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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DashThis
Score 8.2 out of 10
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DashThis is a digital marketing reporting tool with no complicated "extra" stuff. DashThis integrates with over 30+ data sources, and also has a CSV File Manager that helps users add any other data they might want to include in dashboards. According to the vendor, customer support is a top priority. DashThis provides a dedicated member of their team that makes sure users are up and running in no time, and is always available to answer questions whenever needed. Prices are…
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.
It's great if you have to provide reports (either internally or for clients) on a regular basis. It takes a little time to set up your structure (surely comparable to the time you'd spend in another tool and definitely faster than doing it manually), but then it saves so much time on an ongoing basis. It's also really important when you want your reports to look good -- which is pretty much all the time! No more Word documents here and Excel spreadsheet there with mismatched formatting all over the place. Now you can have one streamlined look, which allows you to view the data more easily and not get tripped up on the report itself. Honestly, I think it's appropriate in pretty much any situation! I guess maybe if you were just pulling one report one time, then it might not be worth the time it takes to set up, but even then it depends -- you still have the benefit of one clear, streamlined look for all your data. And it's less error-prone.
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.
Simple drag and drop interface. No complex programming or integrations needed.
Custom options for advanced users. The baseline graphs and charts are very helpful, but depending on what point you're trying to get across it's easy to create your own for maximum understanding
Easily accessible. Save time, trees, and money. Every month we simple forward a dashboard link to our clients. No complex reports necessary.
The social component could be upgraded to more accurately collect metrics on ephemeral content.
Social listening is done in a completely different program than the media monitoring - combining the two would make report creation much easier and allow for a fuller picture of an incident across traditional and social media on the built-in dashboard section.
Social listening only tracks Twitter. Public Facebook comments would be key in seeing a fuller picture of how an incident or campaign is playing out on social media.
Currently it's missing Amazon Ads integrations, which I have submitted a request for.
There should be options to transfer dashboards to other accounts, as needed. For example, when a client engagement ends, being able to transfer the dashboard to the client account would be cool. I'm sure the capability exists.
Offline-reporting capabilities or sending PDFs through email of the dashboard may be very valuable to people reviewing data that don't currently have internet access.
For all of the reasons I had mentioned before, I haven't found a product that surpasses what they offer. I will maintain renewing with them for a few years and then reexamine the market to see if any new competitors arise. Until then, I have no reason to leave them for someone else.
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.
I found Cision [Communications Cloud] to be much more simple to use, and it offers the ability to track [a] wider array of media placements without additional fees attached to it. Now that it has incorporated TVEyes, it can offer print, online, radio, and TV tracking nationwide. This is [crucial] because very often your institution or company could be referenced in a variety of ways, nationally or briefly, on local TV/radio, and you would have no way of knowing about it.
Either the reporting was too complex or too basic. I didn't want to spend months and months learning how to integrate new dashboards with all different platforms. Additionally, the other dashboard companies don't allow for enterprise reporting. I have some clients with 50 Google Ads accounts, and you cannot pull all that data into 1 dashboard.
It seems as though media pickups have overall been down this year, perhaps related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cision Communications Cloud has enabled us to develop numerous localized media lists for press releases, especially on grant recipients. These localized press releases have generated the best pickups that go beyond our KPIs (key performance indicators).
The ability to save media lists provide a great starting point for developing future lists. The "talking about" helps to see what media contacts are talking about, and whether they might potentially be interested in our news release.
