When building an effective social media presence for your company, on Instagram or any other social network, it is important to understand how social media works. Social media is based on several factors including presence, connections, communication, and content.
Presence: Each social network allows you to create a profile which becomes your presence on that particular platform.
Connections: You can "friend" or follow other accounts leading to connections.
Communication: You can communicate publicly to a group or wider audience or privately to one or a few.
Content: You can "consume" content - reading, listening, watching - and produce and publish content to be consumed by others.
As you grow your audience and use your social media presence to increase brand awareness and strengthen relationships with customers and prospects, one of the main ways you attract attention and elicit engagement is by posting content to your accounts. If you’re not in the business of producing content, this can be a challenge.
When trying to keep up with content production for a highly visual social network like Instagram, this task can be even more daunting. There are a number of ways you can leverage other people’s content on Instagram in addition to posting your own content.
Whose content should you use? Sources of quality content on Instagram might be:
- News agencies and other media outlets posting content that could be of interest to your followers.
- Organizations posting about causes that might resonate with your followers.
- Reputable "Influencers" or high-profile individuals or entities with an active following.
- Experts in fields relevant to the messages you’d like to share.
- Content creators who post aesthetically pleasing visuals such as inspirational graphics or other well-produced visual content.
Most people would like others to share their content as long as there is proper credit given or, preferably, the shared post links back to their Instagram accounts. Some accounts, however, may block sharing. Taking screenshots of someone else’s content and then posting it to your own account is unacceptable and considered a copyright violation.
Here are a few ways to leverage other people’s content using Instagram features. Variations of some of these methods can also work on other social networks.
Share a post to your Stories. Most posts on Instagram can be shared to Stories although some accounts may block this feature. When you share someone else’s post to your Stories, the original content creator’s Instagram handle appears along with a clickable link to their account. Keep in mind you that by sharing their post, you will be driving traffic to their account. Make sure their Instagram feed is on brand for you and not controversial or offensive in any way.
Remix content from a Reel. A feature of Reels is the ability to add your own content to someone else’s video and post it to your feed. Using the “Remix with this Reel” option, you can record your own video that will be "stitched" to the original video allowing you to comment on or interact with their message in some way. Doing this creates a new Reel on your account and notifies the original content producer. The Remix feature can be turned on or off through your account settings.
Add audio to your Reels. Similar to remixing, you can take audio from other people’s Reels unless they block the feature on their posts. If you see a Reel using music you like or with some dialogue you’d like to reuse, click to see the audio track listing as well as what other accounts have used the audio. Many musicians on Instagram add their original music to Reels and encourage others to reuse it to help them grow their following. For a potential boost of visibility, seek out trending audio to use on your videos.
Participate in a Collaboration (Collab) post. You can invite someone else to collaborate on a post or someone can invite you. By collaborating on a post, you’re sharing audiences as the same post will appear on the feeds of up to five participants. This is also a way to get content from someone else onto your Instagram feed. Be selective when collaborating with other accounts on Instagram or any other social network. Partners, vendors, and customers could be appropriate collaborators.
As you can see, Instagram has several built-in features to facilitate leveraging other people’s content and most people are open to you resharing their content appropriately. When in doubt, send a message to the content creator to ask permission. Keep in mind that other people may be sharing your content, too. Pay attention to your notifications to keep track of when that happens and thank them for sharing.