CIsion Communications Cloud is used for identifying key media and influencers, connecting with audiences, monitoring traditional and social media, and analyzing outcomes.
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PageLever (discontinued)
Score 7.0 out of 10
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PageLever was an analytics platform for measuring brand presence on Facebook. The company was acquired by Unified Social (now "Unified") in January 2013, and the product is no longer offered separately from the Unified platform.
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.
Pagelever has an amazing team that helps clients get what they need. They understand the needs and are there to help you get the benefits you need from your competitors. In comparison with some other vendors we have worked with, they adopted a true partnership approach. They are very good at listening to what we wish to achieve and then helping us tweak the product to meet our goals. We were initially on the Professional plan and even before we eventually upgraded to the more fully-featured Agency plan, they were very willing to work with us to make sure the product did what we needed it to do. Moving to the Agency plan was great since it gave us additional agency features that were very important such as giving our clients automatic acces to their data and allowing us to set up custom KPIs and custom reports.
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.
It has amazing in depth of data about Facebook Pages. For example, it shows us how exactly content is being consumed over time. We can easily see segmented data showing what content is being consumed by which demographic groups. It's also very easy to incorporate all this data into a a usable report which can be share with our clients.
Analysis with competitive streams: We can compare metrics across client accounts to quickly spot anomalies or see if, for example, low click-through rate is specific to one client, or is common across our account base and possibly due to external factors.
Very easy to use - great usability. The product is quite flexible and we can easily configure custom reports with dashboards and KPIs that are specific to our client's use cases.
Client access: Clients can log-in to the system to see customized reports that we configure specifically for them. This is a huge advantage.
The ability to track changes in metrics over different time periods is also extremely helpful. This is often a key metric for our clients and it is very simple to pul this data from the system.
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.
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.
PageLever is a fantastic product for agencies. The ability to customize and easily share metrics with our clients is key. Many other tools are great for corporate use, but PageLever is a particularly effective tool for agencies working with multiple clients.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Great data that can help a lot in decision making. For example, as the system provides very granular, real-time data we can easily see if certain posts / conntent is resonating with the target deomgraphic group or not. If we are trying to appeal to males between the ages of 35 and 45, it's quite simple to see if our messaging is effective in reaching this group. We can do A/B testing and test different things until we find the content that resonates most strongly with this demographic group.
