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Cision Communications Cloud

Cision Communications Cloud

Overview

What is Cision Communications Cloud?

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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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Users have found this product to be incredibly versatile, with a range of use cases that cater to their specific needs. Customers have …
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Couldn't be happier!

10 out of 10
June 15, 2023
We use Cision for daily media coverage along with news release distribution on a situational basis. The platform allows us to skim through …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Cision Communications Cloud?

CIsion Communications Cloud is used for identifying key media and influencers, connecting with audiences, monitoring traditional and social media, and analyzing outcomes.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

What is Cision Communications Cloud?

Cision Communications Cloud® empowers communicators with tools that help them reach the right audiences, deliver impactful results across traditional, digital and social media, and track a brand in one integrated solution. Automated analysis helps users report and translate campaigns into insights.

Cision Communications Cloud Features

  • Supported: Media Monitoring and Analytics
  • Supported: Media Relationship Management
  • Supported: Social Listening

Cision Communications Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Media Monitoring and Analytics are just part of the complete Comms Cloud. It combines deep data dive with a database of journalists and influencers, and a media relationship management tool.Screenshot of Track brand mentions in real time across the millions of online stories on the internet. Monitor millions of stories and breaking news happening daily across the web. Professional services consultants teams are in place to ensure best practices while setting up a monitoring account.Screenshot of Cision’s media and influencer relationship management tools include audience insights, combined with a pitchable database that enables brands to uncover the best media contacts and social influencers to reach their target audience.Screenshot of Identify the social conversations and influencers that are impacting a brand. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube monitoring capabilities track brand mentions across all major social channels. Analyze results for social mentions or campaigns on the fly with its reporting features.

Cision Communications Cloud Videos

Media Relationship Management
Cision Social Listening

Cision Communications Cloud Competitors

Cision Communications Cloud Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

CIsion Communications Cloud is used for identifying key media and influencers, connecting with audiences, monitoring traditional and social media, and analyzing outcomes.

Agility PR Solutions, Meltwater, and Muck Rack are common alternatives for Cision Communications Cloud.

Reviewers rate Implementation Rating highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Cision Communications Cloud are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(468)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Users have found this product to be incredibly versatile, with a range of use cases that cater to their specific needs. Customers have praised its ability to streamline communication within teams, making it easier for members to collaborate and share information. Reviewers have also noted its effectiveness in project management, with the product providing a centralized platform for planning, tracking progress, and assigning tasks. Additionally, users have found value in its functionality for customer relationship management, allowing them to keep track of interactions and effectively manage their customer base. Overall, the product has proven to be a valuable tool for enhancing productivity and improving efficiency across various industries and professional environments.

  • Easy-to-use and Intuitive User Interface: Users have found the user interface of Cision PR Software to be easy-to-use, intuitive, and not overwhelming. They appreciate the well-designed and user-friendly interface of Cision Communications Cloud.

  • Exceptional Reporting Capabilities: Users highly praise the exceptional reporting capabilities of Cision Communications Cloud. They find the platform's reporting features to be interactive, detailed, and customizable. Many users value how these reports help them quantify the impact of media on their business and gain insights into trends. Additionally, users appreciate the media tracking capability of Cision as it aids in measuring PR results.

  • Effective Search Functionality: Users find the search function in Cision to be helpful and excellent for quickly obtaining high-level information or metrics about a publication. The detailed database of contacts in Cision is also highly valued by users who find it useful for identifying reporters and influencers. Moreover, they highlight that the new edition of the media building interface is easy to use.

User Interface: Many users have found the user interface to be confusing, clunky, and not intuitive, making tasks difficult and cumbersome to navigate. These issues have been mentioned by multiple reviewers.

Search Tools: Some users have experienced issues with the search tools, which sometimes fail to pick up all the coverage or include irrelevant content, requiring additional clean-up work. This has been a common frustration among users.

Customer Service: Users have expressed frustration with the customer service/account team, stating that it takes repeated requests to get an answer from them. Multiple users have mentioned difficulties in getting timely responses from customer service representatives.

Users recommend entering into a trial or limited agreement first to test the software's suitability for the company. They suggest leveraging the support team for training and assistance with any questions. Users highly recommend Cision for its usefulness in public relations and media relations, as it is considered the most comprehensive media list monitoring software available, providing accurate and up-to-date contact information. Overall, Cision is recommended for organizations that require up-to-date media contact information and extensive news coverage, and it can benefit organizations in various capacities. Users advise contacting a representative to receive a thorough explanation of the features and functionalities of Cision. They find Cision very useful for PR purposes and suggest setting aside time to onboard oneself with all the features and functionalities of the platform. Users also suggest comparing Cision against other similar platforms and considering the level of support needed. In summary, users believe Cision is the industry standard and a reliable software option.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We do niche book publicity. The media database helps me and my assistant put together customized media lists for publicity campaigns for our clients. It helps us to search and pinpoint contacts and their information in a wide variety of media outlets that would be perfect for our clients. It saves us a lot of legwork.
  • Customize searches by media type, location, and most importantly subject
  • Able to use key search words to help narrow down results
  • Provides key contact information we couldn't find otherwise.
  • Keeping more on top of updates. Listings or contact information is sometimes out of date. We have been starting to send in more notices about these.
  • We would like to see a separate media category for podcasts. The number of podcasts has increased dramatically over the last few years; many of them overlap with internet and radio, we would like to see them broken out in a separate category.
Cision Communications Cloud is good for people in businesses who need to find lists of media contacts. You can create broad lists, but the option for creating specific lists that target particular media or subject matter is what works best for us. We specialize in niche media campaigns for our authors and tailor our lists to their needs, which makes us unique.
  • Able to create customized media lists.
  • Able to better target appropriate contacts.
  • Able to find and organize media and contact information that would take a lot more time on our own.
2
President and Administrative Assistant
1
Administrative Assistant interacts directly with the program, uses it to search for contacts to put together custom media lists for each client.
  • Finding contacts for particular media.
  • Finding contacts for particular subjects.
  • Finding contacts in particular locations.
  • Being able to cross-search using multiple parameters at once.
  • Using keywords to hone down searches.
  • Being able to find social media information.
  • Refine searches even more. We are looking forward to additional media categories like a separate one for podcasts.
It's very good for what we need, we haven't found anything better. But there is room for improvement.
  • Online training
Very good, but I still needed to work with it on my own.
Our current contact, Max E., has been awesome. He's easy to talk to and been a great support whenever we've had a question or a problem. Recently we had some questions about some of the features we wanted to cover before renewal, and he was very responsive and helpful.
  • Utilizing the various categories to search and cross-search
  • The keyword function
  • The user-friendly layout and look
  • Sometimes difficult to hone down search info
  • Would like a little more info on a page when initial search list comes up so that I don't have to always click on the contact to open a separate page.
Very easy to use for a large platform with a lot of information, but there is always room for improvement.
Easy to use, but still room for improvement.
Easily accessible 24/7.
Pages and reports open quickly and immediately.
Our current rep, Max, is wonderful. Very responsive and easy to work with.
Again, our current rep, Max, has been wonderful.
The program requirements that we need and the price.
Be kind and direct.
Cindy Arco | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cision Communications Cloud (formerly Vocus PR Suite) is used by my department, which is a public relations team of myself and my boss. We also occasionally allow contractors/PR agencies we work with to use it temporarily for specific projects. We use the software for two primary purposes. First, we use Cision to research news media outlets and contacts and organize them in to media lists. Second, we use Cision's distribution feature to send a company news release or announcement to the members of a particular media list.
  • Cision Communications Cloud has an extensive media outlet database so it allows public relations and communications professionals to find the right media outlets and contacts for any media market in the United States and for just about any specialty or trade news media.
  • Cision Communications Cloud is very user-friendly. It's easy to navigate and find what you need, plus offers a lot of options for how to organize your contacts and media lists.
  • The customer support team at Cision is always very helpful and gets back to you quickly when you need assistance. Cision also offers online/teleconference training classes plus a great help section within the portal that contains articles and "how to" videos.
  • Cision could do a better job of keeping all media contacts in its database up to date. It is difficult because in today's media landscape, turnover is high BUT having the right names and contact information is critical for the public relations and communications professionals who use the software.
  • Cision could start offering lower cost package options for smaller companies or agencies. Right now, the cost of subscriptions is at a level that smaller organizations likely can't afford it but don't necessary need all the features that larger, enterprise companies will utilize and are willing and able to pay for.
Cision Communications Cloud (formerly the Vocus PR Suite) is well suited for public relations and communications professionals looking to research media outlets and contacts to target with news releases or company announcements, then be able to quickly send them out via a distribution throughCision (versus having to spend a lot more time sending individual emails to each person.) It's not as well-suited if a PR or communications professional always needs to share their news and announcements with a small, specific group of media contacts - in which case, it would be much more cost effective to maintain their own media list via an internal document and then send announcements out individually by email.
  • It saves time by allowing us to quickly and easily search for the right media contacts and outlets to share news and information with, and it also saves times by allowing me to send those emails in mass through the system, rather than typing one out in an individual email for each person or outlet.
  • It allows us to be knowledgeable and savvy about the ever-changing media landscape
Vocus PR Suite and Cision PR Software are very similar as Cision bought Vocus recently.
  • 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.
No
As far as I know, premium support is not an option for the Cision Communications Cloud. Under our current contract and pricing structure, I have an assigned account executive who is proactive and reaches out to me about upgrades and company news. I also have 24/7 access to their help team via chat, email or phone.
No
Susan Tull | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Helps a PR professional identify the right media contacts quickly.
  • Enables easy bulk emailing to news media and bloggers.
  • Makes it easy and efficient to find out about editorial calendar opportunities for any number of media outlets.
  • Cision could do a better job of keeping its data fresher. Too often, I report editorial staff changes that Cision's research department should have already discovered.
  • The tool for building emails is buggy and the work-arounds add more time to my work.
I prefer Cision to Vocus -- better content and information, plus great ability to filter and get the information you want/need for precise targeting of the right media outlets, editorial contacts and editorial calendar opportunities.
  • Efficiency in identifying the right journalists and bloggers so I can build high quality media lists.
  • Efficiency in distribution of news releases and other communications to hundreds of journalists and bloggers.
There was a major outage of the service earlier this year, rendering the system unusable for the better part of a day and partially during the following day. It was very difficult to get information about what was happening until I persisted and finally got to talk with a supervisor. Cision did not send me (and presumably others) real time updates, so those of us who had to issue news releases on those days were left in the lurch.
1
PR consultant
0
  • I use Cision daily to identify appropriate journalists and bloggers and also get their contact information. Additionally, I search the database for editorial calendar opportunities. And I send emails and news releases to these contacts -- sometimes hundreds of them -- via Cision's bulk email tool.
Prior to Cision, I used Vocus.
  • Vendor implemented
It's a cloud-based service that the company just "turns on" for me to use. All I have to do is login.
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).
  • Online training
  • Self-taught
Basic functionality is easy to learn without training/attending instructional webinars but if you want to use drill-down features, one-on-one training and webinars are best. That said, I always feel that customer support professionals, and my account executives, are pushing me away from one-on-one training and instead to use online resources. I learn better from one-on-one training so I don't appreciate this pressure.
No
No need for that level of support.
I cannot always get a hold of someone who is fully familiar with all aspects of the system. I've actually received incorrect information when seeking technical support. And immediately following a recent major system upgrade that disrupted some key functionality, the customer service was atrocious. Although I later found out that the company was aware of the problems and working to correct them, I never received any type of notification and, instead, wasted a lot of time trying to figure out the problem. It was frustrating and I was unable to perform some time-sensitive work.
It's improved a lot. I used a much earlier version of Cision several years ago -- before I switched to Vocus and then moved back to Cision this past September. By the time I came back to Cision, the user interface has been simplifed and the product has become much more user-friendly.
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.
  • No.
I was able to get Cision to handle importation of about 10-12 media lists from my legacy PR database without charging me about $1,000. I also got several thousand extra distribution points at no charge, enabling me to send more news releases and other communications to more contacts every year without paying extra. I tried but was unable to get any other type of discount on the North American database, the Cision product I use.
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