Cision

As a PR professional, Cision is vital to me. I use it everyday and it can be a huge help in identifying targets across the globe. They are always updating the platform and making it easy to save and search lists.

I don't like how when you use the quick search, having the right spacing of the publication name is important to finding the publication. Additionally, cision will sometimes kick you out of the platform while you are working on lists and those lists wont get saved and you have to start all over. The look and feel of the platform is a little outdated and could use a refresh.

I use Cision at least on a weekly basis to search for media coverage for a multitude of clients. What a lifesaver. It does an amazing job to find media coverage worldwide and some stuff on social media.

It takes a while to set up for each client. Thank god that Cision support helps with this. Sometimes connecting with your Cision rep is difficult and takes time. Their social media coverage needs some work but they have made strides.

I worked with Vocus for years and loved it. They had a massive, easy-to-search database, great integration and awesome customer service. But Cision is a sham. Their database is a joke. I usually have to manually add the outlets I want to reach. Their customer service reps are very poorly trained and can't answer simple questions, and parts of their site are often down. The company seems to have been broken into small parts that are not integrated. It's clunky, ineffective and a waste of money.

Yes. The search function is needlessly complicated. The database is very shallow. Cision and PRweb are not really integrated. And customer service is virtually nonexistent.

Cision allows us to track the online conversation surrounding a certain topic, and allows us to keep a pulse on how our company and products are being discussed.

Sentiment is an issue. Cision automatically grades content as positive, negative, or neutral, but it is FAR from a perfect process. Often times, certain trigger words result in something being graded a certain way, but the context is not interpreted. For instance, a headline may read "XYZ platform prevents bad customer experiences" but because the Cision software sees "bad customer experiences" it is automatically graded as a negative sentiment, despite being positive. This creates a decent amount of manual effort to sort through all content.

Useful database of media contacts, very helpful in identifying key contacts as we moved into new markets.

Unfortunately, with the changing landscape of journalism and the disappearance of "beat" reporters, the usefulness of the product decreased for us.