Today, PR Vibes™ features a short interview with Laura Borgstede, the CEO and founder of Calysto Communications, the social media and traditional PR agency that publishes PR Vibes.
Why did you launch PR Vibes and what is the mission of the publication?
I began distributing the PR Vibes email newsletter when I first founded Calysto Communications in 1999. Calysto was the very first public relations agency to focus exclusively on telecom. In launching PR Vibes, my goal was to support the Calysto mission: To connect, energize and influence people in communications technology through communications.
Although both the communications technology industry and the public relations industry have changed drastically since 1999, Calysto’s mission remains the same today. We just use a much wider range of public relations and social media tools – or what we call “content delivery” tools – to accomplish that mission.
When it launched, PR Vibes was distributed only to Calysto’s original three clients. Now it is distributed via email to more than 40,000 C-level executives – including CEOs, CMOs, CCOs, and senior public relations, sales and marketing professionals – and read by many others on Calysto’s PR Vibes blog.
I want to make one thing clear, though. Many people are only familiar with the e-newsletter PR Vibes, but in reality the newsletter is just one part of Calysto’s proprietary PR Vibes industry intelligence tools.
When we talk about PR Vibes here at Calysto, we are talking not only about the e-newsletter but also about the amazing databases we’ve developed as part of the newsletter’s creation. Not only does Calysto have one of the most complete lists of C-level communications industry marketing executives available today, it also has a proprietary database of industry influencers that we call our PR Vibes Media Catalyst database.
The Media Catalyst database contains up-to-date contact information for more than 20,000 communications technology industry influencers – the influential media, bloggers, research analysts and conference organizers that our clients need to reach. It’s the most up-to-date and comprehensive database of communications industry influencers available today, and Calysto uses it to build custom media lists for our clients.
Together, these resources makes Calysto more informed and well-connected than any other social and traditional PR agency in the communications technology domain – and better positioned to help companies effectively build their businesses by effectively their leveraging PR and marketing programs.
Could you explain what type of content you provide in the PR Vibes newsletter?
As I alluded to before, the editorial content in Calysto’s PR Vibes is actually not only distributed via an email newsletter but also through our PR Vibes blog, via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and through multiple other communications tools.
The content inside PR Vibes is designed to keep readers on the cutting edge of marketing-related developments in the communications industry. As a “breaking news” publication, PR Vibes informs readers of media and analyst moves and coverage area changes; analyzes all major communications industry trade shows in terms of their marketing dollar value; and publishes Q&As with high-level industry influencers regarding industry, media and tradeshow trends.
Last year, PR Vibes evaluated more than 75 trade shows, industry events and conferences. Each PR Vibes tradeshow-focused newsletter discusses what occurred at a particular industry show and provides insight into whether the event was worth the marketing money in terms of its media attendance, speaking opportunities and exhibits.
In addition, other editions of PR Vibes cover career moves by those in the media, blogger and analyst community as well as overall changes in the focus of relevant print and online publications. For instance, we are often the first to let our audience know when there is big news that affects the media and analyst community – for instance, when Connected Planet shut its doors and when the Yankee Group formed a new Affiliate program. In many cases, we tell our readers about these media moves before they’re even officially announced.
In other issues of PR Vibes, Calysto also interviews key influencers (such as Q and As with the editors-in-chief of key publications and the CEOs of analyst firms) in the media and analyst community, where they deliver insight into industry trends, events and their own publications or analyst firms.
How does this fit in with the overall mission of Calysto Communications?
As I already mentioned, Calysto’s mission is to connect, energize and influence people in communication technology through communication. PR Vibes helps us keep our finger on the pulse of the industry – which enables us to serve as a better information resource for our clients and also helps us to build stronger connections in the industry.
PR Vibes is also one of the ways we obtain insider industry intelligence on a daily basis, which gives us the information needed to offer our clients specialized one-on-one PR counsel. At Calysto, our EVP-level professionals engage in collaborative dialogue with industry influencers every day. This allows us to create and adjust our clients’ PR strategy in real-time based on actual insider knowledge and feedback collected from these influencers.
In addition, thanks to our research team and the research it does when writing content for PR Vibes, Calysto’s knowledge of trade shows and publications is unmatched in the industry. This makes Calysto the most qualified to advise its clients on where to spend their advertising and trade show marketing dollars.
PR Vibes also helps us accomplish another key goal here at Calysto: To provide cost-effective results for clients. We use a lot of the information we discover through our PR Vibes research on media and analyst moves to update our proprietary PR Vibes Media Catalyst media relations database. And that means we don’t have to shell out $20,000 or more per year (costs that other firms pass onto their clients) to access an often outdated media database compiled by a third-party database provider. No other traditional and social PR firm has the level of data or insight that Calysto has.
Of course, this is only one way that Calysto improves its clients’ return on their PR and marketing investment. For instance, Calysto is unlike any other agency in that we have been entirely cloud-based since 2006 – including our systems, applications, data, and our people. This keeps overhead costs to a minimum and gives us the flexibility to confidently provide the capability and coverage of a large agency executed with the agility, industry knowledge and ambition of a boutique firm.
You mentioned that the editorial content in Calysto’s PR Vibes is also distributed through your blog, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social media outlets. What are your thoughts on how the emergence of social media has affected the public relations world and the trade show world?
At Calysto, we help our clients craft the message they want to deliver and then help them deliver it through a variety of channels – including traditional public relations and media relations outlets as well as social PR channels.
And nowhere is social media more relevant than in the technology-driven, early adopter environment of the communications technology sector.
But while social media is an integral part of telling your story, it is not a complete communications strategy by itself. Instead, it’s a method of delivering your message directly to potential customers, partners and others as they become more immersed and engaged online.
In today’s ever-changing marketplace, we no longer just issue information to the media in hopes that they share our clients’ stories with the public. We also tell our clients’ stories directly to the public to spark customer conversations.
But that doesn’t mean that communicating through the media – and now also the blogger community – is not important. It remains a key strategy that all companies should use to get their message out.
And that’s where relationships – including meeting with media and analysts face-to-face at trade shows – still matter tremendously. Calysto team members have worked collaboratively and cooperatively with industry and financial media and analysts on a daily basis year-after-year for decades now.
They know that Calysto team members know the communications industry inside and out. And they also know we will only contact them for meaningful opportunities, so when we reach out, they respond.
Name one unique thing about Calysto and PR Vibes.
We believe that PR Vibes is really the only publication out there that really analyzes the marketing value of communications industry trade shows. As I mentioned, this makes Calysto uniquely qualified to advise its clients on where to spend their advertising and trade show marketing dollars.
PR Vibes is also one of the means by which Calysto has built solid relationships with trade show organizers throughout the communications industry. This has helped us more effectively place our clients in key speaking positions at communications industry conferences, including top shows such as Mobile World Congress, International CTIA WIRELESS, the NAB Show and IBC as well as a long list of smaller niche shows.
I’d be hard-pressed to name just one thing about Calysto that’s unique. I could point to our cloud-based business model, which lets us hire executive vice president-level professionals located anywhere in the world – and charge our clients much lower comparative rates for daily access to senior-level experience.
I could point out our relationships with influencers, which we’ve spent more than two decades building – relationships that help our clients’ messages cut through the “media noise.”
Or I could point out the experience of our team – a group of specialists who have managed dozens of social media, exit positioning, launch, crisis and global PR campaigns for well-known names like Alcatel-Lucent, Sprint, Verizon, Broadsoft and many more.
Those are just a few of the things I would point out that stand out about Calysto.
Is there anything new on the horizon for Calysto and PR Vibes?
In the past year or so, we have begun to work with a few PR Vibes advertisers who would like to get their message out to our readers, and we are at the beginning stages of exploring a program that would allow our clients to market their products and services to the PR Vibes database of readers.
At Calysto, we are continually growing, adapting and forming new partnerships so that we can give our clients the best advice on how to meet their business objectives through strategic communications. Watch for new things from us in the rest of 2012 and beyond!
On a personal note, what do you like best about your job?
The people. I think Nokia has always had the best tagline in the industry: “Connecting People.” That’s really what we do and enjoy. It may mean counseling a company to help them better position their business, introducing them to new social strategies they haven’t thought of, or making introductions that result in key business deals for our clients.
There are a lot of really talented entrepreneurial individuals in our industry, and I have enjoyed working with many exceptional executives over the years. It’s been very rewarding to help their businesses grow quickly.
The best clients are the ones who are passionate messages and have something interesting and unique to say. This makes it easy to determine their differentiators and create a powerful company message that resonates with industry influencers, customers and investors.