Content creation process – Excel Hints & Tips
created by Jacob
What is it?
We are creating useful (hopefully!) Excel Hints & Tips which are emailed weekly to a selection of our customers (and subscribed website visitors) and published on our blog as well.
Why are we doing this?
We are generating this content to really demonstrate to our market that we are knowledge experts on Excel (and MS Office) by providing them with useful content that they can benefit from and share with their connections. We know we do a great job on our training deliveries, but we need compelling content to raise the awareness of those who have NOT yet trained with us.
This method (along with many other marketing activities) will contribute towards giving us greater authority in our market/the web and we will all benefit from increased business.
Okay so how do we choose topics to write about?
This is very much an organic process, we want to know about big wins, “aha!” moments you have had with your delegates, we also review what existing topics on our site and the web are generating greater interest.
How do I contribute?
Our processes are at an embryonic stage, we are learning as we go, please be patient!
To start with, we will provide every contributor with a WordPress account (we use WordPress for our MS Office & Excel blogs). You will be able to create draft content (text & images/screenshots). Marketing (Jacob in this instance) can then review the content, edit and publish. The good thing about using WordPress is that we can collaborate on drafts before they go live.
A quick WordPress guide for you!
All we are after at this stage is for you to contribute as an Excel trainer, don’t worry about trying to write the content, choosing a title etc, that will be marketing’s remit. Just provide an introduction to the Excel Tip, what the benefits are, then take them through how to do it step by step…
Here are some published examples:
Use the following examples as a template with regards to layout/presentation.
https://www.stl-training.co.uk/b/blog/excel-training/share-files-excel/
https://www.stl-training.co.uk/b/blog/excel-training/how-to-split-a-stacked-chart-in-excel/
Basic guidelines:
- Aim for an Excel hint that is version free (not version dependent, or if it is show a work around for other versions)
- Consider the potential audience to be intro – Adv users, but pitch the level of difficulty more at introduction/intermediate level
- Always ask yourself – Would I see value in using this Excel hint, would I show it off/share with my friends/colleagues?
- When introducing the Excel hint, try and explain why it is useful (you may be able to draw on delegate interactions “aha” moments)
What are the timelines?
The most important thing is create this content in step with your training schedule but not feel under any artificial deadlines. If we can as a group aim to have one piece of content per week produced that would be great.
Next Excel Hints to create and publish (a mash-up of suggestions from Jens, Andrew and online research!) – This is first come first served, so use the “Leave a reply” form at the bottom of this post to notify everyone which items you can action (at least 2 from this list) , and when approximately you can do this by.
- Keyboard shortcuts, jump between tabs using CTRL + PGUP/PGDWN
Let’s look at featuring a dozen or so shortcuts, with a quick description for each one. - Pie chart – pull out a segment! Just click Pie Chart – then click segment to separate.
- Show formulas (button on the formulas tab in the formula auditing group)
- How To Create An Excel 2010 Chart To Show Both A Number And A Percent Data Series (this is based on existing content, we just need to make it more user friendly with screenshots, reword it and not make version specific)
https://www.stl-training.co.uk/article-2013-how-create-excel-2010-chart-show-both-number-and-percent-data-series.html - Concatenate in Excel
- $ref & BODMAS
- Count & CountA, the difference. Again you can reference this article and make it more visual, also feel free to expand with any related functions etc…https://www.stl-training.co.uk/fg-17/what-is-difference-between-count-and-counta-in-excel.html
- Remove duplicates (and anything else related to this)
- Working with %
- sub-total feature: Data – subtotal
- Page breaks & printing – repeating headers on different Excel pages.
- Use Vlookup to compare lists.
- Arrange two worksheets from the same workbook side by side