Facebook is one of the biggest social media platform today with millions of users. Not only it is a great way to connect with your friends and family but also a place where you can discover so many new people everyday based on mutual friends or common interest.
You can get regular updates on what is happening with your friends, what they are up to and what is happening around you on the social scene.
The things you post on Facebook are often viewed by friends through their news feeds, on which they react by liking, commenting or sharing yours post to their friends.
All this sharing of views on Facebook, in terms of posts containing text, photos and videos is vital for the overall social experience, which is the essence of Facebook.
Similarly it is an equally important for business owners and entrepreneurs for their brands and products, which they can market to a very large audience. Individuals and companies today focus on spreading out their messages beyond their Facebook Page or Group followers, for better brand development and recognition by people at large.
So, how to share your Facebook post to wider audience? Often you’ll have a post that you want to share to people which are not limited to your friend list. Since there is no ‘Share’ button on Facebook for your own posts, you can’t share your post by clicking on something. However, there are certain things you can do to make your Facebook post shareable.
Not all posts on Facebook are shareable. Often you will come across a Facebook friend, who’ll tell you that they couldn’t share one of your posts to their friends on Facebook or elsewhere since the post would not open. This is because of Facebook's privacy settings, which controls every aspect of your profile, in terms of who can see what, be it your posts, your photos, even the comments that you write.
To fix this, all you need to do is make changes in your privacy settings and you can make all or specific Facebook posts sharable.
Make All Facebook Posts Sharable
To make all your Facebook posts sharable, you need to change your privacy settings. You can do the following to change it;
a). Click on the drop-down arrow button on the top right corner of Facebook.
b). The drop-down menu will open. Now click on "Settings" and you would be directed to a new page.
c). Navigate to Privacy section, listed in the menu on left side of the page and click it.
d). This will open ‘Privacy Settings and Tools’ section. There you can edit the settings under ‘Your Activity’ and make all your future posts sharable.
You can change the settings again, if you change your mind, any time by revisiting the Privacy settings section.
Make Specific Facebook Posts Sharable
Although you can change the privacy settings of all your posts, sometimes you may only want to share specific posts to your friends or posts which you may want to have specific settings, like you want to share few posts as public posts so that anyone can see it.
You can do that by changing privacy settings of those few posts individually. To make specific Facebook posts sharable, navigate to the post and click on the ‘Privacy’ icon, defined by a globe and top-down arrow button, below your name and next to the time stamp of the post.
From the drop down menu, select ‘Friend’ or ‘Public’ and that post will become sharable to all your friends or as a public post.
Just like your friend wanting to share your posts, there may be certain posts of friends you may want to share with others. However, you can share your friend’s post only if they have allowed it in their privacy settings.
Check if your Friend’s Post is Sharable
Go to your friend’s post and check if you can see the ‘Share’ button below their Facebook post. If the ‘Share’ button is visible, click on it and now you can share their post as;
a). Public post via ‘Share Now’ making it visible to all.
b). Share post in an Event, by clicking on ‘Share’ and changing the default option on top from ‘Share on Your Timeline’ to ‘Share in an Event’.
c). ‘Share to Your Story Now’ to all your Facebook friends only.
d). ‘Send as Message’ to share post to your friends on Facebook Messenger as a ‘Private Message’, whom you may choose from your Friend List.
e). ‘Share in Group’ to share post to members of the Group you are part of.
f). ‘Share on a Friend’s Timeline’ to share post to on Friend’s Wall.
If the ‘Share’ button is not visible, it could be because your friend’s post is protected. In this case, you can't share their posts until they may change their Facebook privacy settings related to their posts to ‘Friends’ to allow you and others to share the post.
Sharing posts from Facebook Pages is easy since they are public altogether and can be shared and viewed by anyone, even if they have not liked the Page or are not following the Page.
To share posts from a Facebook Page, do the following;
1). Go to the Facebook Page and scroll down to the post to want to share.
2). Beneath the post, look for ‘Share’ button.
On clicking / tapping the ‘Share’ button, you can share the post as;
a). Public post via ‘Share Now’ option.
b). Event post via ‘Share’ > ‘Share in an Event’ option.
c). Friends only post via ‘Share to Your Story Now’ option.
d). Private message via ‘Send as Message’ option.
e). Group post via ‘Share in Group’ option.
f). Friend’s timeline post via ‘Share on a Friend’s Timeline’ option.
Sharing posts from Facebook Groups is a bit different since Facebook Groups can be either public or private. Since Public Groups on Facebook are open to all, you can share any of their posts via ‘Share’ button in any of the ways as described above i.e., as a Public, Event, Private message and Timeline posts.
One public Facebook Group’s post can also be shared to other Facebook Groups via ‘Share in a Group’ option under ‘Share’ button.
When a Facebook Group’s Post is not Sharable
If the Facebook Group is private, you can view and share any post of that group, only when you are part of the group.
To become a member of that Facebook Group, you need to send request to join the group, which should be approved by the group Admin. Once you are a member of that Group, you can share posts from that Group to your friends.
However, posts can be shared only to friends who are already part of that Facebook Group or to any other member of that Group, who may not be in your friend list.
If you have not changed your Facebook’s privacy settings for all of the posts, but want to create a new Facebook post that is sharable, you can do the following;
Create Sharable Facebook Post
1). Open Facebook and login into your Facebook accout.
2). On your Home Page / Profile Page, navigate to ‘Create Post’ section and click on ‘What’s on your mind?’
3). A new ‘Create Post’ pop-up will open, where you can write your post. However, at the bottom on this pop-up window, you’ll find two options – ‘News Feed’ and ‘Your Story’, with ‘Public’ and ‘Friends’ as their sub-options.
4). Once you have selected the options and their sub-options, you can publish your post and it will appear accordingly.
If is worth noting that both ‘News Feed’ and ‘Your Story’ options can be selected simultaneously since both have equally important use.
Create Sharable Facebook Post on Mobile
You can create a sharable post via Facebook App, as per below process;
1). Open Facebook App and navigate to the text box labeled as ‘What's on your mind?’
2). Once there, tap on it to open the ‘Create Post’ Section.
3). In the ‘Create Post’ section, just below your name, you will find be two drop-down menus, labeled as ‘Friends’ and ‘Album’.
4). Tap on the first drop-down menu, to make your Facebook post sharable by either selecting ‘Public’ to share it with anyone, or ‘Friends’ to share it with all your Facebook friends, or ‘Friends Except’ to exclude any friends or ‘Specific Friends’ to share it with selected few.
5). Type the post you want to share and tap on ‘Share’ to publish your post. The post is now visible and can be shared, as per your preferences.
Important - If you are using Facebook on your Mobile browser, the procedure is same. Only difference is that there will be one drop-down menu visible, labeled as ‘Public’ by default (and not like two drop-down menus in Facebook App, as mentioned in point no. 3). above).
Changing the Privacy settings for all new posts as ‘Public’ or ‘Friends’ doesn’t mean that your older posts you had published as private post (‘Only me’ version) will also change on its own.
If you want to make an older Facebook post sharable, do the following;
Make Older Facebook Post Sharable
The shortest and easiest way to make an older Facebook post sharable is to go to the post and click on the privacy settings icon on that post, represented by a globe and down arrow sign, beside the time stamp, under your name on the post.
From there you can then select ‘Public’ or ‘Friends’ or ‘Friends except’ or ‘Specific friends’ as the privacy setting to make your post – a public post or all friends post or all friends except few excluded friends kind of post or only certain specific friends you may want to share kind of post.
Make Older Facebook Post Sharable on Mobile
1). Locate the post which you want to make sharable.
2). Once you have reached the post, tap on the ‘Ellipsis icon’ (•••) represented by three dots, appearing on the right side of the post and click it.
3). A new pop-up menu will open. Tap on ‘Edit Privacy’ which will open the Privacy section.
4). Now simply select the option ‘Public’ if you want to make the post visible to everyone or ‘Friend’ if you want to share the posts with your friends only.
If you had shared the post with someone in the past, but want to hide the post, change the settings to ‘Friends except’ and select their name. Your post will be hidden from them.
Lastly you can also share your old post with selected people by using ‘Specific friend’ option and selecting them manually.
Although you have changed the default Privacy setting in Facebook, for all your posts as ‘Public’, there may be a situation, wherein you may want to make an already published public post as private again, so that it is not visible to everyone or anyone except you.
You can absolutely do it by clicking (tapping if you are on mobile) on the three dots, next to the concerning post.
This will open the Edit menu, wherein you can choose ‘Edit Privacy’ option from the list that appears. Now select ‘Only me’ to make your post private again. Once done, people will no longer be able to view that post again, until you may decide to change your Privacy settings.
Lastly, for those who have already seen your post, it will disappear from their news feed automatically.