Corporate Communications

• Financial and Business Media Relations: Activities include strategy and message development, op-ed development and placement, editorial campaigns, media training, media tours and media material development, Twitter campaigns, online newsrooms and news conference management, and blog development.
• Higher Purpose Communications: A unique approach to cause marketing and corporate social responsibility programming in a social media era that aligns corporate cores values with the values of key stakeholders. Areas of expertise include environmental sustainability, community relations, NGO engagement and philanthropy.
• Internal and Employee Communications: Programs designed for a new communications environment in which social media are an effective way to build community and create transparency about corporate core values. We believe a company should not undertake an internal social media program as simply a way for management to communicate with employees. Instead, companies should aim higher and use social media in an open attempt to capture and build the company’s shared understanding of brand.

Executive & C-Suite Services

Digital communications platforms’ increasing ubiquity in all business interactions has prompted a necessary evolution among executives at the highest levels of corporations—necessary, but not always welcomed. A key driver of this evolution: Stakeholder empowerment, or the ability of all stakeholder groups to influence a company’s brand, reputation and, ultimately, bottom line, for better or for worse.

Indeed, stakeholder empowerment at the hands of digital communications platforms draws new parallels between audiences’ perceptions of a company and the company’s ability to achieve its business objectives. MH Group specializes in helping clients understand and manage this relationship between stakeholder perceptions and the realization of business goals.

Among the specific services MH Group offers to meet the needs of senior management teams:

• Conducting organizational audits to assess the effectiveness of current structures and reporting relationships, and making recommendations to facilitate more effective communication and collaboration between and among departments.
• Developing processes for integrating the corporate communications function across all business units to promote consistent messaging and more effective collaboration.
• Training senior management teams to establish and build their executive voice in the online channels that are most strategic and relevant to their goals.
• Identifying the company’s most influential audiences on and offline, and developing targeted messages that will resonate with them.
• Shaping messaging for senior leadership teams and Boards of Directors.
• Influencing the opinion leaders who impact corporate reputations.

Brand Development

There are strategic business objectives behind a company’s interest in hiring a communications firm—objectives far more complex than the tactical need to begin engaging audiences via social media. Whether driven by the need to raise assets under senior management’s purview, sell more products or services, or restore trust in a company’s brand, those objectives are the foundation on which companies build a strategic integrated communications plan that combines tradition media activities with digital platforms.

MH Group believes that the key to an effective communications strategy in a digitally driven media environment is not simply joining the latest and greatest online platform. Instead of beginning with the digital tools, our approach centers on analyzing your key audiences and the best media relations/social media techniques for reaching them. Our objectives are to:

• Identify your most influential online audiences, and the best combinations of channels to reach them.
• Develop communications goals and messages for each influential audience.
• Shape campaigns based on the most strategic combination of social media channels in order to meet communications goals, as well as overall business goals.
• Ensure that your online momentum isn’t lost on high-visibility events and traditional news announcements.

That said, MH Group’s strategies are always developed to maximize the divergent characteristics of social media, which are not created equal and do not function the same way across the board. For example, Twitter is most effective in meeting customer service goals, while Facebook and Flickr are ideal for brand-building, YouTube for driving viral efforts, and blogs for encapsulating brand identities and corporate cultures.

To form a cohesive, integrated social media strategy, then, MH Group will:

• Identify the best social media platforms through which to engage influential audiences.
• Deliver communications messages through discrete programs designed for specific digital platforms while ensuring each platform is completely integrated with your overall business objectives.

The social media strategy is likely to be implemented through one or more of the following integrated approaches:

• Traditional media outreach.
• Twitter feed development and enhancement.
• Facebook programs centered around community development.
• YouTube channel development and viral-focused execution.

Measurement, of course,  then becomes critical. Social media participation by definition is made up of behaviors that are measurable. This exists in direct contrast to traditional media, where largely anonymous measures like impressions, frequency and tone gave little context to the overarching question of more meaningful outcomes like engagement, influence, impact.

The key to evaluation in this environment is a solution that encompasses multiple tiers: Traditional components like reach, frequency and tone, coupled with social media-driven factors like increased engagement, loyalty and efficacy, deliver a more comprehensive picture of how a specific communications initiative drives bottom-line results.

In addition to traditional PR measurement, MH Group’s approach consists of three parts:

1. Daily monitoring and reporting of conversations in social media platforms that affect the client, delivered in the context of traditional news coverage.
2. A high-level quarterly overview of the size of a client’s social media community, the volume of conversations about the client within social media channels, the tone of those conversations and the content of conversations relative to the client’s key messages.
3. A customized ROI measurement evaluation used to assess specific digital programs against the client’s key performance indicators. This measurement solution combines a client’s existing CRM data with information gathered from influential audiences’ conversations on social media platforms. Depending on the quality of the client’s own customer data, the assessment will like a customer’s participation in the client’s social media channels with tangible metrics such as overall purchase consideration.

Issues & Risk Assessment

The digital drivers of today’s communications landscape introduce a constantly changing list of reputational risks, none of which abide by precedents set during more traditional times.

Indeed, questions surrounding fair disclosure, legal discovery, intellectual property, privacy and liability have all been raised by companies’ participation in social media as a means of official business communications. For as many opportunities that have been presented by these digital technologies, an equal number of challenges exist, many of which call into question the scope and application of longstanding laws.

MH Group’s associates are well versed not only in the court of law but also in the court of public opinion, and are help companies navigate the uncharted territory of social media. Among the services offered:

• Vulnerability assessments and risk mapping.
• Media and risk-management training.
• Social media policy and terms of use development.
• Opinion research benchmarking.
• Strategy development within the confines of the current regulatory environment.
• Monitoring and social media analysis.