Social media

Part 1: How to Ethically Share Someone’s Social Media Content on Instagram

Early on, as I was learning about Instagram, I’m sure I shared something along the way that wasn’t correctly credited back to the creator. I didn’t know any better, but as I’ve learned, I’ve done better and I want to help you do better too.

Now that I know better, I do better.

Maya Angelou

The first thing you’ll need is an app that allows you to share content from Instagram. It’s not hard to find, you can Google “apps to share content on Instagram” or search that term inside your device’s App Store. The results will give you plenty of options to choose from. Each of them are different, many of them have free options and you’ll need to evaluate each one to see if it fits your needs.

If you’re just starting out in business or using a personal account, one of the free options will probably do. If you’re into scheduling posts out ahead of time you might want to look into some paid options. Google will be your friend here in determining which paid option is best for you.

Sharing Other Creator’s Content on Instagram

In order to be successful at ethically sharing, you need to know what I’m talking about when I say “content”. Content is anything someone creates whether it be a photograph, an altered photograph, an image created for advertising, a meme, and any caption (text) that goes along with it.

So now that we know what content is and we have an app whose job it is to reshare that content, here are things to keep in mind when sharing content from other creators.

Always link back to the content creator’s account

Most apps do this automatically when you select the option to preserve the caption. I recommend you let the app do its thing here cause it gives your account visibility through the app’s fans, the creator’s fans as well as possibly a hashtag the app creator’s use to tag their work.

Preserving the original creator’s captions

I asked a bunch of folks what their feeling was on this and here is what came out of those conversations:

• Sometimes the app malfunctions if Instagram has changed something and needs a minute to catch up so you might not be able to preserve the original caption. I actually use two different apps in case one hasn’t caught up yet. If you don’t have the bandwidth for learning two apps, in this case you need to manually make sure the link back to the creator’s account happens some way in your caption or by tagging the image.
• Sometimes you may want to add to the caption or refine the caption’s message. In this case, add to the caption, but make sure the reader knows where the original caption stops and a new contribution begins.
• Sometimes it’s all about the image or graphic the original creator shared. Ethically, just share it, tag it with the creator, and preserve the caption. Just sharing the image as your own work is unethical. Don’t do that…make sure that somehow the creator is credited for their work.
• Always make sure your app tags the image in some way. The creator’s IG handle should appear directly on the photo, if it doesn’t, explore in your app to turn that option on. Most of them have options for placement and whether they appear dark or light.

How to know what you’re looking at…

The following graphics explain what a shared post looks like, who shared it, who created it, how to figure out the tags, and what is different from the original caption.

The graphic above illustrates the content that was shared in one of my Instagram posts recently as well as identifies who is sharing the information and the tag back to the content creator.

This graphic illustrates how some re-sharing apps tag and hashtag to attribute credit to the creators and themselves. This might seem weird that they would point to themselves, but their livelihoods also depend on views, just like so many of our businesses. This graphic also illustrates the original caption and the additional information added to the end of the caption.

What about Instagram Stories?

I didn’t address sharing to Stories on Instagram. Those are somewhat of a different beast. The Instagram app itself has some capability to share to Stories and takes care of attribution so I’m going to let you figure that one out on your own.

I hope this discussion on how to share social media content on Instagram has been helpful for you and helps you feel more confident when sharing other people’s content. Now get out there and socialize!

Part 2: How to Ethically Share Someone’s Social Media Content on Facebook coming soon!