Cision Communications Cloud vs Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform

• Influencer research: I am able to quickly find the right reporter or editor for my pitch because Cision lets me know what they write about, their communications preferences, past articles, etc.
• Distribution: I appreciate a template to help streamline my pitch and press release distribution that allows me to send my news to a targeted list of contacts without having to send individual emails. I can send out communications with just a few steps, in just a few minutes.
• News search: I use Cision to scan for news and monitor for mentions of my clients. I also use this feature to keep tabs on topics and key terms of interest to me and my clients to stay ahead of emerging trends and stay on top of emerging discussions in my clients' industries.

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• Keyword Search - We are able to find who has recently written about a topic. This allows us to target those who have been recently interested in what we are writing about in our release. It is also a way for us to expand our contact list to reach people who may be writing outside of their normal beat/genre.
• Search Function - We take advantage of several saved searches that track media mentions. This uses boolean logic to get us the exact results we are looking for. The search function is also great for searching for mentions of our competitors, narrowing our search to a specific product we may have done a campaign on or a more broad topic outside of our company alone.
• Reporting - Meltwater allows us to set up our own customized reports that are emailed to us on a regular basis that we request.
• Dashboard - Each user is able to set up a dashboard (homepage) for the platform with the reporting functions that are specific to what we are interested in or need to be aware of. This is a great day-to-day update of our media mentions.

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• The social component could be upgraded to more accurately collect metrics on ephemeral content.
• Social listening is done in a completely different program than the media monitoring - combining the two would make report creation much easier and allow for a fuller picture of an incident across traditional and social media on the built-in dashboard section.
• Social listening only tracks Twitter. Public Facebook comments would be key in seeing a fuller picture of how an incident or campaign is playing out on social media.

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• While the platform has seemingly unlimited options, it takes a while to learn. Our product support representative has been really helpful in web tutorials, and the Knowledge Base documents explain some things in detail, but it may be helpful for Meltwater to publish videos of them navigating the site.
• Meltwater finds obscure placements, but it misses many on prominent web sites. In the last month, it's missed stories on Forbes, New York Times, Huffington Post and Bloomberg.
• Meltwater can improve its updating of media contacts. I think they do this annually, but I average six or seven dead email addresses for every 25 reporters whenever I build a distribution list.

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• Cision has a net positive impact on time savings for staff so we can be quicker to market
• Cision has a positive impact on internal savings as it is used internally across multiple accounts and with the internal PR team
• Cision is extremely useful when it comes to resourcing and conducting outreach in those DMA's where our agency doesn't have a physical presence

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• I've yet to really see a way to measure ROI by using Meltwater.
• We have a goal number of positive mentions by percentage that our organization strives to reach. Meltwater keeps excellent track of this.
• I like what Meltwater does for us, but I don't see extreme positives or negatives in terms of business objectives. It is simply good for what I need it to do.

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