Retargeting on Facebook. Facebook Pixel: features, settings, use

Birthday is not just a date, but a real holiday that you want to celebrate every year. Naturally, the birthday man cannot invite all his friends, but this is not a reason to leave him without his congratulations.

Using social networks to wish a comrade, friend or colleague a happy life is much faster and cheaper than, say, sending a traditional letter or calling. You can even wish a happy birthday to a friend from another country, without knowing either his address or his phone number. And this can be done in several ways.

Congratulations options

In general, using Facebook is very convenient to keep track of birthdays. The system itself will remind you of the upcoming holidays of your friends. First, messages are displayed on the page in the notifications section. Secondly, letters with reminders will be sent to the e-mail specified during registration in the social network. It is extremely difficult to miss the birthdays of Facebook friends with such an alert system, so the standard excuses that cover the absence of congratulations do not work.

If speak about specific options congratulatory messages, they can be issued in the following ways:

• write in a personal;
• leave a message on the wall;
• send a virtual postcard;
• post a "thank you" video.

With private messages, everything is clear. Just write to your friend or acquaintance any congratulation - a few lines with good wishes, a congratulatory poem, a funny picture or even a video postcard. The beauty of this method is that it will be addressed only to the hero of the occasion, and no one else will see the message. So, you can attach a compromising photo or something very personal to the congratulations.

The method is no less popular - a message-congratulation on the wall of the birthday man. In fact, the same as a personal, only presented to all your friend's friends. By the way, if you click on the name of the birthday person in the notification, a new window will appear in which you can immediately enter congratulatory words. And if there is a desire, you can also attach a pretty picture.

There is an even more interesting option - virtual postcards. Of course, they are immediately associated with Odnoklassniki, however, by turning on your imagination and showing originality, you can please a friend with a cute message. To post a card, you need to use one of the dozens of apps available on Facebook - Birthday Cards, Fun Cards, Happy Birthday Cards, and many more. In addition, postcards can be downloaded in Facebook publics, and then published on the wall of a birthday friend.

Finally, you can congratulate your friend on his birthday using the “Thank you” service, which was launched on Facebook. In general, it was invented in order to thank friends for the pleasant moments of communication on the social network, but this method is quite suitable for birthday greetings. To launch it, you need to go to https://www.facebook.com/thanks.

Here you have to choose a birthday friend and materials that will be included in the videos. These can be your messages on the wall and photos (you can select them from albums or download them from your computer). The result is a nice video with music and the simplest video sequence, which looks pretty decent as a virtual birthday present.

And, of course, if possible, pay attention to your friend and congratulate him personally on his birthday. Or at least call. For sure, he will be very, very pleased.

Facebook is popular with 1.49 billion registered people worldwide. This number includes more than 15 million Russian-speaking users.

What can you do on Facebook

I will try to briefly list what you can do in social network Facebook:

I want to introduce you to some concepts that are an integral part of Facebook.

Facebook Wall

Your wall is a space on your profile page where you and your friends can post, post, and share news.

Friend, subscriber, friend, fan, fan - a friend of your personal profile, whom you both, by mutual agreement, added as friends: You added him as a friend, and he added you as his friend.

Profile, public, community, group - different types of pages on social networks, each of which has its own functionality.

Before creating a profile, community or group, you need to decide what you need them for and then create them. Let's try to figure this out now.

Personal Facebook profile

Personal profile (Private page) - you need to understand that it is forbidden (!) to use a personal profile for business on Facebook, otherwise you can lose access to your profile and its content.

The personal profile limit is 5,000 friends. The profile owner must be a real person.

You will not be able to start a page or group with the same name that your personal profile will have, they must have a different name.

From the Facebook rules:

Remember that the presentation personal account anything or anyone other than yourself is a violation of the Facebook Terms of Service

Question: “Which is better: a group or a facebook page?” not entirely correct, because the group and the page have different purposes and different capabilities. This will be discussed below.

Facebook Pages

Pages are intended for representation on Facebook different types businesses, products, brands, organizations, bands, public figures, cities, and more.

On Facebook pages there are statistics.

Page (Page) contributes to the formation of a community in a particular topic, is a place for people to communicate.

For a page, you can set various applications.

It is possible to come up with and use a beautiful short page address.

Pages are indexed by search engines.

Unlike a personal profile, there are no restrictions on the number of fans (friends) on the pages. Also, unlike a profile, you can run ads on Facebook pages.

Facebook groups

Group (Group) can be:

• open,
• closed,
• secret.

Facebook groups are for those who want to chat with a group of friends about something or who want to express their opinion.

Unlike pages, you can't add apps or tabs to groups. The functionality is limited.

Below in fig. 1 shows an example of a profile, as well as the topics of business pages and groups for someone who is engaged in network business. The main idea is that there can be one personal profile on Facebook, but there can be many pages and groups.

Facebook Like Button: Like

Prior to January 2013, the thumbs-up button was called "Like".

If you click on the "Like" button on any page, it means that you liked the page. Simultaneously with this click, you will become a subscriber of this page and in the future you will receive notifications from it about adding posts, photos and other news.

Facebook news feed

You can see the news feed as soon as you go to your Facebook (after entering your e-mail and password).

There are all the news of your friends, on the pages of which you are subscribed, all the information that your friends published, etc.

Facebook post

A post is any publication on Facebook: a photo, a link to something, text, video, audio, etc.

Facebook Help

Many questions can be answered in the Help Center on Facebook

When you click on the Like button from Facebook on websites, a full announcement of the page appears in your profile (instead of the previous mark that you liked something) - link + quote + picture.

If you look at it from the side of the webmaster, you can see a great opportunity to get additional traffic. Let's take a look at how you can maximize the impact of this button. First, let's set the parameters manually (not all CMS have modules/plugins that automate the process).

You can find the Like button generator at: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

The first step is to create the button itself.

URL to Like- you can set your own URL, you can leave the field empty, then this parameter will be the address of the current page (when choosing the XFBML button format - more on that below). It is worth noting that the FB button by priority will select the one specified in canonical tag in the head of the page.
Layout Style- three button design options, we select the most appropriate for your design.
Show faces- if you check the box, then when you enter the site with the Like button, the avatars of your friends who have already “liked” this page will be displayed under it.
Width- width. Considering that with Show Faces enabled you will need more space for the button, specify the allowable block width. Purely in pixels, percentages don't work.
Verb to display y - select the inscription on the Like or Recommend button.
Font- you can choose a font similar to the one on your site.
color scheme— choice of light or dark color scheme.

Set up? Now we press the button Get Code. In the window that appears, there will be two options: iframe and XFBML. If you did not specify URL to Like, then for the button to take the page where it is installed as this parameter, select XFBML. Personally, for aesthetic reasons, I also prefer XFBML, because when inactive it does not stretch the page and does not leave a lot of empty space, like an iframe.

The resulting code can be Russified, for this, in the address http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/ we change en_US to ru_RU

Let's put this code on the site. As you can see, the announcement, title and picture are chosen arbitrarily by Facebook. Often not the way you would like. For example, in osts without images, an image of a counter or a Feedburner button can be taken for the announcement. Of course, this does not contribute to the clickability of the post. So let's continue with the setup. Extra options for posting on Facebook, the webmaster can set it using special meta tags. The same link will also help you configure them: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

Title- post title.
type- here you can set the type of post (rather - the topic) - in theory it is used in the search engines of the platform, possibly also by search engines cooperating with FB.
URL- you can set your own address, but the canonical tag will take precedence.
Image— the address of the image that will be used for the announcement.
site name- the name of your site.
Admin- Facebook ID, if you are on the button settings page being logged into FB, then your ID should be substituted automatically. It will allow you to view statistics on the operation of the button, details are below.

Now we have meta tags that we put before the tag pages.

It is worth noting that you can create one attractive image for the site and use it for all Like buttons of the resource. This will simplify the task, but if you make your own picture for each page, it will turn out to be more interesting for the user ( Wow, something new, I'll take a look!).

Let's move on to automation. Let's use the plugin for WordPress Facebook Like Button http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-like-button/ - it will simplify the task for blogs on this platform. This is one of optimal solutions, which does not require editing the template, manually setting parameters, etc.

On the plugin settings page, you will find the following fields to fill in:

AppID for XFBML version - here they ask you to enter the AppID of the application, if we use the XFBML button to get this AppID, we will need to link a phone number to the account, this can become a problem with our operators (although on this moment everything is ok with Beeline and Megafon in the Moscow region, although recently it has not yet worked out). However, the plugin will work even without specifying the AppID.

type: XFBML or iFrame - select the button format, as I noted above, XFBML is more convenient.
Show in Home: Show on the main page.
Show in Pages: Show on pages.
Show in Posts: Show in posts.
Show in Categories: Show in categories.
Show in Archive: show in archives.
position: select the position of the button. It is better to put after the content.
Alignment: Align the button to the left or right.
Admin ID: if we need statistics on the operation of the button, we indicate our ID here (I already wrote about this above).
Defualt Image e: here we write the address of the image for the announcement by default Check to enable: check the box to enable the use of the image.
language: select the language of the button.

Layout Style: Select a button type.
Show faces: Whether to show friends' avatars.
verb to display: the word on the button.
Font: font.
color scheme: colors.
Width: width.
Height: height.
container class: if there are elements in the style sheet for decorating this button, then specify the name of the class here.

If you have indicated your ID, then the statistics will be available after a while at http://www.facebook.com/insights/

An extremely handy thing: you can find out the total number of Likes on the site, the number of clicks from Facebook, the demographics of those who like your notes (to identify an active backbone of the audience with which to interact)..com 0.02% - there is something to work on.

As a postscript video with facts and Facebook:

is the ability to show ads to a predetermined audience. This can be both fixed contact details (addresses Email, phone numbers, account IDs), and dynamic audience of your website visitors. This article will focus on the latter option.

For retargeting to work, you need to install special code advertising system in which you are going to advertise. This code allows the ad system to match your website visitors with its database. Depending on the advertising system, its name may change, but the essence remains the same. In the Facebook advertising system, it is called facebook pixel.

Recently Facebook updated retargeting pixel. Previously, you needed a separate code for creating audiences from websites and a separate code for tracking conversions and optimizing ads.

Now this is one code that performs the functions of both collecting the audience and the ability to work with campaigns that are optimized for conversions and track these same conversions.

Create a pixel

First of all, this code needs to be created. To create a new pixel, go to the Tools menu, point Pixels.

Menu "Tools", item "Pixels"

This is what the window looks like on the first visit:

Click "Create Pixel"

Put a tick, come up with a name, click "Create a pixel"

We get the code for installation on the site.

Received code put on all pages of the site. Just like other counter codes, it is best placed inside head tags. To check the correct installation and further work I recommend installing the Facebook Pixel Helper add-on (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/ads-for-websites/pixel-troubleshooting) for Google Chrome(In general, Google Chrome or another Chromium-based browser is best for working with Facebook ads).

Without modifications, the code is already ready to collect audiences from website visitors, or to create Custom Conversions.

Pixel setting

Previously, you had to create a separate conversion code to track conversions. Now these functions are new pixel. To track conversions, it needs to be supplemented.
There are 9 basic types of conversions in total:

1. CompleteRegistration- completion of the registration process (for example, visiting the thank you page).
2. Purchase— a purchase, there are two required parameters for this event: value — the conversion price and currency, the currency in which the price is calculated (the setting is required for dynamic remarketing).
3. lead Lead (the first step of any funnel).
4. AddPaymentInfo- adding payment information.
5. InitiateCheckout- the beginning of the ordering process.
6. AddToWishlist- add to wish list.
7. AddToCart— add to cart (setting required for dynamic remarketing).
8. Search- site search.
9. ViewContent— viewing page content (required for dynamic remarketing).

In the newly created pixel, only one event is sent - PageView, indicating the page is loading:

To track conversions on desired pages need to add after this event new event - conversion.

Adding a line
fbq('track', 'CompleteRegistration');
after code
fbq('track', "PageView");

Now the resulting code will send a "CompleteRegistration" event to the Facebook servers, and we can:

• use this event for tracking conversions
• use this event for advertising optimization
• use this event to create audiences

In order to track user actions on the site (clicking on buttons, following links, adding to the cart, etc.), it is enough to add the execution of the code of only a specific event. It is important that the event is sent after the main pixel is loaded.

For example, when adding a product to the cart, you need to run

Along with the event, you can send additional data: product name, cost, quantity. Subsequently, on the basis of this data, you can also form audiences, or by creating Individually configured conversions, you can optimize the AC for conversions with certain properties.

Per parameter content_name the type or name of the subscription page is indicated, in the parameter status— current state of registration (registration, activation)

For an online store, you can add parameters to the event ViewContent to track views of different categories and sections of products.

Each standard conversion has a set standard parameters. Required parameters are the conversion price and its currency for the purchase event, all the rest can be used without parameters.

Full list:

If there are not enough standard 9 events, you can create any of your events with the parameters you need
The code for the custom event looks like this:

MyOwnEvent- any name for the event
param1-any name for the first parameter, value1- its meaning
similarly for param2 And value2

This is what an event might look like, indicating that the user has spent more than a minute on the page.

Custom events cannot be used to optimize ads, but using custom events you can create a custom conversion and optimize for it.
As a result, you can create any kind of micro-conversions to optimize ads.

Creating Audiences

Now in the Audiences section, you can create audiences based on which visitors to your site visited.

To do this, select Create custom audience.

In the pop-up window, select Website Traffic.

Here we have 5 options:

1. Everyone who visits your website.
2. Users who visit certain web pages.
3. Only users who visit certain web pages.
4. Users who have not visited the site for a certain period of time.
5. user combination.

For all options standard settings- the name, the time the audience was stored (or the time when they did not visit the site) and an indication of whether to add information already available in the history to a new audience, or to fill the audience only from the moment of creation. Also, for all options, the maximum audience storage period is 180 days.

Now the features of each of the settings

For the whole audience who visits your website, it is possible to select the site domain if you have set the counter to several domains.

Next audience (users visiting specific web pages), allows you to specify the audience from which pages you want to collect, for this you need to insert either the full URL of the pages from which the audience will be collected from (the URL item is equal to), or part of the page address for the “URL contains” item.

This setting will work for all Thank You pages on the domain.

This setting will only give a specific thank you page (Application with home page). As you can see in the examples, if you have several pages with the same name, it is better to specify a specific url with the page you need.

The third option for the audience, in addition to the previous features, it allows you to exclude some users from the audience received, using all the same rules. For example, you can create a pre-made audience that excludes visitors to the Thank You page, then when creating an ad, it will be enough to specify one audience, instead of separately specifying the targeting and exclusion audiences.

And the last, fourth point from the standard options - p users who have not visited the site for a certain period of time— collects an audience of people who visited your site before, but did not return at the time specified in the settings (up to 180 days).

user combination. If for some reason you didn’t have enough of the previous options (and their combinations in the targeting settings - inclusion and exclusion), this option comes into play.

In short, the possibilities for including and excluding audiences in this paragraph are practically unlimited - you can use an unlimited number of conditions (I did not get to this limitation). In my opinion the most important: in this option it is possible collect an audience by events configured to track user actions on your site and their parameters, which allows you to implement any audience based on behavioral factors.

As a data source, you can use not only the rules for URL address, but also Events from the configured pixel.

For example, if you pass time spent on the page, you can highlight the audience of people who were on the page for more than a minute, but did not convert.

At first this instrument Facebook — Facebook Pixel — may seem unnecessarily complicated, but in fact it requires a minimum of knowledge to implement at the “Copy from here, paste here” level. But when used properly, it allows you to get a large number of information about users of your site in the context of this social network, as well as create the most relevant ads to work with the audience of your site.