Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Businesses looking to keep track of their web presence and utilize a tool to identify areas of opportunity. The trends tracking and competitor modeling allow businesses to be able to build an SEO strategy that they can track progress over time and fill in content gaps. This is used by our company in conjunction with our marketing automation tool and Google's web presence suite (eg.
Google Analytics , Search Console, Tag Manager).
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review It finds relevant keywords and lets you know your chance of ranking with them. It helps you find content that needs work to rank better. It helps you improve any technical issues with your web pages. It helps you audit your current site for any technical issues. It helps you keep track of your most important keywords. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Some of the auto-gen visual tables aren't all that useful for smaller companies. For instance on the Search Visibility tab, many of my clients have a tiny % of keywords in the top-10, so the table shows basically 4 overlaid flat lines. I wish we had some options to customize this table or expand the range or something. I wish there were some more tools relating to the technical aspects of the site/pages. The whole tool is very keyword-oriented, which is fine, but I feel like over time this has become and will continue to be less important than technical aspects, site speed, voice search, etc. There's an Anchor Text tab, but it only looks at Inbound links—I wish this feature was for on-site anchor text—this could be a much better optimization tool. Because there's nothing you can do about inbound link text. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review We've been paying monthly for Moz for at least four years. We rely heavily on it for our daily work, and would need to re-engineer many of our processes if we were to cancel our subscription. I suspect we'll continue to use Moz as long as we are in business (assuming they maintain their quality).
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review it's easy to use once you get the hang of it and most people with any sort of background in using online tools and analytics systems can figure it out. it's just not as intuitive as it could be like google webmaster tools or Adobe (Site Catalyst)
Read full review Reliability and Availability Easily accessible 24/7.
Read full review Every time I've ever needed it, it's been there.
Read full review Performance 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
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review As I have mentioned before, if you have enterprise subscription, the staff are super helpful. Moz also participated in the marketing tech conferences especially moz in seattle. These sessions are super useful in helping digital marketing analyst like me to investigate new marketing techniques, tracking leads and conversions and eventually monetize them. Their staff is not only knowledgeable in their own product but they have been around. For example Dr Peter from moz always publishes his insights and I have relied somewhat on his opinions.
Read full review Online Training 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.
Cindy Arco Public Relations Manager, Florida Region
Read full review Implementation Rating There is no implementation at the customer's end so this doesn't really apply to my instance of Cision (possibly to all instances of it).
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Moz emerged as an industry leader with a great reputation for driving optimal SEO performance and ROI for customers. Moz' thought leadership on all things SEO gave us a lot of confidence to invest and partner with them. The wide array of product features was also something that was important to us relative to Moz' competitors. In the end, we felt there wasn't anything we couldn't do with Moz. We were also impressed with the on demand platform training and tools provided from day 1. Lastly, Moz was one of the more expensive platforms, but it wasn't the most expensive, so we felt we received great value for the overall price.
Read full review Scalability Easy to use, but still room for improvement.
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Read full review Here I can easily find competitor's ranking keywords and their backlinks. It also gives you another exciting feature where you can compare two domains at the same time. The thing that I don't like about this software is, that sometimes your page can take too much time for crawling. Read full review ScreenShots Cision Communications Cloud Screenshots