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The pivot table is one of Microsoft Excel’s most powerful — and intimidating — functions. Powerful because it can help you summarize and make sense of large data sets. Intimidating because you’re not exactly an Excel expert, and pivot tables have always had a reputation for being complicated.

The good news: Learning how to create a pivot table in Excel is much easier than you might’ve been led to believe. But before we walk you through process of creating one, let’s take a step back and make sure you understand exactly what a pivot table is, and why you might need to use one.

In other words, pivot tables extract meaning from that seemingly endless jumble of numbers on your screen. And more specifically, it lets you group your data together in different ways so you can draw helpful conclusions more easily.

The “pivot” part of a pivot table stems from the fact that you can rotate (or pivot) the data in the table in order to view it from a different perspective. To be clear, you’re not adding to, subtracting from, or otherwise changing your data when you make a pivot. Instead, you’re simply reorganizing the data so you can reveal useful information from it.

How to Use Pivot Tables

If you’re still feeling a bit confused about what pivot tables actually do, don’t worry. This is one of those technologies that’s much easier to understand once you’ve seen it in action. So, here are two hypothetical scenarios where you’d want to use a pivot table.

Scenario #1: Comparing Sales Totals of Different Products

Say you have a worksheet that contains monthly sales data for three different products — product 1, product 2, and product 3 — and you want to figure out which of the three has been bringing in the most bucks. You could, of course, look through the worksheet and manually add the corresponding sales figure to a running total every time product 1 appears. You could then do the same for product 2, and product 3, until you have totals for all of them. Piece of cake, right?

Now, imagine that monthly sales worksheet of yours has thousands and thousands of rows. Manually sorting through them all could take a lifetime. Using a pivot table, you can automatically aggregate all of the sales figures for product 1, product 2, and product 3 — and calculate their respective sums — in less than a minute.

Scenario #2: Combining Duplicate Data

In this scenario, you’ve just completed a blog redesign and had to update a bunch of URLs. Unfortunately, your blog reporting software didn’t handle it very well, and ended up splitting the “view” metrics for single posts between two different URLs. So in your spreadsheet, you have two separate instances of each individual blog post. In order to get accurate data, you need to combine the view totals for each of these duplicates.

That’s where the pivot table comes into play. Instead of having to manually search for and combine all the metrics from the duplicates, you can summarize your data (via pivot table) by blog post title, and voilà: the view metrics from those duplicate posts will be aggregated automatically.

How to Create Pivot Tables in Excel

Now that you have a better sense of what pivot tables can be used for, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how to actually create one. 

Step 1: Highlight Your Cells to Create the Table

If you’ve already entered data into your Excel worksheet, highlight the cells you’d like to summarize in a pivot table, click “Insert” along the top navigation, and select the “PivotTable” icon. You can also click anywhere in your worksheet, select “PivotTable,” and manually enter the range of cells you’d like included in the PivotTable.

This will open an option box where, in addition to setting your cell range, you can select whether or not to launch this pivot table in a new worksheet or keep it in the existing worksheet. If you open a new sheet, you can navigate to and away from it on the bottom of your Excel workbook. Once you’ve chosen, click “OK.”

Alternatively, you can highlight your cells, select “Recommended PivotTables” to the right of the PivotTable icon, and open a pivot table with pre-set suggestions for how to organize each row and column.

Note: If you’re using a version of Excel earlier than Excel 2016, “PivotTables” may be under “Tables” or “Data” along the top navigation, rather than “Insert.” In Google Sheets, you can create pivot tables from the “Data” dropdown along the top navigation.

Step 2: Drag and Drop a Field Into the ‘Row Labels’ Area

After you’ve completed Step 1, Excel will create a blank pivot table for you. Your next step is to drag and drop a field — labeled according to the names of the columns in your spreadsheet — into the “Row Labels” area. This will determine what unique identifier — blog post title, product name, and so on — the pivot table will organize your data by.

For example, let’s say you want to organize a bunch of blogging data by post title. To do that, you’d simply click and drag the “Title” field to the “Row Labels” area.

Note: Your pivot table may look different depending on which version of Excel you’re working with. However, the general principles remain the same.

Step 3: Drag and Drop a Field Into the ‘Values’ Area

Once you’ve established what you’re going to organize your data by, your next step is to add in some values by dragging a field into the “Values” area.

Sticking with the blogging data example, let’s say you want to summarize blog post views by title. To do this, you’d simply drag the “Views” field into the Values area.

Step 4: Fine-Tune Your Calculations

The sum of a particular value will be calculated by default, but you can easily change this to something like average, maximum, or minimum depending on what you want to calculate.

On a Mac, you can do this by clicking on the small “i” next to a value in the “Values” area, selecting the option you want, and clicking “OK.” Once you’ve made your selection, your pivot table will be updated accordingly.

If you’re using a PC, you’ll need to click on the small upside-down triangle next to your value and select “Value Field Settings” in order to access the menu.

Digging Deeper With Pivot Tables

You’ve now learned the basics of pivot table creation in Excel. But depending on what you need your pivot table for, you might not be done.

For example, you may notice that the data in your pivot table isn’t sorted the way you’d like. If were the case, Excel’s Sort function can help you out. Alternatively, you may need to incorporate data from another source into your reporting, in which case the VLOOKUP function could come in handy.

To take a deeper dive into the world of Excel and learn about its various functions, download our comprehensive guide, How to Use Excel.

 

Social media is one of the best ways to amplify your brand and the great content you’re creating. But it isn’t enough to just post content to social whenever you feel like it. Some times are better than others.

So, what are the best hours to post on each social media channel?

Unfortunately, there’s no perfect answer. People browse each social network differently, and businesses may find different days and times work best for them. For example, while Twitter sees tweets perform well at hours like 3 p.m., Instagram sees certain posts perform well as late at 2 a.m.

These aren’t your only (or best) times, though. Good post timing depends on the platform you’re using, as well as on how your target audience interacts with that platform, the regions and corresponding time zones you’re targeting, and your marketing goals (e.g., clickthroughs versus shares).

However, there is ample data out there on the best time to post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. The great folks at CoSchedule recently looked at a combination of its own original data and more than a dozen studies on this very topic — from the likes of Buffer and Quintly, just to name a couple — and compiled it into the infographic below.

Bookmark this post as a go-to set of guidelines, and refer to it next time you need to find the optimal posting times for your business.

The Best Times to Post on Social Media

With many businesses facing a growing global audience, varying time zones have become a growing concern, especially when it comes to the best times to post.

To start, let’s take a look at the U.S. About half of the country’s population is in the Eastern Time Zone, and combined with the Central Time Zone, that accounts for over 75% of the total U.S population.

Given that sizable share, if you’re targeting a U.S. audience, try alternating posting times in Eastern and Central Time Zones — we’ll get into those specific times in a bit.

If you’re targeting users outside of the U.S., conduct some research to find out where they live and which social media channels they’re using. That kind of data is available through studies like Smart Insights’ Global Social Media Research Summary, or We Are Social’s annual Digital Global Overview.

1. Best Time to Post on Instagram

Instagram is meant for use on mobile devices. Half of its U.S. users use the app daily, though it would appear that many engage with content more during off-work hours than during the workday.

• In general, the best times to post on Instagram are on Monday and Thursday, at any time other than 3-4 p.m.
• The best time to post videos is 9 p.m.-8 a.m., on any day.
• Some outlets have reported success on Mondays between 8-9 a.m., correlating with the first morning commute of the week for many.

2. Best Times to Post on Facebook

People log in to Facebook on both mobile devices and desktop computers, both at work and at home. How it’s used depends heavily on the audience.

• On average, the best time to post is 1-4 p.m., when clickthrough rates have shown to be at their highest.
• Specifically, 12-1 p.m. is prime time on Saturday and Sunday.
• During the week, the same goes for Wednesday at 3 p.m., as well as Thursday and Friday between 1-4 p.m.
• The worst times are weekends before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m.

3. Best Times to Post on Twitter

Like Facebook, people use Twitter on both mobile devices and desktop computers, both at work and at home. How it’s used also depends heavily on audience — but people often treat it like an RSS feed, and something to read during down times like commutes, breaks, and so on.

• Good times to tweet average around 12–3 p.m., with an apex at 5 p.m. — which makes sense, given that it correlates with the evening commute.
• Weekdays tend to show a stronger performance, though some niches might have more active audiences on the weekend.
• If your goal is to maximize retweets and clickthroughs, aim for noon, 3 p.m., or 5–6 p.m.

4. Best Times to Post on LinkedIn

Roughly 25% of U.S. adults use LinkedIn, largely for professional purposes, during weekdays and the work hours. It’s used with slighly less frequency than some of the other channels on this list, with more than half of users visiting less than once a week.

• Aim to post toward the middle of the week, between Tuesday-Thursday.

• When aiming for a high clickthrough rate, post on these days during times that correspond with the morning and evening commute — roughly 7:30-8:30 a.m. and 5-6 p.m. — as well as the lunch hour, around 12 p.m.

• Some have also seen a positive performance on Tuesdays, between 10–11 a.m.

5. Best Times to Post on Pinterest

Pinterest users skew heavily female, and 25% of users are active on this channel daily.

• Interestingly enough, Saturday evenings are said to be the best time to reach users, especially between 8-11 p.m.
• Some have also seen a strong performance on the later side of Friday afternoon, around 3 p.m.
• Contrasting many of the other channels we’ve listed here, evening commutes tend to be some of the worst times to post to Pinterest. That could be due to the fact that it’s not as “browseable,” with many pins requiring navigation away from the channel.

6. Best Time to Post on Google+

People love to debate whether or not Google+ is a social media channel worth investing in — though according to my colleague Chris Wilson, some marketers have experienced success with it.

But if you’re going to use it, you might as well do so effectively — which includes posting at the optimal times.

• People seem to be most active on Google+ during the start of the workday, between 9-11 a.m.
• That’s especially the case on Wednesdays, around 9 a.m.
• Some marketers have also seen success during the lunch hour, posting between 12-1 p.m.

There you have it, folks. Happy posting, tweeting, and pinning.

 

Within the past several months, before news first broke of voter profiling firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtaining and using personal user data, Facebook said it would be making a large degree of changes as to how it handles advertisements.

Those promises came when it was first revealed in 2017 that the social media behemoth had been weaponized by foreign actors to spread misinformation and influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Since then, Facebook has made incremental changes to the way it ranks and provides context around content appear in users’ News Feeds.

In January, that was a shift in the algorithm to focus more on content from friends and family. But then, the Cambridge Analytica story broke — and since then, Facebook has swiftly instituted sweeping changes to its data, content, and privacy policies. The latest of those changes came today, when it announced that more changes would be made to the transparency of all ads on its site, and not just political ones.

Here’s what Facebook says that’ll look like.

Issue-Based Ads Will Require the Same Verification as Electoral Ones

Last October, before the Cambridge Analytica news broke, Facebook said it would only allow authorized advertisers to run electoral ads on Facebook or Instagram — that is, ads for candidates, for example. Today, wrote VP of Ads Rob Goldman and VP of LOcal & Pages Alex Himel, the same will be required of any parties who wish to publish ads related to the issues that often come up during elections season.

That’s important, because it was that type of ad that allegedly played a role in the aforementioned efforts to share divisive content on Facebook (and other social networks) that could ultimately influence the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. And to help combat that, Facebook says, the company is partnering with “third” parties to comprehensively determine what all of those issues are — an ongoing effort that the announcement says will be fine-tuned as the efforts proceed.

This authorization will work similarly to the verification efforts Facebook identified in recent weeks when Product Management Director Rob Leathern spoke to a new ad review and verification process that will require all Page admins to submit government-issued IDs and provide a physical mailing address before they can publish any promoted content.

Now, any advertisers will have to verify their identities and locations in the same way and won’t be able to run any political ads until that process is complete.

To further those efforts, these ads will all contain a “Political Ad” label, including information about who paid for it. According to this announcement, this verification process has already been tested this week, and users can expect to see these labels later on in the spring. 

Machine learning will also play a role here, to help Facebook identify existing advertisers that should have been put through this verification process, but weren’t, for whatever reason — and users can weigh in by tapping the three dots at the top right corner of the ad and selecting “Report Ad.”

“This is the clearest approach to labeling political ads that they’ve put forth thus far,” says Henry Franco, HubSpot’s social campaign strategy associate.

Searchable and Archived Ads

Here’s another feature that Facebook alluded to last week when it held an overview of upcoming efforts to protect election security: View Ads, which has been tested in Canada and will be rolled out globally this summer. As the name suggests, it allows users to view any ads the Page is running under its “About” section.

That functionality will be available to all Facebook users, even if they don’t follow a given advertiser Page, and will roll out on a global scale in June — the same month when Facebook says it will also launch its public, searchable archive of political ads.

That archive will store the full text and imagery of any and all ads with the aforementioned “Political Ad” label, as well as the number of impressions it received and demographic information about the audience it reached. And according to previous statements from Facebook, the archive will keep this information for up to four years after the ad ran.

Here’s what this archive could look like:

No Pages Left Behind (for Verification)

Finally, Facebook said that any Page with a “large” following — what precise amount that entails is unclear — is subject to verification, regardless of its categories. And until the administrators of these Pages complete that process, they will not be permitted to post anything from it.

While that could carry some implications for any marketers or advertisers with a large following — if for no other reason, than elongating the process of being able to publish content — Facebook also says that this change will make it much more difficult for fake accounts to thrive. For reference, these “fake” accounts already violate Facebook’s policies. 

“It might be a bit of a headache to verify your page,” says Franco, “but it will also increase the legitimacy of your postings, and make the Facebook community a safer, more transparent place.”

These Pages will also come with additional context, like any historical name changes it’s gone through — which bears a resemblance to recent efforts announced by Facebook to display more details alongside any stories appearing in the News Feed.

That’s slated to include such information as any “official” Wikipedia entry on the publisher of the story, in addition to related articles on the same topic. It will also display where and how many times that story (from that publisher) has been shared on Facebook, as well as a “More From This Publisher” feature, allowing users to see what other stories the publisher has recently posted. 

Source: Facebook

With Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to make two appearances before Congress next week — a joint hearing with the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees on Tuesday, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday — it would appear that the recent onslaught of changes announced by Facebook is at least in part the result of preparation for this testimony before lawmakers.

Earlier today, Zuckerberg published a post on this latest round of changes on his official Facebook Page:

Facebook has also been releasing announcements on its accomplishments in this space, perhaps to build a repertoire of successes and progress to bring to Congress for next week’s hearings. This week alone, that includes significant plans to restrict data access, as well as the removal of 70 Facebook accounts, 65 Instagram accounts, and 138 Facebook Pages that were controlled by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA).

We’ll be on the ground in Washington, DC to report on these hearings next week. Questions? Feel free to reach out on Twitter.

In simplified terms, a SERP (which stands for Search Engine Results Page) contains two types of content: organic and paid results.

In an effort to make the user search experience easier and more direct, Google created SERP features, on-page content that gives users answers to their queries without requiring them to click into an organic result. Although on-page SERP features are optimal for the user, they can make it harder for marketers to get noticed in organic search results, even when they’re ranking #1.

Search engines are smarter today than ever before. A few years ago, a search for “pizza” would result in a predictable mixture of restaurant websites, directories, review sites like YELP, and blog posts about the top pizza places in Boston.

Today, here’s what you get when you search “pizza”:

As you can see, the SERP first displays an advertisement, a map with nearby pizza restaurants, and a card pulled from Wikipedia containing pizza’s nutritional information. This content all appears higher and more prominently on the page than any organic results, so even Pizza Hut, which ranks #1 organically, is hidden below the SERP features.

As a marketer, it’s essential to stay up-to-date with new SERP features. Ranking #1 organically doesn’t provide as much visibility as it used to, so it’s imperative for marketers to take full advantage of Google SERP tools to learn how they can rank higher.

There’s a marketing joke that goes something like this: “Where’s the best place to hide a dead body? Page two of Google.” Nowadays, a good place to hide a dead body is actually anywhere below these SERP features. Here’s how you can keep up.

Rich Snippets:

A rich snippet contains more information than a normal snippet does, including pictures, reviews, or customer ratings. You can recognize a rich snippet as any organic search result that provides more information than the title of the page, the URL, and the metadescription. Site operators can add structured data markup to their HTML to help search engines understand their website and optimize for a rich snippet. The Starbucks app, for example, includes customer ratings and pricing within the search description.

Paid Results:

Paid results are the ads and sponsored posts that appear at the very top of the SERP. Google differentiates paid from organic by providing a sponsored or ad label, as you can see below, or by boxing it off in a separate area of the page or using another visual cue.

Universal Results:

Universal results are Google’s method of incorporating results from its other vertical columns, like Google Images and Google News, into the search results. A common example of universal results are Google’s featured snippets, which deliver an answer in a box at the top of the page, so users ideally don’t have to click into any organic results. Image results and news results are other examples.

Local SERP:

Local SERPs appear any time your search intent implicitly relates to location. For example, if you type in “restaurants”, “gas station”, or the name of a specific product sold in stores, Google will surface locations near you that match your query, and show you exactly where you can find them on a map.

Vertical Search:

Vertical search is the box that appears at the top of the page when your search requires Google to pull from other categories, like images, news, or video. Typically, vertical search relates to topical searches like geographical regions — for example, when you search “Columbia, South Carolina,” Google delivers a “Things to do in Columbia” box, along with a “Columbia in the News” box.

Knowledge Graph data:

When your search likely only has one answer — “what’s the weather”, for example, or “who is married to Channing Tatum” — Google will surface a Knowledge Graph: a box that pulls the answer to your query directly from an organic result and into a box at the top of the page.

Google SERP Tools

Now that you have a sense of the different SERP features, you’re probably wondering how you can rank higher in SERP … and, ideally, how you can capture a feature like local SERP or universal results. Here are some of our favorite tools to help you evaluate your current standing in SERP, compare keyword ranking to competitors, and ultimately figure out how to rank higher:

1. WhatsMySerp

WhatsMySerp provides advanced SEO tools to scan and analyze your rankings for different keywords, as well as your overall website ranking on SERP. This tool allows you to search for up to 25 keywords at once, making it ideal for a quick-and-dirty overview of how your site is ranking in search engines.

Price: Free

2. RankWatch

RankWatch provides an in-depth analysis of your URLs, backlinks, keywords, and other SEO elements. The tool also conducts comparative analysis on your competitor’s websites and the number of keywords they are ranking for, so you can strategize how to outrank other businesses in search results.

Price: $29/month

3. MozPro

It’s good to know how you rank both nationally and locally for keywords, but it’s undoubtedly more helpful to get actionable data and insights on how to improve. Moz Pro offers strategic advice on ranking higher, a major benefit to the tool. It also crawls your own site code to find technical issues, which will help search engines understand your site and help you rank higher.

Price: $99/month

4. SerpBook

If you’re an SEO expert in charge of handling clients’ rankings, SerpBook is a useful organizational tool for assigning groups of keywords to individual clients, scheduling which reports you want sent to which clients, and enabling clients to log into your account and check their ratings.

Price: $30/month

5. Moz Local

With 61% of local searches resulting in a purchase, it’s important to ensure your business is optimized for local SEO. Moz Local scours 15 sources, including Google and Facebook, to check out how your business ranks locally. Similar to Moz Pro, Moz Local offers actionable advice for fixing incomplete or inconsistent listings.

Price: Free

6. SemRush

SemRush helps you compete for SERP features including featured snippets, local SEO, Knowledge Graph data, and Google News by figuring out which keywords your competitors are ranking for within these SERP features.

Price: $99.95/month

7. SerpWatcher

SerpWatcher is an easy all-in-one dashboard that delivers an overview of your SERP performance. Even better, you can create a list of custom keywords and track data on those alone, so you’re not overwhelmed by data you’re not interested in. SerpWatcher handily emails you whenever your keywords enter or leave page one of search engines.

Price: $29.90/month