Should you repost on Instagram?

You may have noticed, but reposting is ubiquitous on Instagram. They can be found on individual accounts in the form of selfies or inspirational quotes, as well as on the pages of famous brands like Starbucks or GoPro.

• Is it legal to repost on Instagram?
• Does it lead to a decrease in the performance of the page?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of reposting?

It is to these very delicate questions that I will try to answer in this article.

Is reposting allowed on Instagram?

Although there are many rumours to the contrary, re-sharing posts is completely allowed on the Instagram application.

This practice is not openly encouraged by Instagram but it is totally tolerated if you follow certain legal provisions. Otherwise Instagram is much less accommodating.

The first is to look at Instagram's terms of use which state in black and white that you are responsible for the content you post.

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If you wish to share content that is not your own, however, you are required to obtain the creator's permission first.

How to obtain the creator's consent?

There are two possibilities for this.

1. If you are a brand with hashtags identified by your community, you have collected posts with your tag mentioned on them. In this case, the creator of the original post is considered to have given you implicit consent to repost it.
2. If you like a publication so much that you want to share it but the creator hasn't tagged you, you can always ask for the creator'sexplicit permission by sending a message like "I love your photo X and would love to share it with my community. Of course I will credit your work. Do you give me permission to do so?

If the answer is positive, you can repost this content in complete peace of mind.

Having seen the legal side, let's focus on whether reposting is beneficial or detrimental to your Instagram account.

The benefits of reposting

Saving time

Reposting on Instagram saves community managers or communication managers hours and hours of work. Finding a photo, editing the description and reposting it on your page can, with good organisation, be a matter of minutes.

The most time-consuming part is probably the search for interesting content, but even here there are fantastic tools such as Kurato which collects posts and submits only those that are likely to perform well on their page to the person in charge of Instagram.

Reduced mental workload

Having to produce a design in a hurry is enough to make you lose your hair. Because creating a visual takes time, a lot of time. It is estimated that a beautiful visual takes an average of 2.5 hours to create, with results that are not always worth the investment.

One should always follow Pareto's law which recommends spending 20% of the time on content creation and 80% of the time on promoting it.

Creating a visual requires several things:

• Finding inspiration
• Make a first draft
• Ask for validation from your line manager
• Skip the returns
• Getting the final go-ahead

More content

Not knowing what will be published the next day is a bit of a nightmare for a community manager. To avoid this, it is of course necessary to create a content strategy beforehand based on themes related to the brand, but sometimes this is not enough.

Integrating resposts into your strategy can open up a handy content stream to avoid running out of money.

Building community loyalty

Reposting content from your users, whether they are customers, partners, employees or franchisees, is an excellent way to build loyalty. That's why this type of post generates 28% more engagement than other posts.

Decline in expenditure

I discovered through my research that companies that practice reposting save an average of €68,000 in content creation costs. Add to that the time saved on the creative side, and a company can save a lot of money by integrating reposting into its publishing feed.

With so many benefits, it's easy to see why some of the biggest brands use reposting on Instagram regularly.

The disadvantages of reposting

It is true that remailing on certain accounts can pose some difficulties which we will review.

Branding against all odds

Many companies make it a point of honour to have a graphic charter that everyone can recognise. In these conditions, it is extremely complicated to integrate content from other users.

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Hard to repost with this graphic charter### Content not relevant

Sharing content from outside your company can disrupt the message you want to convey. To do this, check that the publications you choose are in line with your brand's themes while respecting the graphic charter. If this is not the case, move on 😄

It's up to you

Finally, integrating reposts into your Instagram content strategy seems like a great move. In addition to increasing the number of posts available, saving search time and engaging your community, it will also save you some money.

However, to avoid any problems, only repost publications for which you have been given the rights implicitly or explicitly.

Good luck 👍