In our last article, we considered the concept of going green, and how that largely involves the principle of reduction, in various senses of the word. It was noted that reduction begins with observation: observing how others are doing things, observing how we are doing things, and combining these observations to see how we can do things better.

Today we will look at a particular type of office introspection, the waste audit, and how to conduct one. In layman’s terms, a waste audit is basically breaking down all your office’s waste, so that you can see what sorts of items compose the majority of your output. This lets you know where you are doing well, where you are falling short, and when considered astutely it will let your garbage tell you how you can do better. This is one case in which doing better can save your business a significant amount of money. For example, if you realize that a lot of your waste is composed of a recyclable material, say cardboard, you can concentrate more on recycling cardboard instead of simply trashing it. Not only is this environmentally friendly, it also cuts down on the garbage that you are paying to be taken away. Less garbage = smaller dumpster.

Let’s begin by taking a look at the basic steps involved:

1. Plan Your Audit

2. Gather Your Waste

3. Sift through Your findings

4. Consider How You can do Better

5. Revise Office Conduct to Improve

Now let’s consider each of these in closer detail:

1. Plan Your Audit

As with anything, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Planning your waste audit is one of the most important steps in the process. Planning for an audit is not overly difficult, but it should take priority.

The two major things you should consider in your planning are numbers and space. The term, “numbers” comes to mean several things. First, how many buildings are you planning to audit, and how many floors does each location consist of. For our purposes, we will consider auditing a small company’s single location, which has just a single floor. This way, you can see the basic process, which can then be adapted to a larger environment through teams of people if necessary. The second meaning of numbers here pertains to the number of people involved, on both ends of the audit. The more people you have working in the location, the more people you will probably need helping with the audit. For the case in consideration, if this single location has less than twenty people working in it, you will probably only need several people involved. There is a handy chart of estimations for size / auditors ratios at: http://solidwastedistrict.com/projects/waste_audit.htm.

It is very important to consider not only how many people you have as auditors, but who is auditing, and when. These people will be sifting through what may be very confidential material. As much as we all know that items of extreme importance should be shredded before being discarded this is not always the case. Additionally, there is a personal privacy issue that needs to be considered. In the waste audit we are only looking at what sorts of materials are being discarded, and to what amounts. Although it may certainly be helpful to refine your search so that you can determine the specific location of a type of material (e.g., if paper is your leading waste, asking “Is most of this paper waste personal paper waste from workers, or is it from a corporate document?”), auditors need to be mindful of the fact that they are going through garbage. Even if it is the company’s garbage, issues of ethics should always be courted with care. The basic point is, make sure that you have an ample amount of people conducting the audit, and that they are trustworthy people.

Space is also a factor for consideration. Walking through the entirety of your workspace can be a helpful step. It is sort of like the scientific method: Observe, make a hypothesis, and then test this. Look at your office, hypothesize over your weakest areas that lead to leading wastes, then conduct your audit to see. This also helps to look at the general workflow of your office holistically. Remember, waste efficiency is only one component of efficiency as a whole. We want to improve the entire process by improving each component.

Planning also includes elements of time. First, you should plan your audit at an appropriate time. It is no help to conduct it at a time of the year or week when you know you have an atypical amount of waste. However, although you should probably notify your employees that a waste audit is being conducted, telling them when it is being conducted will probably not be beneficial, since it will probably affect their actions.

Once you have determined how many people you will need, who will be involved, and when you will conduct your audit, you can move into planning the collection phase.

2. Gather Your Waste:

There are basically two ways to go about collecting your waste. You could collect it totally unfiltered. While the idea behind the audit is to collect as naturally as possible, there is an alternative that is just as helpful: Filter down your disposal as much as possible beforehand. For example, after your audit is done you will probably want to separate your waste outlets anyway, and since you will need to separate them for the audit, you might just as well break down the areas for your wastes before you begin. For example, distribute different receptacles for your different wastes, so that all paper goes in one box, cardboard in another, only pop-cans in another, etc. When you do this, make following the intended procedure as easy as possible, while also making it as difficult as possible to diverge from the intended action. So, say you wanted to encourage workers to recycle paper as much as possible. Keep a recycling bin by the printer/copier, have them keep smaller bins by their desks, and then an accompanying bin large enough to collect their desk bin paper at several central locations. Or, say you wanted to reduce the amount of pop bottles going into the garbage; you could put out a bin with a top that has slotted holes, which are only large enough to let the bottles through. The slots, in particular, make it harder to just toss in other trash, such as gum or little bits of paper. By funneling these elements before your audit begins, you have already started the efficiency process—making it easier to focus on any one of the elements after the audit—and you have already separated the waste into its individual components, thus saving you work during the sifting.

Regardless of whether or not you elect to separate the waste like this beforehand, it is important to keep track of where the garbage is coming from. Come up with some system to label the waste in terms of source (e.g., putting a label such as “Office paper,” or “Lounge paper” on respective bags), so that you can pinpoint your problem areas. The size of your company may facilitate entailing the cooperation of your janitors for this.

However you choose to gather your waste, it all needs to be taken to one, secure location at one time, so that you have it all there in front of you. It should be secure in the sense that you will not have anyone but the auditors exposed to the waste. This is for their protection, as well as for securing the ethical distance mentioned above—you shouldn’t have the waste out there for just anyone to come in and rifle through.

3. Sift Through Your Waste

Once you have gathered all your waste it’s time to examine it. As noted above, this should be done in a hermetic location. You should also take several sanitary measures, such as laying down plastic (a thin tarp, or garbage bags will work) over your work area. Every auditor should definitely be equipped with gloves, and a first aid kit and some form of strong disinfectant should be ready at hand. Some people even prefer to wear protective overalls, but this is left to your discretion.

The next step is to carefully separate all of the elements into manageable sections. All the paper should be together, all cardboard, all bottles, all plastic, etc. Be as meticulous as possible. This will be much easier if you use the method of doing this beforehand prescribed above. Once you have the elements separated it’s time to weigh them all in, and then add the respective weights together for a sum weight, so that you can see the proportions of your contributing wastes.

There are a number of ways to weigh the waste in, and keep track of it all. Some are simpler, such as this site’s audit form method: http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/airwaste/wm/recycle/FACTS/ComRec.htm

Others prefer to be a bit more meticulous, as with the procedures outlined here:

http://www.cook.rutgers.edu/~envpurchase/basics_cycle_audits.htm

Whatever method you prefer, the basic strategy is to weigh it all in, and keep track of the respective parts. This can be as simple as taking a scale from home, weighing yourself in, then weighing yourself holding a bag and subtracting your body weight. You should be meticulous, but without making this step any harder than it has to be.

4. Consider

Now you should have a pretty clear idea of where your waste is coming from. Your challenge now is to look at how to reduce, recycle, and reuse. The ways to accomplish these three objectives are as innumerable as the circumstances in which they have to be accomplished. We will consider such objectives in articles to come, but for the moment, the Rutgers site that I linked above also has some very helpful ideas.

5.Revise

The last step is just to change your conduct. Put whatever strategies you came up with during your consideration phase into practice, and conduct another waste audit at a later time to track your progress.

Although many people often think of Holiday Valley for its skiing renown, this month the slopes will be used by the elite of another sport—Bowhunting. From August 20^th through the 23^rd, Ellicottville should be filled with thousands of extra people, as competitors come from around the world for the 2008 World Bowhunting Championships.

The Championships are an International Bowhunting Organization event. Because of this, over 2,000 competitors will come to Ellicottville from the world over. Once here, they will compete on twenty man-made courses across the Holiday Valley grounds. On these courses, competitors will stand up to forty yards away from their targets, which will be 3D models of animals.

The archer who can hit these targets the best will walk away with a World championship title. All those in the running must be qualified to enter, and additional qualifying rounds begin on the 21^st. In addition to the World title, those who make rank face other, more lucrative chances: over $200,000.00 in cash and prizes will be disbursed to the winners.

Archers who aren’t world-elite can also enjoy the weekend, thanks to Holiday Valley. The hosting resort will offer an Archery Festival during the competition dates. For forty dollars, pre-registered archers can try their hand at the same course as the World Championship competitors, but without the pressure. Additionally, a Future Bowhunters event will be run for the younger champions of tomorrow.

With the big green boom, it seems like everyone is going green—but what exactly does that mean? How do you go green with your business? Would you even want to if you knew what that would entail? You should; in the end, going green can save you and your company a lot of time, hassle, and money, in addition to all the altruistic benefits to the environment. You don’t have to be Bono to make this kind of commitment, though. Rather, in many instances going green may simply mean a clear look at different ways your company can conserve, in various ways, and taking active steps to make those conservations.

Like any commitment, this sort of change begins with a vision. Vision, of course, entails image. What does this look like? To many people, the term going green conjures up an image of the ever-elusive paperless office. The question, of course, is how to make this passionate, paperless dream manifest. There are many ways to do this, but they all begin with lots of research, both introspectively, as well as externally. Read up on the matter. For the broad strokes, visit http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/how-to-go-paperless-bury-the-paper-before-it-buries-you.html. For a more in depth process analysis, check out http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/Jun2005/johnston.htm. Once you understand the fundamentals, take a close look at your company. Look at the overall workflow, and eliminate any redundancies. Look at any superfluous paper usage. Scan in old documents, such as invoices, and keep them digitally. Set a date, after which all primary copies of records will be digital, and all old records will have been digitized. The equipment and programming for these sorts of transitions, such as scanners, is cheaper than ever. Whatever you do, keep in mind that the manner in which the paperless concept will take form is unique to your company.

If the idea of going paperless seems a bit daunting, don’t worry. Although one should not give up on the idea simply because it is difficult, paperless offices are not the only green ones. As mentioned above, practical strategies for going green do not necessarily entail clichés, so much as realistic, innovative ways of reducing in general. Reduction can be attained by any company, anywhere, regardless of size, product, or service.

One leading example is Wal-Mart. Billionaire John Doerr, a partner in the renowned VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, cited Wal-Mart’s reduction efforts in a talk he gave at the Ted conference, which you can view at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/john_doerr_sees_salvation_and_profit_in_greentech.html. Doerr cites Wal-Mart as the largest private employer in America, and also as the largest private user of electricity. One might surmise that given Wal-Mart’s immense size, any sort of reformation would entail massive overhaul. Yet Wal-Mart, in the middle of its operation, committed to reduce its energy usage in existing stores by 20%, and usage in new stores by 30%. This was achieved through various innovative methods, including the addition of skylights to take advantage of daylight. There are two basic principles that can be observed from Wal-Mart. The first is commitment. It is not enough to say that something must, or will happen. If you want to save your company money, then you need to take the risk of saying that a certain action will be done by a certain date. This labels the idea as a priority, thus making it urgent. So set the goal, make the plan, and then make it happen. The second principle to be learned is innovation. Painting the roof white to keep the building cooler, using skylights—these are modifications that anyone take advantage of, but they are also specific to Wal-Mart’s needs, and ability to change. Reduction, in every respect of the word, begins not with a grandiose scheme to overhaul the entire company, but by looking at the things that you can feasibly change, one step at a time. Conduct a waste audit (which will be discussed later). Talk to a plumber about pressure reducers or flow constrictors for your water. These are just a few practical ways to conserve waste in your workplace. In the next article, we will start to take a look more specifically at ways you can accomplish this.

You can’t quite say that the circus will be coming to town on August 15^th through 17^th in Olean, but you wouldn’t be far off. With three festival-esque events all happening in the same weekend, the city’s Chamber of Commerce has brought the weekend under one title, naming the week’s end the Shuck, Rattle N’ Roll Weekend. Each part of the name represents a different component of the weekend. These components are the Community Corn Festival and Wellness Rally, the Gus Macker 3 on 3 basketball tournament, and the Rally in the Valley motorcycle event.

Exercise fiends should be well at home this weekend, considering that two of the three events involve exercise of some sort. The Olean-Bradford Family YMCA is sponsoring the first part of this weekend’s trio, The Corn Festival and Wellness Rally on August 17^th, at Gargoyle Park. True to form, some of the events the Y is offering are fun runs and bike rides. Festival goers are welcome to participate in a 5k Fun Run/Walk, or they can jump on the saddle for a sixty mile bike ride. Although the festival begins at 11 am, bike riders will be departing at 9 am. The festival also seeks to provide a good time for those not interested in running or riding, through a whole gamut of family friendly attractions. All the festival essentials made the list, including 50/50 raffles and a Basket Raffle Rally, as well as all the normal family fun like bounce houses and a bungee run, pony rides and rides in a horse drawn wagon, a dunk tank and petting zoo. The festival will also feature music by “DJ Dan Shambeda,” as well as fresh, roasted corn from Bockmier’s Corn Market, hence the name.

The Corn and Wellness Festival is not the only place in town to get a workout, though. On August 15^th Olean will also host the Gus Macker 3 on 3 basketball tournament to benefit the Olean High School Sports Booster, and the Olean City School District Foundation. First held in Lowell, Michigan in 1974, the Gus Macker tournament has grown and evolved with the times. Now America’s largest outdoor basketball tournament, the Gus Macker event aims to allow everyone to be competitive and enjoy the limelight. They go about this by using a computer to match teams up according to age, height, and experience. More than that, randomly selected teams can get passed to the Dream Court. An All-American venue, the Dream Court is a specially designed red, white, and blue court, complete with bleachers, team benches, and a synthetic court surface. While the Dream Court game is going, commentators will give a play by play from a soundstage, aiming to focus on the nicknames and personalities of players of spectators.

Of course, spectators may not be able to hear the commentary over the rumbling from across town, as the Annual Rally in the Valley motorcycle will roll into town on August 15^th. Began in 2003, this Rally has brought in an increasing number of bikers and spectators every year since. The weekend is scheduled to begin with the Friday Kick Off to the Rally, featuring the Patti Parks Blues Band. There will be even more going on Saturday, with the Bike Rodeo. The Bike Rodeo consists of a number of contests, including the slow ride, ball drop, tire toss, and hot-dog contests to demonstrate rider control. A bike show is also scheduled for Saturday, and during it all bikers can listen to the sounds of Jon Payne & Wildfire over the revving engines. Sunday will see the bikers off with a 130 mile dice-run. A 2008 Harley Davidson Candy Red Glo FxDF Dyna Fat Bob motorcycle will also be auctioned off during the weekend.

We’re not in Philly anymore. If you recall our entries from the fall about working in Philadelphia with an artist native to Olean, you’ll instantly remember the stunning images of massive building-side murals that drape the streets in Philly. World renown mural artist, Meg Saligman, launched her web site with Mellon & Co. several months ago. She has since taken her art on the road, to do yet another nationally recognized mural. This time around, the Saligman crew can be found atop scaffolding in Omaha, Nebraska, working on one of the world’s largest murals. The project, “Fertile Ground,” consists of Nebraska historical characters and events.

Mellon & Co. is working closely with Saligman and her talented marketing consultant, Sue Spolan, to maximize public relations opportunities in Omaha to bring the good news back east.

The list of media is growing, and you can find all sorts of interesting project information at www.omahamuralproject.org. The full list can be found on Saligman’s PR page.

We are extremely excited about working with such a talented artist with local roots. For information about seeing Meg’s work, contact us anytime.

Having a web site won’t do much good if nobody can find it. Mellon & Co. offers full search engine optimization support. This article details some of the steps in getting your site indexed and staying at the top.

Are you launching a new website? There’s no better time to think about search engine optimization than prior to launching a new site. By giving consideration to your on-page optimization factors, you can increase your chances of achieving top organic search results.

To prepare your site for easy indexing, be sure to follow these basis guidelines:

1. Design your site in html or similar format that minimizes the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make your code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engine spiders to read your content and prescribe the appropriate Google PR to your web page.

2. Make sure that your meta tags are coded properly and include the Robots.txt tag. Many individuals downplay the importance of meta tags. Although meta tags themselves won’t drastically change the organic ranking of your site, they do create the display text users will see when your site appears in search results. If your meta tags are search engine optimized and compelling, you increase the changes of improving click-throughs.

3. Apply the proper tags to your page. H1, H2, and H3 tags are a great wall to call attention to your content and promote your keywords and keyword phrases. Try to use each tag at least once, but don’t force the issues. You want your text to flow and appear normal.

In addition to ensuring that you’ve made your page easy to access and presented text that is optimized, you also want to consider other factors that can help long-term with your SEO efforts. So often, web designers get caught up with on page factors, that they overlook the requirements for establishing a foundation that supports long-term initiatives.

Read the full article.

Source: Marketing Scoop

Constant Communication. Are you making this marketing mistake?

A few years ago, I met one of the best known ’sales experts’ in the UK. He had authored several books, and provided motivational training for blue-chip companies in a career spanning decades. If you’ve worked in the sales world for any time, you have almost certainly heard of him. Now in the ‘golden years’ of his career, he could sit back and let the opportunities come to him, couldn’t he? Actually no.

“We never kept a database, Bernadette” he privately confessed to me. So at great expense he had to hire and manage a sales team to set appointments for him. If he had cultivated a list over the years, he would have had prospective clients knocking on his door. “But my business is different!” Ok, so you’re a consultant - and you only work with 3-4 large clients each year. Surely you don’t need a list of 1,000 do you? Maybe not, but any list will give you huge leverage.

Read the full article at Marketing Scoop.

This accurate description of Integrated Marketing Communications, the words often heard when describing the field, are an important part of what we do at Mellon & Co. It may help our clients, and even prospective clients, to have a deeper understanding of our core philosophy:

Marketing: It is a process. We measure the results of the process by number of customers, sales, amount of profit generated, etc.

Marketing Communications (MC): This is an umbrella term for all communication avenues available for conveying marketing messages. These include advertising, public relations, sales promotions, direct response marketing, events, sponsorships, point-of-purchase materials, packaging, trade shows, customer service, and personal sales. MC is measured as the proportion of marketing dollars assigned to each avenue and the marketing return on investment (MROI) for each.

Marketing Mix: The specific MC elements used by an organization, measured in marketing dollars and MROI.

Brand: It is the total collection of perceptions and associations (good, bad, and indifferent) that differentiate an organization from its competitors.

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC): Another process. IMC is the organization, planning, and monitoring of marketing components and data to control and influence brand information, associations, and experiences. The goal is to incubate profitable relationships and dialog with patients and other groups. This is typically measured by internal and external surveys, focus groups, managerial accounting, trend analyses, referral indices, etc. [Source: audiologyonline.com, describing how they use IMC for their business model.]

Read the full article.

Mellon & Company is pleased to announce that we have just added another member to our continuously expanding team.  Rachel Drinkwalter has joined on to assist us in our upcoming business ventures.  Rachel brings with her a very creative background with several years of professional graphic design, marketing and public relations experience.  She has already shared with us some great ideas that she has to help promote the company and area local businesses.  We are very excited to see where Rachel brings us as we continue to grow and travel along several new paths in design, web, marketing and technology services.

Photography plays a very important role in marketing. Especially if you’re in real estate, or have a business that benefits from showing more than just still shots. Now that the weather is nice, depicting your brand with images will be even more impactful! A stunning image will stay fresh in the minds of your customers, arguably more than anything else.

Virtual Tours

Showing customers what you have to offer is just as important as telling them. Mellon & Co.’s custom 360° virtual tours serve as a platform for providing alternate views for the full effect. Some of our past virtual tour customers have found much success in using this media. They have included: RSM Development, LLC, St. Bonaventure University, and Cathy Pritchard Real Estate. We also offer still photography as a part of our packages. Now is the ideal time for virtual photography packages, so contact us for more information!