How to Share on Facebook

Learning how to share on Facebook effectively can turn your page from a quiet digital space into a vibrant community hub. Whether you're promoting your business, building a personal brand, or just connecting with friends, understanding the mechanics and strategy behind sharing is a true social media superpower. This guide walks you through everything from the basic controls to the advanced strategies that drive real engagement and growth.

Understanding the Facebook 'Share' Button: The Core Mechanics

At its heart, sharing on Facebook is about amplifying content - whether it's yours or someone else's. While the "Share" button seems simple, it opens up several options for distributing content across the platform. Let's break down the most common scenarios.

1. How to Share Someone Else's Post to Your Feed

Sharing content from other Pages or Profiles - also known as content curation - is a great way to provide value to your audience without having to create everything from scratch. It positions you as a knowledgeable resource in your niche.

• Step 1: Find the Post. Locate the post you want to share on your Facebook feed.
• Step 2: Click the 'Share' Button. Below the post, you'll see "Like," "Comment," and "Share" options. Click "Share."
• Step 3: Choose Your Sharing Method. A menu will appear with several choices:
  • Share to your feed: This option opens a pop-up window where you can add your own text, tag friends, or add a feeling/activity. This is almost always the best option.
  • Share to your story: This posts the content to your Story for 24 hours. (More on this later).
  • Send in Messenger: This lets you send the post directly to a friend or group chat.
  • Share to a group: This allows you to post directly to a group you're a member of.
  • Share to a page: If you manage a Facebook Page, you can share directly to its timeline.
• Step 4: Add Your Own Commentary. This is the most important step! Never just share a post without adding your own thoughts. Tell your audience why you're sharing it. Ask a question, pull out a compelling quote, or offer a counterpoint.
• Step 5: Set Your Audience. At the top of the pop-up, you can choose who sees your post (Public, Friends, etc.). For Pages, this will nearly always be Public.
• Step 6: Click 'Post'. Your shared content, complete with your commentary, will now appear on your timeline.

2. How to Share an External Link (like a blog post or news article)

Driving traffic to your website, blog, or an interesting article is a key social media activity. Sharing links on Facebook properly helps motivate your audience to click.

• Step 1: Copy the URL of the webpage you want to share.
• Step 2: Go to your Facebook profile or Page and click into the "What's on your mind?" status box.
• Step 3: Paste the URL directly into the box. Facebook will automatically generate a link preview, which usually includes an image, title, and a short description from the webpage.
• Step 4: Once the preview appears, you can delete the URL text from the status box to make your post look cleaner. The clickable preview will remain.
• Step 5: Write your own engaging caption above the link preview. Again, add context! Ask a question related to the article's content or summarize the key takeaway for your followers.
• Step 6: Click 'Post'.

Pro-Tip: Some links generate poor previews (blurry images or weird text). You can sometimes customize these in the link settings, but if a preview looks bad, consider sharing it as a photo post instead. Upload a compelling image and put the link in the caption or as the first comment.

3. How to Share Photos and Videos

Visual content is king on Facebook, with video - especially Reels - being heavily favored by the algorithm. Uploading natively (directly to the platform) almost always performs better than sharing a link to a video on another site like YouTube.

• Step 1: On your Page or profile's composer, click the "Photo/Video" button.
• Step 2: Select one or more photos or a video file from your computer or phone. You can create an album if you're uploading multiple photos.
• Step 3: For videos, you'll be taken to a creator studio interface where you can add a title, description, and custom thumbnail. For photos, you can simply write your caption.
• Step 4: Write a descriptive and engaging caption. Tag any relevant people or Pages.
• Step 5: Click 'Post'.

From Clicking to Connecting: A Strategy for Smarter Sharing

Simply knowing how to share isn't enough. To build a brand or foster an engaged community, you need a strategy behind what, when, and why you share.

Add Value with Every Share

This is the golden rule of social media. Before you hit "Share," ask yourself: "Does this entertain, educate, or inspire my audience?" A feed full of mindless shares with no commentary feels spammy and impersonal. Always add your unique perspective.

How to add value when sharing:

• Ask a question: "This is a fascinating take on remote work. What are your feelings about a 4-day work week?"
• Pull a powerful quote: "Loved this line from the article: 'Consistency is more important than intensity.' It's a great reminder for anyone starting a new project."
• Share a personal connection: "This article about overcoming creative blocks really hit home. I struggled with this last month, and here's a tip that helped me…"
• Tag the creator: Always give credit where it's due! Tagging the original Page or person is good etiquette and increases your post's visibility.

Balance Curated and Original Content

A healthy Facebook presence relies on a mix of your own thoughts (original content) and valuable finds from others (curated content).

• Original Content: This is content you create from scratch. It includes your own photos, videos, text updates, and links to your own blog. This is how you build your specific brand voice and authority.
• Curated Content: This is content you find elsewhere and share. It shows you're connected to your industry or community and saves you the time of creating everything yourself.

There's no magic ratio, but a good starting point for a brand or business is the 80/20 rule: about 80% should be helpful, valuable, non-promotional content (which can include curated shares) and 20% can be a more direct promotion of your product or service.

Schedule Your Shares for Maximum Impact

Don't just post whenever you have a free moment. Sharing content when your audience is most likely to be online can dramatically increase its reach and engagement.

Use your Facebook Page Insights to find out when your followers are most active. Navigate to your Page, click "Insights" or "Professional Dashboard," and look for the "Audience" section. There, you'll find data showing the days and times your audience is online. Scheduling your important posts for these peak times greatly improves your chances of being seen.

Advanced Sharing: Groups, Stories, and Audience Controls

Once you've mastered the basics, you can use more advanced features to reach specific audiences and create more engaging content.

Sharing to Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are one of the most powerful organic marketing tools available. Sharing relevant content into a niche group connects you with a highly targeted and engaged audience. However, there's an important rule to follow: don't spam.

Always read the group's rules before posting. Many groups prohibit self-promotion. Instead of just dropping a link, participate in the conversation. Share content that genuinely helps group members and sparks discussion. Thoughtful sharing in groups establishes you as a helpful expert, not a marketer.

Mastering the ephemeral: Sharing to Stories

Facebook Stories are vertical, full-screen photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. They are highly visible, appearing at the very top of the Facebook app. You can share posts from your feed directly to your Story, which is a great way to re-surface important content you don't want people to miss.

To share a post to your Story, click the "Share" button and select "Share to your story." You can then resize the post, add text overlays, stickers, or polls to make it more interactive and encourage engagement.

Controlling Your Audience Settings

For personal profiles, you have granular control over who sees what you share. By clicking the audience dropdown menu (it usually defaults to "Public" or "Friends"), you can limit a post's visibility to specific friend lists or even just to yourself. This is helpful for sharing personal family photos or updates that you don't necessarily want your professional contacts to see.

For a business Page, nearly all of your content should be "Public" to maximize your reach. But the principle of knowing your audience remains the same - you're always creating content for a specific group of people, even if anyone can see it.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, learning how to share on Facebook is about much more than a button - it's about becoming a valuable part of the digital conversation. By thoughtfully mixing original and curated content, always adding your own context and value, and paying attention to what resonates with your audience, you can transform your Facebook presence from a simple broadcast tool into a dynamic and highly effective communication channel.

We built Postbase to cut through the chaos that often comes with managing an active social media presence. Instead of guessing when to post or struggling with tools not built for today's video-first world, you can rely on our visual calendar to plan your content and our rock-solid scheduling to get it live. We specifically focused on making it easy to schedule the content formats that matter now - like Reels and vertical video - so you can plan everything in one place and trust that it works. This lets you put your energy back where it belongs: on creating great content and connecting with your community. Check us out at Postbase.