3BL Media's content distribution platforms and Brand Studio promote the environmental, social, governance (ESG) initiatives of companies, nonprofits and NGOs.
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Cision PRWeb
Score 7.0 out of 10
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Cision PRWeb aims to impact customer behavior by providing efficient communication tools to continuously engage with target audiences across multiple online channels including search, social media and with industry-specific partner websites, bloggers and influencers.
I would (and do) recommend 3BL Professional to any company/org trying to expand the reach of it's CR programs. Often communications is how we justify the budget for our program work (communications help us increase brand reputation, reach potential employees, reach investors and ESG analysts). The 3BL platform is an incredible way to get your impacts and initiatives out to the world so that people know about the incredible programs you're running. Would recommend for any CR/ESG/Sustainability team.
Wire press release distribution is often a luxury purchase, especially at the price point. In my experience Cision acts as if it's destined to win everyone's business just because of its name. Too often we've found ourselves being turned off by the arrogance and taking our business (and our clients' business) to alternative companies that are happy to have us.
PRWeb is fairly easy to use to issue press releases. They have a review process that will look over your release before submission although this review is not going to catch spelling and grammatical errors.
I've seen our press releases posted on industry relevant websites thanks to the reach that PRWeb provided us.
Although I never used it because we subscribed to a different service, PRWeb allows you to create and send email blasts within their OutMarket marketing platform.
I enjoy the ability to add a quote call out in the release.
I also like that images or videos can be added to the release.
Could use detailed description of difference between page views and impressions and how these are differently experienced by people who could see the content on various channels
It would help to know a ballpark figure of impressions served up by Reuters, AP and other services that pickup 3BL content
It would help if quarterly reporting could track with our fiscal year quarters instead of calendar year quarters
Increasing the volume of media that can receive communication would help - going from 5,000 to 7,500 or 10,000 would be a massive help.
Providing a social media platform in which to send out either X posts, LinkedIn, and Facebook posts to media as an alternative communication would help
Increasing the number of podcasters and there contact details would help.
We are unlikely to renew PRWeb because I feel that the costs outweigh the benefits of the service. For a company like ours (small business with about 60 employees) we don't have enough press that warrants monthly coverage. We may look at using PRWeb on an as needed basis, 3-4 times a year for single submissions, but that would be the extent of it. I could see PRWeb being much more beneficial for large companies that are constantly needing to issue press.
The Cision PRWeb platform is mostly intuitive. It is broken into Monitoring, Social, Insights, and Outreach sections. The way Mention Streams are set up and organized has confused employees who are new to the dashboard. Under Outreach, the Launchpad and Activities tabs are a little bit redundant and could probably be consolidated.
I have only required support from PRWeb on two separate occasions and they handled my issues without any problems. I was a bit confused at first not sure if they had received my requests but shortly after I received responses and was able to move forward with my press release.
It is not an "either-or" situation. If a company really wants to put a release out on the wire, one service might be better suited for it than the other. For when a company wants to target certain countries or vertical markets (e.g. Latin America), PR Newswire would be the proper choice.
