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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NinjaCat
Score 8.0 out of 10
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NinjaCat is a reporting solution for digital marketing agencies. It allows users to track the spend and performance of Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Analytics, Facebook, and DoubleClick with call tracking in one interface, allowing users to monitor campaigns and deliver reports to demonstrate return on marketing investments. NinjaCat users can connect, clean, and transform marketing data in NinjaCat then ship it to any of the leading data warehouses via its API or code free replication…
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.
NinjaCat is very good if you have a lot of clients in the same Industry doing similar advertising. You can set up templates and use them across multiple clients. All of our clients are in the same business and do digital advertising on the same platforms. It is time-consuming to set up the first set of reporting templates, so it could become cumbersome if you have different clients in different industries. That being said, the NinjaCat staff will do their best in assisting you with the onboarding and set up process.
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.
The training was a little rocky, but that should be expected when implementing a new platform with such a vast scope of data sources and reporting formats.
Communication with our designated rep was a little difficult. I realize that they were trying to manage their time, but sometimes I just needed a 2-minute phone call to get an answer, and that proved to be difficult.
Occasional reporting delays. If you schedule too many client reports on the same day and time, the system can get bottlenecked. We haven't had any recent backlogs, but in the beginning it was troublesome.
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 platform is in-depth and thorough. The support team is amazing. The ability to do automations and data visualizations are fantastic. However, it does lack integrations fore taking data to the next step. Other platforms let you integrate Python and R scripts for organizing data or even forecasting. If NinjaCat were to add this, I think it would be a 10/10 and best product on the market
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.
NinjaCat offers the best of both worlds. It will not break the bank, as these other platforms can run high prices for small businesses, but at the same time offers one of the most in-depth data insights. The biggest difference though is the support team at NinjaCat. They will help you design any template when it seems like it can't be done and are friendly and patient the entire time.
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.
