Microsoft Excel can be used for many things, especially to help keep your digital marketing plan organized. It is also a handy
tool to use to arrange many of your small business reports and data.
I have always been interested in what Excel can do, but I just haven’t been able to quite grasp how to use it to its full potential. Excel can do a handful of things that include merging spreadsheets of data, simple math reports, formulas to make calculations easy and combine information into using multiple cells of data, among many other things. Every small business wants their digital marketing plan to be organized and using Excel is an efficient way to achieve this.
It really does drive me crazy that I can barely do many of the basic functions in Excel, but I did come across a list of basic
tasks to know that gave me a good start. Feel free to research these functions on your own, either through helpful books, online videos or whatever is your preferred method of learning!
- Computations in a spreadsheet – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division
- Formal titles of columns and rows
- Auto-fill features
- Add and delete columns and rows
- Pivot tables
Speaking of pivot tables, that is what we are going to drive into a little deeper in this post, because they can be used to easily organize data when it comes to your digital marketing plan. I am still learning all about pivot tables and Excel, but this is a good place to start!
Pivot tables can be used to reorganize data in your digital marketing plan, without changing the data. But this can also be a useful function to use to sum-up values and even compare data.
To start, go to DATA > PIVOT TABLE
This will populate a table automatically, with the opportunity for you to change the order of the data if desired. There are four options to choose from when working with pivot tables.
- Report Filter – This is used to look at certain rows of data. The user chooses which data to look at.
- Column Labels – These are often used as headers in spreadsheets.
- Row Labels – These labels can contain data from columns, like the First Name label.
- Value – This is used to look at data differently and can do thinks like find the sum, count, average, maximum, minimum and other things with the data.
At least this gives me a good start to mastering Excel. I know I have a long way to go and will need to continue to work with it. I anticipate an “Excel tips for your digital marketing plan” series is in the works…
