Cision Communications Cloud

Media monitoring

Press releases

Media contact database

The sorting features are clunky and hard to use

Media monitoring doesn't seem to catch all

Creating media lists.

Researching media targets that may exist for new business opportunities or existing clients.

Reporting results.

While the content generated through media research is high quality, the interface to get there is often clunky and slow.

The reporting features are good but not great. The software still misses a lot, and it takes time to comb through to determine what needs to be added manually.

Easy to use

Helpful

Good customer service

Price

Reach - A large list of mediums and new organizations that pick up our press releases.

Simplicity - Step by step approach to releasing news items with guidance along the way. Things like support with titles to get the best response [is] very helpful.

Expanded reach in technical niches - We are [an] electrical manufacturing company and our audience [is] quite difficult to [reach]. Cision Communications Cloud does a great job of helping us target.

Media contacts

Email distribution

Tracking campaigns

For new users, the learning curve is a bit daunting.

It's not the most user-friendly platform.

[The] price [could use some improvement]!

Helps us build curated lists of press contacts

Builds and stores email distribution templates

We would love if Cision Communications Cloud provided more robust contact information related to non-traditional media outlets, such as podcasts.

[We can] use keywords, topics, and "talked about" words to successfully target appropriate journalists.

[It makes it] easy to compose personalized outreach to targeted journalists.

Reporting and evaluation [are] top-notch for our follow-ups.

Word processing software could be a bit easier to use, other than that, the whole platform is top-notch.

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 would be nice if the option existed to add more than one image as an attachment to a release distribution, particularly when you have multiple headshots of people being referenced.

Integrating TVEyes was a wonderful touch, but they are missing some of the search flexibilities TVEyes offers on its own.

Font changes and spacing have some minor issues in the body of press release templates.

Provides follow up to the press release distribution

Provides guidance and close monitoring prior, during, and after distribution

Broad reach and effective targeting of press releases

A more friendly interface so the company could see past press releases and metrics related to them

A local, bilingual support staff

Social Media Monitoring.

Resource Options - Forums, Q and A etc.

More information on the front end about the functionality.

More information at the beginning on how to fully maximize opportunity.

More engagement on social media

Easy and attractive reporting capabilities.

Intuitive platform, very user-friendly.

Ability to measure results (like share of voice) that you couldn't do manually.

Time efficiency - takes the manual labor out of a lot of measuring and searching for journalists.

Hard to get your boolean/search query accurate.

Slow customer support from the technical side (not from the Sales side).

Media database is mostly updated, but not always

"Talking About" option on media database

Widgets on Cision Communications Cloud and SEO value

The platform is easy to use

Customization of Cision Communications Cloud reports

Cision Communications Cloud customer service

Not all placements are picked up or a lot of times the wrong placements are included.

Although you can add in placements/coverage - it does not always end up in your report.

If you want wire coverage (e.g. - PRNewswire, PRWeb, Businesswire) it won't capture the coverage if it is behind a firewall or taken off the site so you need to capture a report the day it runs or it skews the results if you are creating monthly reports.

Now that TrendKite has merged with Cision not as many ebooks, resources and content is available - TrendKite used to have a great resource section.

Cision customer service isn't as responsive as Cision TrendKite's customer service reps

Easy-to-use interface

Broad coverage

Excellent customer service

Does what I need it to do

Never experienced an outage

Add easy-to-find training modules

Needs to improve on some hyper-local media outlets

Up to date media contact information

Platform for distributing press materials

Useful tool to track and monitor media coverage

Would like notices when media contacts leave an outlet and need to be replaced on media lists.

I like that Cision gives us specific numbers (ad value, total readership, etc.) as many of our clients respond best to concrete facts like this.

Cision customer service is the best! I've never waited for more than 5 minutes for a response, they are always nice and willing to explain things to me clearly.

I like the real-time media alerts that you can sign up for, it helps me keep track of media hits when I'm not actively thinking about them.

Cision often picks up coverage that isn't from my clients, so I'll have to go in and delete them.

It would be nice to be able to edit the information from within a report and not have to go back to the dashboard and then re-pull the report.

Media monitoring.

Media searches.

Social monitoring.

Better geographical searches.

Require more HARO details.

Require more Ed Calendar details.

Cision has the largest distribution network in terms of press releases

Cision Communications Cloud provides a detailed and almost immediate visibility report on the results of the release

I experienced some customer service struggles--mostly in that I had to wait on hold for 15+ minutes before I could ask a simple question along the way.

My release needed to be sent in a faster manner than traditional, so I had to follow up after each step wasn't completed quite as fast as it was detailed that it would. I did receive help, I just had to initiate the next step each time.

Great at providing a full list of contacts for each outlet we're trying to reach.

TrendKite provides great insights for coverage, especially in terms of reach and SEO.

Robust system that provides what many others cannot.

Would like more features to flag contacts as inactive.

Would like to be able to modify contacts already listed, for those that may have switched jobs and Cision hasn't updated their files yet.

Oftentimes, the interface can feel "clunky," constantly having to click through things to find the information I'm looking for.

Customer Support and consistent outreach from account reps.

Resources and toolkits for best utilizing their products.

Providing accurate data and contact info.

Ease of use of influencer and outlet search tools.

Difficult to format email campaign templates.

Duplicates of contacts, outlets in lists.

Reporting breakdowns of campaigns, or emails of performance could be beneficial.

Media lists.

Fairly easy to use.

Searching for bios.

Variety of media outlets, news, blogs, etc.

Viewership data.

Search is not as accurate as we would like.

Database doesn't seem to be well maintained. Not always updated or accurate.

Receive too many emails. Seems that even if you unsubscribe, you still get alerts.

Can find news on Google that Cision does not carry or seemed to miss.

Very high priced for what you get.

Cision can be very slow at times, causing timeouts on our computers.

Reaches editors and writers on the peripheral.

Great SEO

Easy to use and train on.

Provides great PDF proof of the release (which can be used for your files and even sent out if needed).

More granular selecting of publications.

More business publications.

More visibility into who is reacting to your content.

Measures the impact of articles

Gives a thorough review of all articles about the college

Provides us with numbers to measure our impact

Dashboards could be a bit easier to set up.

Easy to use platform

Helpful operations team at Cision

Great way to communicate to media outlets

More explanation on who is picking up the release

Updating platform regularly

More explanation on headlines of those who pick up the release

When I send contact updates to Cision Communications Cloud customer support, they always reply, usually in a timely fashion.

I like the filters to the Cision Communications Cloud media lists which allow us to drill down by subject, job role, location, DMA, etc.

Our account manager (Mike Sullivan) has been friendly. He's been able to keep our subscription at the same price in recent years.

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.

Distribution--able to send things to many media contacts at once

Building lists--able to easily add and remove contacts from lists

Tracking past activities--easy to reference past activities using the calendar view

Monitoring--pull in a lot of irrelevant coverage due to the name of the company easily being confused with similarly named institutions

Analytics--could have more features, very basic

Back end--a lot of work and tweaks need to be done on the back end in order to fix issues, can be a lot of manual work