Set Up Your Social Ad Tracking With GTM

If you’re looking to step up your social media game and enter the dark post realm of social media advertising, you will need to install some third party tracking supplied by these networks.

These scripts help align your site with that of the ads you push out on social and improve the accuracy or targetting, tracking and performance. Installing 3rd party tracking on your own can be a daunting task for many, especially when it comes to editing source code on your site and risk bringing the entire site down. I can only say this because I’ve done it myself so tread carefully if you do take that route.

While that can be a dangerous path for some, for others CMS’s it can be a pain you can’t endure, and you’ll have to enlist the help of a developer.

Social tags with GTM

If the situations I described above are familiar to you then firstly I feel your pain, and secondly, I want to let you know it doesn’t have to be that way. Running GTM makes 3rd party tracking oh so easy, you don’t even have to be a techy to do it. So let’s dive into how to get these tracking codes up and running.

How to install the Facebook tracking pixel with GTM

Setting up your Facebook tracking code

• Open up your business.facebook.com dashboard.
• Click on the burger menu in the top right-hand corner.
• Select all tools
• Navigate to measure and report
• Click on pixels
• Click Add Data Source
• Click Add Pixel
• Give the Pixel a name.
• Click on integration or GTM as installation.
• Select your GTM
• Select manual install
• Copy pixel base code

Installing up your Facebook tracking code

Now that you have the code its time to install it on your site

• Open up your Google Tag Manager.
• Click new tag
• Give the tag a name - IE Facebook Pixel.
• Select tag type custom HTML
• Paste the code facebook gave you in the setup process
• Select a trigger
• Select to fire on all pages
• Save your tag
• Click submit

And you're done! It's important to note that this is just the base code, if you want to set up tracking on user actions like sign-ups, add to carts, purchases and more you will have to create separate tags and create event triggers provided by Facebook.

How to install the Twitter tracking pixel with GTM

Setting up your Twitter tracking code

• Open up your ads.twitter.com dashboard.
• Login with your Twitter account
• Select your country and time zone
• Click on your profile and add a new payment method.
• Confirm your payment information
• Then go back to the main dashboard and click tools.
• Click conversion tracking
• You should be presented with a script.
• Find your Twitter pixel ID in the script.

Installing up your Twitter tracking code Now that you have the code its time to install it on your site

• Open up your Google Tag Manager.
• Click new tag
• Give the tag a name - IE Twitter Pixel.
• Select tag type Twitter universal website tag
• Paste in the Twitter pixel ID
• Select a trigger
• Select to fire on all pages
• Save your tag
• Click submit

And you're done! If you want to add custom conversion tracking, you can do so from within the Twitter Ads platform. 

How to install the LinkedIn tracking pixel with GTM

Setting up your Linked tracking code

• Open up your ads.linkedin.com dashboard.
• Click on your account.
• Select account assets on the top menu
• Select insight tag
• You will be presented with a script, but all you will need is the partner id.

Installing up your Linkedin tracking code

Now that you have the code its time to install it on your site

• Open up your Google Tag Manager.
• Click new tag
• Give the tag a name - IE Linkedin Pixel
• Select tag type Linkedin Insight tag
• Add the Partner ID
• Select a trigger
• Select to fire on all pages
• Save your tag
• Click submit

And you're done! If you want to add custom conversion tracking, you can do so from within the LinkedIn Ads platform. 

Pinterest

Pinterest has also stepped into the audience management and retargeting game with its native pixel that can also be installed via Google Tag Mangar. If you would like to learn how to run Pinterest ad tracking on your website, then check out our step by step guide.

Testing your implementation 

There are several tools you can install on your browser to check if your pixels are running correctly. 

• Facebook pixel helper
• Chrome developer tools
• Ghostery
• Google Tag Manager Debugger

Personally, I prefer using Ghostery since its the easiest, and I'm pretty lazy when it comes to debugging things.

Pixel tracking made easy.

GTM is an absolute delight when it comes to installing marketing tech from 3rd party sites, and social tracking is no different. Not only does it make setting up the base code easy, but once you're ready to do more comprehensive monitoring and sending more user data to your social Ad accounts, GTM makes it a painless exercise with the ability to set up and test on the fly.

Contact us

If you want to know more about Google Tag Manager, don’t be shy we’re happy to assist. Simply contact us here. 

Contact us

If you would like us to improve Pinterest activity for your site or want to know more about digital marketing for your business, then don’t be shy we’re happy to assist. Simply contact us

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If you require a more detailed guide on how to create your profile or your listing, then we highly recommend you check out the following articles. 

• How to create a nichemarketer profile 
• How to create a nichemarket business listing 

Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, why not check out the following posts on social media tracking. 

• Your Guide To Facebook Event Tracking

Tags: facebook, google tag manager, linkedin, Social Media, Twitter