The Tea on Regrams and How to Share Other People’s Content with Integrity
Alright my dears, this will be a long but VERY important one, so grab a cup of coffee and let’s talk about Regrams, Integrity and consequences of using people’s content as a shortcut to grow your Instagram account.
Before we even start talking about this very important topic, I want to clarify what I am talking about:
What is a Regram?
Regram DEFINITION:
to post a piece of content from someone else in your Instagram feed, such as a Reel, a photo, a graphic, a tweet or a quote.
A regram is NOT:
sharing a post by someone else to your Stories, a Reel Remix. This are ways to actually share the work of others. not A post ON your feed as a final destination, and REplacING of a piece of content that you would have to produce.
Let’s not beat around the bush:
“Other people’s Instagram feeds should NOT be a source of content for yours”.
- Manu Muraro, founder of Your Social Team
According to Instagram’s Community Guidelines, you can only post content that you own and not something you’ve copied or collected on the Internet.
Unfortunately, Instagram’s own terms of use and community guidelines (which is a part of the terms) have been long ignored by the users in the platform, including social media managers!
Using content from others has been normalized for as long as Instagram exists, but few know that it can even be against the law if you don't get the rights to that content before posting.
In my opinion, in most cases, it's also unethical, because you're using the hard work of others for free for your own gain, because we know creating content is hard work!
This is important, because this practice that has been normalized for as long as Instagram exists, can be against the law if you didn't get the rights to that content given to you in written form before posting.
In my opinion, in many cases, it's also unethical, when you're using the content for your own gain.
THE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT
Just in case that you got bad advice before or thought it was okay because it seems like everyone does it I want to be 100% clear:
Posting content from others in your own account, like a post or carousel in our feed or a Reel, captions, quote, or a graphic you redo in Canva in your own branding is not allowed by Instagram's terms of use. Whether you tag or credit them does not change that.
The only way to post content from others in your account in accordance to Instagram's terms is to ask for and get written permission first.
It's important to understand the difference between sharing people's content and using in your own account.
Sharing to stories is a great way to actually share the message and support other accounts without the confusion of using that content as your own.
NOW THE TEA about what happened to me and other dozens of women experts...
If you haven't seen any of this on Instagram, the conversation got heated up last week, when I became aware that an Instagram educator with a massive audience had reposted not only my content without authorization, but also the content of other dozens, if not hundreds, of female experts to grow their accounts and sell their programs.
Many were our members, too. A total of around 400 Reels with our faces were found in their two business accounts!
They credited us, but never asked for permission, which is 100% against Instagram's terms of use and in most parts Copyright Infringement too.
WHY THIS CASE MATTERED MORE
This is far from the first time I personally found my content in other people's account without permission. It happens to a lot of people, a lot of times.
But this instance was more alarming for a few reasons:
The amount of content reposted
The size of their audience and how this content helped them grow
The fact they are two white people being accused of stealing content from so many women, including women of color
The fact these people claim to have 7 and 8-figure businesses, yet they were accused of exploiting the work of so many women for free for their own gain
The fact they are praised and featured by big companies in the niche, such as Instagram themselves who just featured one of them in their @Creators account and Social Media Examiner, who had them teach tens of thousands of people in their Social Media Marketing World conference last in March
These are two people who are selling Instagram education with a combined audience of over 1M followers. And they teach them to do just that: post viral content from other creators in your account as a method to grow faster. From what I have seen and was told, not at any point in time in their presentations, classes or presentation at the Social Media Marketing World conference by Social Media Examiner, they have ever mentioned asking for permission before posting.
Things got interesting when one of the people who were accused of stealing all this content, which I don’t name in my marketing simply because this is also against Instagram’s guidelines, started watching our weekly Instagram Live and asked to be added.
We added him and he named himself. You can watch how it all went down in our live below.
Luckily, the conversation did have great outcomes. Not only this person won't be able to get away with doing this without authorization anymore and certainly not with teaching people to do the same.
And this is amazing: only a few days later Instagram's own Adam Mosseri posted a video where he mentions they understand how important it is for creators to get credited for their work and they are working on changes in ranking, which will give more credit to original work than regrams.
Watch the last part of his short video below, where he talks about an update on Ranking to give more value to original content, especially as it compares to reposted content:
I guess he and Creators do check their DMs after all, because so many of us wrote to them about this issue!
A big proof that sometimes we think we are too small to have an impact, but there's power in numbers and we can make good changes. So keep spreading the good word and let's make Instagram a more ethical place to market our businesses 🥲
Have you snagged our 10 FREE Canva templates for Instagram yet?
Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and content shop to help social media managers and Instagram savvy women entrepreneurs to beat the algorithm and grow their organic engagement (yes, even in 2021).
This year she also launched Your Template Club, a Canva Template subscription to provide social media managers and Instagram savvy business owners with content templates designed for engagement in their inbox.
Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2017, Manu started Your Social Team with the mission of helping women entrepreneurs and social media managers grow engagement and sales through Instagram without the overwhelm.