Why is Echobox's automated sharing not working as expected?

Automated sharing is an advanced part of Echobox Social, and sometimes it can behave inconsistently with your expectations. This can be because it has identified new patterns in the data and is taking advantage of those, or because there is a configuration problem. Here are some common questions we get about our automation.

Why is Echobox making fewer shares than I expect?

Total new shares a day and Schedule Periods

Each day your page's automation will try to share a certain number of new articles. If you are using the Optimal setting for new shares, we will share an optimal number of articles. If you are using the Custom setting for new shares, you will be able to set this “total new shares a day” number yourself.

However, this number of shares depends on how long automated sharing is active each day, according to the Schedule periods setting. In Schedule periods you can control when automated sharing will run. For example, you could tell the it to only run outside of work hours, or only run during the weekend. This can affect how many shares are made each day.

The Total new shares a day is the number of shares over the whole day, not only when automated sharing is running. This means that if the Autofeed isn’t running for the whole day, the Autofeed will make fewer shares. For example, if the “total new shares a day” is 8, but the Autofeed is only set to run for half the day, then the Autofeed will only try to make 4 shares on that day.

This also affects reshares in a similar way to new shares. If automated sharing is only running for some of the day, not the whole day, there will be fewer reshares than the Reshares a day (target) number.

What can I do about this?

You can check the Schedule periods to see when automated sharing will be active. If it is only running for some of the time, and you are using the Custom setting for New shares, then you can increase the “total new shares a day”.

You could also consider increasing the amount of time automated sharing runs by adding more times in Schedule periods.

Very High Number of Shares

If you are using a Custom setting for new shares or reshares, you can set your “total new shares a day” or “reshares a day (target)” to a very high number. Maybe a number that is too high.

Some social networks have limits on how many shares you can make within a period of time. For example, Facebook has very strict limits on how soon each share can be after another one. For this reason, automated sharing will try to match the number of shares set in “total new shares a day” or “reshares a day (target)”, but it might not post hundreds or thousands of times a day for one social media page.

What can I do about this?

Choose values for “total new shares a day” or “reshares a day (target)” that match what you want as targets for the overall day for each social media page.

I recently changed an automation setting, why is it having this effect on the queue?

Whenever a change is made to automation settings, we will clear out the suggestions and scheduled articles it has put in place and start afresh, in order to try and ensure that all shares going forward adhere to the new rules. This means that some shares might suddenly be moved around after settings are changed.

However, if Approvals are on, or if you have edited one or more shares in the Schedule queue, then we will not make changes to those shares. In this case, changes to the automation settings might not be visible for some time.

What can I do about this?

If a share is removed from the queue, you can add it back manually. The automation will take the share into account and make shares appropriately.

If a share isn’t removed from the queue, you can delete it yourself. However, if you delete a new share it will not be available on the Home Feed to be reshared later.

Why did this good article get shared at a strange time?

Our automation aims to maximise performance for the page as a whole above the performance of individual articles. This means that high-scoring articles, might be shared at unexpected times.

What can I do about this?

If there is a specific article you want to be shared at a particular time, you can manually share that article using the Specific time, Share now or Time slot options in the Compose Box. Our automation will account for this share, and adjust the rest of the schedule queue around each manual share. If the Autofeed is set to Optimal, then it will adjust the number of shares it will make that day accordingly. If it is set to Custom, it won’t adjust the number of shares it will make that day.

Why do reshares look like the new shares from a week ago?

If you are using a Custom setting for reshares, you will have control of both how old an article can be and how long it should be before it is reshared. The maximum age of an article for reshare is the Articles older than this should not be reshared setting. The minimum time before an article can be reshared is the Minimum between shares of the same article setting.

If the Articles older than this should not be reshared setting is only slightly more than the Minimum between shares of the same article setting, then our automation will have a limited selection to pick from.

For example, if Articles older than this should not be reshared is 7 days, and minimum between shares of the same article is 6 days, our automation will only have 1 day of articles to choose from for reshares.

What can I do about this?

You can increase Articles older than this should not be reshared so our automation has more options for articles to reshare.