Cision Communications Cloud is to PR Reporting as Oreos are to Milk
January 26, 2016

Cision Communications Cloud is to PR Reporting as Oreos are to Milk

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

TrendKite

Overall Satisfaction with Cision Communications Cloud

Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* is utilized by our market strategy department to have full insight into our public relations efforts and provide real-time insights into company-specific media mentions and to monitor industry trends. Cision was our solution to stop relying on our public relations agency's PR reports and have greater control of the data.
*[This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.]
  • Dashboards - extremely easy to monitor your brand, products or competitors and see the impact the coverage is having.
  • Automated Reporting - it used to take us several days to produce quarterly public relations reports. With Cision, they are automatic and even with some customization and data cleansing, I can produce reliable reports in a couple hours, max.
  • Customer Support - amazing and nearly-instant customer support team available through online chat. They are always very helpful and willing to take the extra step to ensure I'm happy and getting what I need out of the product.
  • Early Stage Product - TrendKite (now part of Cision Communications Cloud) is a baby in the old, crusty PR reporting industry. They frequently are adding new features and improving the product. Keeps getting better over time.
  • Impact of social sharing - monitors social amplification so you can understand the life an article has after it has been published.
  • Redundant Efforts - the UI can be buggy at times, but that's to be expected for new SaaS. Sometimes takes multiple tries to add a new publication if TrendKite didn't automatically pick it up or to change article sentiments.
  • Impact on Digital Marketing - while Cision does integrate with Google Analytics to show traffic driven to your site from an article or blog post, it would expand on this by providing information about backlinks created and SEO impact.
  • Local Coverage - not always accurate, could be improved on to discern between where an article is published vs where it's readership is.
We evaluated Cision, Meltwater, Gorkana and various social-based monitoring programs. TrendKite (now part of Cision) beat out the competition on usability, depth of analytics it provides and cost. It was a pretty clear decision once you understand that Cision Communications Cloud spawned from people who know the industry and know what issues public relations teams have in providing transparency in reporting and are dedicated to solving that problem.
Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite) was our choice after looking at Meltwater, Cision (pre-TrendKite acquisition) and a wide array of smaller, social-based monitoring programs. Cision Communications Cloud is perfectly suited for a public relations or communications group who wants greater insight into the analytics of their PR efforts and to be able to track sentiments trends, social sharing and where coverage is being placed. The people behind Cision Communications Cloud understand the real value PR can have for organizations and doesn't simply rely on reporting coverage reports and Advertising Value Equivalency (AEV).

Transition from TrendKite to Cision Communications Cloud

Out of all of the vendors we work with, Cision provides the best customer support. I've used their support probably a dozen or so times over the past year and each time I was met with an instant fix or in some instances where there was an issue that couldn't be immediately resolved, it was evident that they involved additional support on their end to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

Using Cision Communications Cloud

Cision Communications Cloud* has a intuitive yet simple user interface and it doesn't take much to become an expert at using the software. I've trained my entire team how to use the platform and we rarely run into issues getting what we need out of it. Search functionality, building dashboards and exporting reports never takes more than a few clicks to complete the task.

*This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.