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Users have found this product to be incredibly versatile, with a range of use cases that cater to their specific needs. Customers have …
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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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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Product Details
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- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
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
Cision Communications Cloud Videos
Media Relationship Management
Cision Social Listening
Cision Communications Cloud Competitors
Cision Communications Cloud Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
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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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!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
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- Recommendations
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
(1-25 of 93)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
June 03, 2022
Cision Communications Cloud Keeps Skies Sunny
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Cision helped with media monitoring, press releases, and media database for pitching. It helps streamline pitching knowing their database is up to date and accurate which saves time researching reporters' contact information. It also provided timely media monitoring to make sure we were on top of the news that interested us most.
- Media monitoring
- Press releases
- Media contact database
- The sorting features are clunky and hard to use
- Media monitoring doesn't seem to catch all
December 13, 2021
Easy to use, and has what we need!
We use Cision Communications Cloud for our media database. We utilize it to find journalists' contact info and details on publications. We've used it for about eight years and will continue to leverage the platform, as it is needed as a PR professional.
- Easy to use
- Helpful
- Good customer service
- Price
We primarily use Cision Communications Cloud to look up media contacts, build media lists, and send out email announcements.
- 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]!
As a PR firm, we use Cision Communications Cloud largely as a contact database and to send mass email distributions and press releases. We maintain dozens of curated lists of press contacts and use them to send pitches and press releases on a day-to-day basis.
- 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.
August 27, 2021
Cision Communications Cloud: Perfect for Start-up Visibility
We use [Cision Communications Cloud] to search and contact selected journalists to add visibility to our start-up and the problems we solve. As a start-up, it is used by our whole organization (very hands-on), and we have experienced success in gaining additional earned media on selected press announcements.
- [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.
June 07, 2021
Cision Communications Cloud is the Right Choice
We use Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* for client alerts and searches, monitoring and listening, and reporting. Each account person leverages Cision Communications Cloud for their accounts. We specifically like the key message analysis, share of voice comparison against the competition or other brands within an organization, and social amplification. We also use the SEO score and like it's integrated with MOZ. It makes monitoring media coverage easier, pulling client results easier and really differentiates us from the competition when going after new business or helping guide clients with data-driven decisions. We use Cision's media database for media list development and we have access to Cision's analytics but isn't any good - especially compared to Cision Communications Cloud - the platform has not merged their analytics yet. Cision also offers social media posting but we still like Sprout Social better.
*[This review was written near to the time of Cision's acquisition of TrendKite. The former TrendKite product is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.]
*[This review was written near to the time of Cision's acquisition of TrendKite. The former TrendKite product is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.]
- "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
Cision Communications Cloud (Trendkite)* is used by account coordinators and account executives to create monthly and quarterly reports for clients. We are specifically in the media relations branch of our small company. It gives us the tools to demonstrate value to clients, especially those who might not understand the power of PR. We create reports on a monthly, quarterly and as needed basis. Sometimes clients ask for a custom report before a board meeting or for a specific launch.
*This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
*This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
- 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.
January 13, 2021
So far so good!
We just used Cision Communications Cloud in order to send out an important press release via PR Newswire regarding a software update that we pushed out. This is helping us to increase awareness and spread the details of the software update to our customers as well as the media.
- 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.
September 29, 2020
Positive Experience, Great Product
It is being used in the marketing department as a means to distribute press releases. We have sent over 15 in the past year and have been pleased with the functionality of the program and reach. Great product.
- Easy reporting
- Good reach
- Great customer service
- Reasonable price
- More characters on included Twitter post
September 06, 2020
Cision helps busy PR and content professionals connect the dots
We use Cision to distribute news releases, PR pitches, and inquiries to media for several of our key clients. It is primarily used by me, as I lead our PR efforts as well as content management. Since many of the clients I represent are in narrow verticals, the solution allows me to research what influencers have written about specific topics and better target my pitch to them. It also helps me quickly perform follow-ups on my pitches, rather than spending hours cutting and pasting a pitch into email and reformatting and personalizing for each recipient. The amount of time the product has saved me has been amazing. It is the most useful tool in my PR arsenal.
We also use the platform to scan the news for coverage for our clients, and to perform competitive analysis for new clients, or during the discovery process for existing clients. It allows us to provide a summary view of what others are saying about our client and its competitors, and to also share helpful content analysis facts, such as number of mentions, number of publications reached during a time period, key terms used, etc. It is a valued research tool.
We also use the platform to scan the news for coverage for our clients, and to perform competitive analysis for new clients, or during the discovery process for existing clients. It allows us to provide a summary view of what others are saying about our client and its competitors, and to also share helpful content analysis facts, such as number of mentions, number of publications reached during a time period, key terms used, etc. It is a valued research tool.
- 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.
- I would like to see more COVID-19 search terms. This is here to stay. Many of my clients want information specific to this topic.
- Let us monitor for reporters specifically writing about COVID-19. Make this a topic in the influencer search.
- I wish I had more functionality when searching "all news" instead of just "my coverage." There are times I have a search fully set up and get no results back only to realize I am in "my coverage" instead of "all news" and have to start all over again— only to find that I can't do half of what I could have if I was only searching my coverage.
Overall the tool is easy to use and you can find exactly what you need pretty quickly. The list save and export feature is very user friendly and makes it very efficient and a big time saver. I use for searches and then it's super easy to get more granular to generate lists specific to your goals. The reporting and monitoring is also very useful for understanding the impact of our efforts.
- List building
- Monitoring Impact
- Reporting and ROI Tracking
- Pricing can be difficult for smaller companies
- Navigation can be confusing
- Influencer marketing can use some better features
August 23, 2020
Three Cheers for Cision
Cision is used at our agency to quickly and accurately compile lists of target media outlets and contacts for media relations. Using the online platform, we're able to sift through publications across the country to find reporters that will have an interest in our clients.
- Maintain media lists
- Perform ad-hoc reporter research
- Customer service
- User interface
- Customizability
August 07, 2020
Customized lists, great for niche publicity
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.
At the Art Center, we use Cision Communications Cloud as a means to connect and interact with other art-based organizations and creators on both a local, regional, and national level. The main business problem we are looking to address with Cision Communications Cloud is to better inspire creative expression in people of all ages through more organic and widespread earned media. It is through the connections and limitless amount of detail in Cision Communications Cloud's contact database that we are able now more than ever able to connect with cultural and nonprofit organizations we may have never otherwise spoken to.
- Ease of Access. While other CRM software can get bogged down with high-level facts and figures, Cision is able to provide the same information more intuitively.
- In-depth data. It's great being able to track readership and monetary value of earned media as well as review engagement with widespread emails for that it provides the user with an idea of how to better strategize and personalize what we send.
- The onboarding process. An extremely thorough and friendly onboarding process made learning the ins and outs of Cision Communications Cloud a breeze.
- Mailing Lists. The functionality of creating new mailing lists without downloading and uploading an edited template is not as clear as it should.
- Emails. The amount of unrelated emails you get when signing up is a bit of an annoyance.
- Hidden features. It's confusing for some users when options/elements are presented yet when they go to click to use them it just brings them to a page to buy said elements. If you could either cross them out or make them a different color to show that they aren't accessible, that would clear up that confusion.
June 17, 2020
Cision is the best
Cision is being used across my entire organization - mainly amongst the PR team. It helps us find media contacts, monitor and analyze coverage.
- Media contacts in different industries.
- Filtering contact searches.
- Tracking pitch opens and metrics.
- Mass pitches.
- Updating email addresses.
- Making sure all coverage is picked up with monitoring tool.
March 29, 2020
Cision Communications Cloud Review
We are using it to monitor our own, and our clients', PR impact. Having previously used a number of different platforms to generate valuable insights and showcase the results of our work, this is plugging the gap by bringing all of those analytics under one easy-to-use platform.
- The dashboard - really straight forward to use, easy to explain to new starters how to use it and also switch around for clients depending on what campaigns / time frame you're monitoring
- The shareability - it's great to give clients an interactive report for them to go into themselves and click through to individual pieces of coverage
- The chat bot - always a quick, helpful response which is especially handy for us as we're in the UK and it's a US platform so when starting out our contact wasn't always available
- The share of voice tool - very accurate and good to be able to add a number of different charts to monitor different sectors / offerings
- Integration with Google Analytics - this isn't always showing the most accurate results and it's not explained as well as the other widgets.
- Print coverage - it would be useful to have a manual way of adding in print coverage so we can evaluate all coverage on one dashboard.
- UK regional breakdown - there is a good breakdown for hotspots in US but not for UK regions.
We use it to track media placements and mentions for a variety of clients that we serve as a PR agency. We use it across the entire agency but our clients do not use it. It helps us keep track of all the media placements in one place as well as do our monthly reporting on things such as share of voice, SEO impact, etc. to help show the value of our work to our clients.
*[This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.]
*[This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.]
- Media monitoring: good at catching broadcast clips and online clips compared to other tools I've used.
- Share of voice against competitors is also easy to use and good to show the value of brand within the industry.
- Some of the searches can be really complex to understand and can pick up a lot of unwanted media hits.
- Setting up dashboards and learning to use them can be hard and have a bit of a learning curve.
March 28, 2020
Cision Communications Cloud: Almost There
We use it across the whole organization to conduct daily scans of client and competitor news, as well as to conduct monthly and quarterly coverage and share voice reports.
*[ This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.]
*[ This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.]
- Ease of use: easy to tag articles, build reports and comparisons
- Customer service is always ready to help with anything.
- Helps automate a very manual process.
- The quality of the automated and developer implemented article filters: too many unwanted articles get through. Takes too long to make the articles pulled and the reports accurate. Eliminates the time savings pretty quickly.
- Difficulty in self-building new searches.
December 03, 2019
Very happy with Cision Communications Cloud!
We are currently using Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* to monitor client coverage. It catches coverage for us that we can't always access through a simple Google search.
*This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
*This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
- Customer Service
- User Friendly
- Automatic setup systems (like daily emails) for users instead of having to ask a rep.
November 12, 2019
The best option in a not so great field
We are using Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* across our base of accounts to consistently measure media results and more easily track competitors, key messages and share of voice. Ultimately we use it to provide more consistent measurement and demonstrate ROI to our clients.
*This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
*This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
- Measurement consistency
- Share of voice
- Key message identification
- Insights into coverage that gets most amplification and SEO value
- Search is hard to refine and narrow. Consistently get too many results and the team spends way too much time filtering down. Some times we just give up and use manual searches and trackers.
- Functionality - quite often we've removed articles or results only to have them appear again.
- Newsletter function is not collaborative and takes too much time to set up. Not flexible or scalable.
- Don't use added features like Cision database because the database isn't as good or have the functionality of MuckRack.
- Lack of integration across the platform. So many mergers have made add ons and pricing inconsistent. We have to have separate contracts for our international offices.
- International monitoring (UK and CAN) not great.
- Articles behind firewalls can't be pulled.
November 08, 2019
Review from an agency of Cision's database offerings
We use it specifically within the PR team as a way to identify the best editors to pitch for our clients.
- Their database is vast and extensive.
- They have a variety of news outlets and blogs.
- They don't keep the database updated as often as they could.
- Their customer service is pretty terrible.
October 28, 2019
It's OK
We use Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* to quantify the results of our work.
*This review was written near the time Cision acquired TrendKIte. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
*This review was written near the time Cision acquired TrendKIte. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
- Allows us to set up multiple dashboards for different clients
- Allows us to present results from publicity campaigns in a quantified manner
- Customer support is pretty responsive
- Inability to add articles from e-editions of magazines
- Manually adding articles is a slow process
- Tracks several false/unrelated mentions and misses credible mentions
October 28, 2019
Solid media coverage tool
We use it for tracking conversation about a brand in the news.
- Tracking media mentions.
- Sentiment coding.
- Full text of media articles mentioning my brand.
- Updated boolean query options.
October 22, 2019
Cision Communications Cloud Review
We used Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* for media monitoring to support the Secret Service. We created a daily news summary with it.
*[This review was written near the time Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.]
*[This review was written near the time Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.]
- Breadth of sources: We could always find reports.
- Query language is intuitive and help menu detailed enough to help you write advanced queries easily.
- Features were complementary and useful.
- We didn't use most of the features, as we had no need for them.
- News sources were often spam or not meaningful. Some of these could be addressed in the query, but often there were no options.
- Paywall sources such as LexisNexis and Bloomberg gave just enough to get you an article hit, but failed at giving you the whole story, which made them useless.
September 10, 2019
Tech Agency Review of Cision Communications Cloud
It is being used across some, but not all, of our client accounts in the PR agency. The main problem it helps us address is evaluations of client campaigns and presenting hard metrics that can help us illustrate value.
*This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
*This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
- Tailored reporting
- Quant metrics
- Clear analysis and visual interpretations
- Sentiment nuances
- Breadth of media covered
- Picking up incorrect/irrelevant articles