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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Mention
Score 9.4 out of 10
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Mention is a social media monitoring tool. Users can create alerts for their company name, product or competitors. The vendor aims to help companies get updated in real-time by tracking the most relevant mentions over the web and social web. The vendor’s value proposition is that Mention enables companies to react, get statistics, and collaborate with their team, all on the go! According to the vendor, over 650,000 companies use Mention.
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.
Mention is perfect if you are looking for a fairly inexpensive software that will help you monitor your brand reputation, help you discover SEO opportunities, and potentially help you generate sales revenue. While I know Mention can work with bigger companies, I personally feel this fits the SMB market the best. On the other hand, Mention may not be for you if you have a mega brand and need to see sentiment analysis.
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.
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
Mention works quickly and its user interface is easy to use. Alerts update regularly and I've never noticed any lag. It integrates with our CRM via Zapier, but this is not something which we use yet. The only thing I would say is that it takes time for Mention to reach its full potential. It only starts to rank influences from when you set up the alert, so it can take a few weeks to build a map of your influencers.
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.
Mention always responded promptly and gave excellent support. Any problem we had with the software, from login trouble to broken features were addressed quickly. There was once a problem with our quota, where we were unable to see results we should have been able to see. We sent an email, and within an hour, the situation was resolved!
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.
Brand24 was my alternative to Mention, I switched back in 2018 because Mention's pricing was going up. While Brand24 is a U.K. based company, I still thought it may be beneficial to me here in the U.S. However, I didn't think about time zone differences and when the support would be available to me. Normally when you have a question, you want it answered right now, but that was a bit of a problem for them. Mention is very quick with support and understanding of their own program.
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.
Mention has had a positive impact on my business because it gives people the impression that I was following them, even if I might not have been. It makes me appear active on all social media platforms, even if I ONLY look at my mentions each day!
Because I have only used the free plan but have benefitted greatly, I would say that my ROI is fantastic!
The only negative impact that Mention has is that I do get a daily email in my inbox, and it is one more thing to check. However, it is worth the time.
