choose "Save to Collection": In the pop-up, you’ll see the option to add this post to an existing collection or create a new one. Tap "Save to Collection."
4. Create a New Collection: If this is your first time or you're starting a new topic, tap the "+" icon to create a new collection. Give it a clear, descriptive name like "Q3 Marketing Campaign Ideas" or "Paris Trip 2024." Specific names make them easier to manage later.

Continue this process to populate your collection with a handful of relevant posts. This gives your collaborators something to work with when they join.

Part 2: Sharing Your Collection and Inviting Collaborators

Once your collection is ready, you can invite others to see and contribute. You are an owner and others are collaborators in the collection.

1. Navigate to Your Profile: Go to your Instagram profile page by tapping your profile picture in the bottom-right corner.
2. Open the Menu: Tap the hamburger menu icon (the three horizontal lines) in the top-right corner.
3. Select "Saved": In the slide-out menu, you'll see a "Saved" option with the bookmark icon. This is where all of your saved posts and collections live.
4. Choose the Collection: Tap on the collection you want to share. At the top of the collection's grid view, you'll see its name.
5. Turn on Collaboration: At the top of your private collection page is a slider bar named "Collaborative". When you enable this feature, a collection changes from a private collection to a collaborative collection. You can tell the type of collection it is based on both the label and the user icons at the top of the page.
6. Invite People: After turning collaborations on, you can start searching for people to invite. Type in their Instagram username and select them from the list. You can add multiple people.
7. What Happens Next: Once you send the invite, the person will receive a notification in their DMs inviting them to join the collection. When they accept, they’ll be able to see every post you've saved and add their own. The collection will appear in their own "Saved" section.

A few important things to remember: Collaborators can add or remove any post in the collection - even ones they didn't add themselves. Everyone has equal editing permissions. Additionally, the original creators of the posts are not notified when their content is saved or added to your collaborative collection.

Beyond the Basics: 10 Creative Ways to Use Shared Instagram Collections

The real power of this feature shines when you apply it creatively. Here are some ideas for both personal and professional use cases.

For Personal Use & Fun

• 1. Trip Planning: This is a classic. Create a collection with your travel buddies and fill it with restaurants, photo inspiration spots, cool shops, and interesting landmarks you find on Instagram. It’s like a visual guide you all build together.
• 2. Gift Wishlists: Planning for a birthday or holiday? Start a collection with family members. Everyone can drop in product posts or ideas, making gift-giving much easier and more organized.
• 3. Recipe Exchange: Ditch the messy group chat links. Create a collection with friends dedicated to sharing fascinating food Reels and recipes you stumble upon. Next time someone asks, "What should I make for dinner?" you have a whole library of ideas.
• 4. Home Renovation Mood Boards: Whether you're re-decorating a living room or planning a full kitchen remodel, use a shared collection to gather aesthetic ideas, furniture, and color palettes with your partner or roommate. It ensures you're both on the same visual page.
• 5. Book & Movie Recommendations: Keep a running list of what to read or watch next. When a friend sees a great book review or a trailer for an indie film, they can drop it straight into the collection for everyone to see.

For Creators & Brands

• 6. Marketing Campaign Mood Boards: Kick off your next campaign in a collaborative collection. Your team can add visuals, color schemes, font styles, and competitor ads that align with the campaign's direction. It provides a quick, central source of truth for the project's aesthetic.
• 7. User-Generated Content (UGC) Curation: Designate a shared collection for your community manager to save the best UGC. When it’s time to plan the content calendar, you have a pre-vetted bank of authentic customer posts ready to go.
• 8. Influencer Collaboration Kick-off: When briefing an influencer, create a shared collection filled with example posts that capture the tone, style, and messaging you’re looking for. It communicates the vision far more effectively than a text-heavy creative brief alone.
• 9. Competitor Research & Analysis: Your marketing team can use a collection to compile interesting posts from competitors. It becomes a live look at what others in your industry are doing, sparking discussion and new ideas during team meetings.
• 10. An All-Team Content Ideation File: Start a "Content Ideas" collection and invite your whole team - not just the marketers. A salesperson might have a great idea from a customer conversation, or an engineer could find a funny meme. Tapping into diverse perspectives builds a richer content strategy.

Best Practices for Managing Your Shared Collections

While collaborative collections are incredibly useful, they can get disorganized without a little intention. Follow these simple tips to keep things running smoothly.

• Be Specific with Naming: Avoid generic names like "Ideas" or "Collection 2." A name like "Holiday Campaign BTS Reels" is much more effective. Clear names help everyone understand the collection's purpose at a glance.
• Communicate the Goal: When you invite collaborators, add a quick note by sending them a DM. Something as simple as, "Hey, inviting you to our UGC collection - add any great customer posts you see!" sets clear expectations.
• Keep Your Collections Tidy: Collections don't need to live forever. Once a project is finished or a trip is over, you can remove collaborators or delete the collection entirely to reduce clutter. A regular quarterly clean-up will help.
• Understand the Privacy Limitations: Remind collaborators that your collection is private to the group, but the posts themselves are not. If a user deletes their post or their account goes private, that content will disappear from your collection. Access is dependent on the original creator's settings.
• Be a Considerate Collaborator: Don't fill a collection with dozens of low-quality or irrelevant posts. Focus on adding value that aligns with the group's purpose. It's about quality over quantity.

Final Thoughts

Instagram's shared collections feature elevates a simple bookmarking tool into a functional space for collaboration, planning, and content curation. By following these steps and blending them with a bit of creativity, you can use it to organize everything from your team’s next marketing move to your next weekend getaway.

Keeping track of all this inspiration and turning it into a cohesive content plan is where many teams get bogged down. At Postbase, we designed our visual content calendar specifically to solve this problem, letting you drag and drop ideas and see your entire strategy across all your platforms. Instead of letting great content ideas get lost in DMs and shared collections, we help you schedule them reliably - especially for formats like Reels and Shorts, which legacy tools often struggle with. You can plan your social media with clarity using Postbase.