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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Ipsos Synthesio
Score 8.8 out of 10
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Synthesio, an Ipsos company (acquired 2019) offers social monitoring and engagement tools. Synthesio competes with major listening vendors like Radian6 and Sysomos.
A point of differentiation is that Synthesio offers a mix of technology and human analysis. In their view, human analysis is required to validate and interpret the data.
Customers are large, particularly French, brands.
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.
Synthesio works well in delivering analytics. Logging in and viewing data is easy. When reporting to upper management, the tool is not the best. I think it could have real-time updates to displays. We are solving this by paying for the API access and exporting to our own dashboard solution.c
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.
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.
It really works well. It provides an overall marketing solution like other tools in the market.
Cost should be a little bit decreased as it is a big pain point for brand managers to go with a tool with high costs.
Synthesio has a lot of potentials but the sales reps were not good at selling it. I think it only happened to me, maybe others may have not faced this problem.
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.
Ben Farkas was the representative that worked with us on this project, while we have been very excited with the work he provided, especially the customer service, we just did not have enough time with the product hands on to be comfortable giving it the 10 we think it deserves. As the Data tracking was done beyond our expectations and the finished product (infographic) were all excellent, we used this service to fill our need in being shorthanded to cover the data ourselves. Synthesio provided outstanding customer service, their data tracking and materials where top notch, just we lacked the hands on experience to speak to everyday use.
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.
Everything we needed was handled, in many cases during the first time we used Synthesio the representative made adjustments and explained them to us, some things we did not even consider when setting up the service.
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.
I think all the tools that are offering social media analysis, community management, and listening activities are quite the same. Synthesio is good because it has a fast and modern user interface which is one of the main reasons in terms of selecting a social media management tool.
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.
