Agility PR Solutions is a media monitoring and analysis platform for public relations management, and a subsidiary of Innodata. The product was originally PR Newswire Agility, which was divested to MediaMiser, a subsidiary of Innodata, then rebranded as Agility PR Solutions.
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Brandwatch
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Brandwatch, from Cision (acquired February 2021) is an enterprise social intelligence platform that is designed to allow brands to listen and analyze online conversation to extract meaningful insights, inform their business decisions and understand more about the return on their marketing spend.
$800
10k mentions
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 6.9 out of 10
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CIsion Communications Cloud is used for identifying key media and influencers, connecting with audiences, monitoring traditional and social media, and analyzing outcomes.
TrendKite competitors include Cision [before TrendKite was acquired by Cision], Meltwater, Newswire, Agility PR Solutions, Business Wire, PRWeb, and Coveragebook.com. The Centrica organization evaluated a few of these competitors before selecting TrendKite. Cision [before …
We liked the cost of Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* against its competitors. We also felt the platform was more advanced and intuitive. It was easier to use and included more features. They're always adding something new - even the little things make a difference. I …
We've used Gorkana in the past, however, it was acquired by Cision. We've also used Meltwater which has a lot of Cision's core capabilities but at a lower price point.
Social listening tools cover news media to varying degrees. Of these, my favorite is Talkwalker. Its coverage seems to be as comprehensive as Cision's (if there are gaps, I haven't noticed) and the boolean language and tool functionalities are far more advanced, flexible, and …
Agility PR Solutions is well-suited to finding mentions for a large number of keywords and keeping them organized. As a membership association, this is perfect for us because we are able to track all of our members. We are also able to use it to find up-to-date reporter contacts in the right areas for our media pitches and press releases for both ourselves and members. Scenarios where Agility PR Solutions is not well suited... I haven't really found any yet. I anticipate that if you expected the software to do everything for you, then maybe that would be a problem.
The user interface is great and is easy to use for social media marketers of all ranges. In regard to planning and scheduling content, it allows all users with access to the capability to view all upcoming on an actual calendar. For organizational purposes, this is great and mitigates any confusion that other team members may have. The tool seems to always be updating which has its pros and cons because once you figure something out, there's a switch and you'll need to relearn how things are positioned but overall, it's not a heavy lift.
For a small start-up, the cost-benefit to add lift to press releases [and] particular milestone accomplishments is definitely there with the Cision [Communications] Cloud. Much of what we do, by necessity, is done internally without the benefit of outsourced press folks, so the Cision [Communications] Cloud ease of use and reporting is very important.
Clean, beautiful visuals that can be easily incorporated into reports to be used internally and externally.
Customization-- anywhere from the queries you create to adjusting individual report widget/components this tool is very flexible.
Excellent Customer Service and support. My Brandwatch rep is always open to hearing from me for questions and often reaches out to me to check in on my status or see if I would like to participate in beta programs.
Constant innovation. It seems like Brandwatch is constantly updating and adding improvements to their platform--especially with their 2019 acquisition of Crimson Hexagon.
Their upgraded press release templates and ability [to] pull in an entire, completed release makes the [process] faster and easier, and allows for more graphics, such as company mastheads, [are done well].
The media tracking offers the ability to find relevant placements across the entire country.
The journalist database streamlines the process of finding relevant reporters to directly connect [to] on news releases that are relevant to their beats.
The process of setting up, creating, and distributing a release is seamless, easy to use, and not labor-intensive.
There is a lot of stuff you can do on the website, and it can be challenging to find what you need without asking customer service for help. I'm a person who likes to do things for myself.
Sometimes I wish that more of their features were just a part of what was available instead of an upsell. I want to use everything but can afford it.
I feel like they upgrade a lot which is great but at the same time, changing the feeling of things makes it feel less familiar.
In the media influencer database, the classic Cision allowed us to do a zip code radius search to really drill down to the neighborhood level. That's because we do localized media advisories and press releases for events at neighborhood schools. One part of a big city like Chicago really doesn't care what's happening in another part of Chicago that's too far away. The zip code radius search was a feature in the classic Cision but not with the current Cision Communications Cloud. We've asked for this to be restored several times, but nothing's happened. In fact, we were told to use DMA — which actually goes wider in a search (bigger than a city), not more narrow as needed. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of what we need.
Another missing feature involves a merge field when sending out an email press release through Cision. This is the "select insert field" button in the upper right that's used to personalize a release with the media contact's name and other information. This is key for localization of the release. Many media outlets won't run a release unless it's local. While "county" is a feature in the influencer database when putting together a media list in Cision, "county" is not available to insert into a press release as a merge field. Counties are important because this is how many newspapers and health departments are organized and identify themselves. I've asked for this to be implemented, to no avail. As a workaround, we've had to use "contact city" or "outlet city."
After refining a media list in Cision using filters, I've had to download the list and take it offline to see the big picture, screen for duplicates, etc. While there is a button on the bottom left intended to help with this, it doesn't do the trick. That's because there may be multiple contacts with the same email address. In addition, one media contact may represent numerous media outlets, so this same contact could show up several times. It would be nice to have a better way to see the whole list online and eliminate both duplicates as well as those who previously opted out.
Brandwatch is a simple tool that is easy to learn and understand. Without any rigorous training, the team can learn to use it and interpret the results in an efficient manner. It saves a lot of work and helps the team to focus on other important time consuming tasks. I would like to continue using Brandwatch.
While I am happy with the product performance overall, TrendKite's recent merger with Cision is cause for concern. When we first signed on with TrendKite, I spoke with several users and the best response I received was that the company was a startup and we could expect there to be hiccups along the way as the company grew and the platform got more robust. That has certainly been the case. However, now that they have merged with Cision — a company that has grown too fast, has not focused on improving its product and has poor customer service — I have concerns that TrendKite will lose some of the qualities that have made it a great company and great product to work with.
I've invited quite a few of my colleagues to try Brandwatch, and all of them were able to use its features with no assistance, and most of these had never used a social listening/monitoring tool before, or even a digital analytics tool! Brandwatch is not only easy to use, but filters, widgets, menus and other options are in intuitive places - it just works
The flexibility and customization of Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* is among its most important features. Changing the dashboards, using keywords in the saved searches to pull out the best stories and the integration with marketing automation tools gives me confidence that I will able to continue using this tool well into the future. The future implementation and integration of the media contact database will complete the suite, making list management and email marketing programs much smoother. *This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
Brandwatch craps out sometimes. Pages freeze, data doesn't populate for hours. It's fine if you're not in a hurry but something to keep in mind if you're working in real-time. It's not as bad as Talkwalker but it's impacted timely delivery of work for me, and one of the first things I teach when introducing the platform is the process for closing out and re-logging in to see if it unfreezes
Generally, Cision performs well day to day, but it's got some annoying bugs that slow down usage/require user workarounds which is inefficient. More seriously, a few months ago, as a result of a major system upgrade, certain critical functionality was not working and I was unable to use the service for more than a day when I had time-sensitive work to execute
We have not had to reach out to the team for much support but when we did, The support from the Team has been Superb. We were given the assistance needed once requested by the Team. We would recommend Falcon not only because the product is simply amazing but also because of the level of support we have reached.
For Cision TrendKite in particilar, support always responded, but it was sometimes slow. For some of our booleans and search queries, we would need help refining and excluding terms/phrases that weren't relevant to our client or campaign. This sometimes took 1-2 days just to get a response back, which sometimes was too late when a last-minute report was due. This was only with the support staff, not necessarily our customer success manager or sales rep.
good knowledge, great tips, although the program seems a bit disconnected. It could improve it they create more free webinars and a good content calendar and tackle little topics in each webinar. Their trainers are top notch and they know a lot about the tool but they fall a bit low on technical level understanding of how the tool actually works
The online training sessions available for the Cision Communications Cloud are helpful and informative. There's more than one option - initially, I signed up for the live webinar classes on basic functions and that is what I recommend other new users do as well. If I have specific questions or something I want to learn more about, I can search the online database and find article or online training videos to get the information I need.
If you're using it to monitor your brand's social presence only, or if you're in an agency and using it to monitor existing clients and provide reports to them, then this is a great tool and you're hard-pressed to find something better. But if you're wanting it more for new business and discovery, there are tools that do this much better, including Sysomos and Crimson Hexagon. So it depends on what specifically you're trying to do. My agency was already using this product when I arrived, so I did not have a choice in the matter, but I've evaluated both of these other tools. Crimson is similar enough that the slight increase in cost doesn't justify switching. Synthesio is the most expensive competitor in the market (no matter what they tell you), but you get what you pay for. If you can afford it, go with Synthesio.
It's a similar product. I think Meltwater sells itself as being a bit more niche, but I have not found many significant differences between Meltwater and Cision. Meltwater's sales process is a very high pressure and their prices are inflated.
We love to be able to share member news, so Agility PR Solutions enables us to do just that. Better! This improves our member engagement, which then improves retention.
We are a funded EDA Tech Hub. I use Agility PR Solutions to track both mentions for ourselves so we can share them with the EDA which is important for ratings, but also to track what the other hubs are doing.
Agility PR Solutions has had an impact on our media relations because I can now send out a media advisory about a press release to a targeted list instead of just putting out a press release that might never reach anyone.
At a high level, the biggest impact the Brandwatch Analytics has had is giving us the ability to quantify the impact of social media for our clients. In the world of social, ROI is defined and interpreted differently across clients (particularly where it's more difficult to apply traditional ROI) - so this may mean reporting on earned media for some, while for others it's measuring increasing engagements or social mentions over time.
