News releases sent by e-mail should have a summary paragraph that an editor sees on the screen before the actual news release appears. Modify for e-mail a news release that you have written previously.
This can be from a past class – Intro to PR would work just fine. Give context of the press release so we all know what the original release announced.
Scratch that – We are going to do something else. You’ll see in class today!
Gina Luttrell 
Ken:
Cision is a tool that I think will make life for the PR practitioner much easier. After becoming mildly acquainted with the site, I was able to navigate and find different journalists very easily. Contact information is worth its weight in gold to someone trying to get their story published for a distinct audience or region of the country. I could find the numbers to a wide variety of people that could get what I needed published. I think it would be well-worth the money spent, and true to the term “Ya get what you pay for,” this site is worth the fee. Perhaps by spending the money it allows the website to put out a better product and make it worthwhile to public relations officers. I would recommend any company I worked for to have this product and am looking forward to be being able to add this site to my resume. Even the textbook, published in 2013, mentioned the site. It said, Media database such as Cision are including Twitter addresses for various journalists. This proves the relevancy of Cision and how new its features are.
Thank you, kcbproject! We appreciate the kind words and hope your semester is going well 🙂
Best,
Lisa
For me, CisionPoint was definitely hard to navigate at first. It took me a while to understand how the site works, I watched videos online and read some tutorials about it.
Although, today when I went to attempt different things on Cision I kept getting an ERROR reading. So I was unable to create any media lists, but I do understand the site better now.
I really enjoyed how you could search such a broad amount of topics, everything from the latest technology to travel. You can see some of the top journalists on those topics and even the biggest influencers on Twitter.
I think that it will take me some time to be completely comfortable on the site, there is kind of a lot going on and a lot of different aspects. It would take some time and experience to be able to fully utilize the site to it’s full potential.
Cision will be great help to me in the future when I am a professional PR practitioner. It will provide me with many opportunities to expand myself. Who knows, maybe if I am good journalist or blogger someday my information could be on there!
I love CisionPoint! Although a little confusing at first, it can be so beneficial to PR practitioners. The reason why I love it is because it makes searching for a specific region or specific outlets super easy, instead of just googling them (which could take forever). CisionPoint is great for working with a certain story angle, for example, Nestle just came out with a super-healthy new product directed towards children. A PR person that works for Nestle may want to look up popular national family and health outlets that the story could be distributed from. Overall, I think CisionPoint is a great tool! I think it’s awesome we get access to it for part of the semester.
I agree that it is definitely easier than having to use Google to find the information we need for a certain news outlet or reporter. However, it probably doesn’t hurt to use Google to double check that all of the information on Cision was accurate since there will be times when an organization’s website is more current than Cision. In addition, I agree that Cision is great for working with a certain story angle because it is quick and easy to look up health reporters or health magazines, but this would take a much longer time on Google since we would have to use multiple searches to find this information rather than being able to use Cision to find the information in one search.
I think the ability to cater to a specific region could be very beneficial for a lot for a lot of reasons. It’s hard to make those connections to different regions or markets, and having access to all those writers and bloggers could be very valuable. I think that if the class devotes some time in using it, we could definitely have an advantage over our peers.
At first I was definitely lost on Cision, there was a lot going on and I wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. Even after the explanation I was totally lost on what to search for. However once I figured it out I thought it was cool. I can totally see how beneficial it would be for a PR practitioner.
I learned while messing around that there are so many resources out there! Anything you search you are sure to get what you are looking for, even if the topic is narrow. I searched health and then even narrowed it further and there were still so many resources for it! I also learned how to make lists on Cision and to export them to an excel file so that I have all of there contact information.
I would like to learn more about the different lists and searches you can do and also what it would look like when you have your own site. Such as where are the lists stored and are there other resources you have access too on the site.
How can Cision not help you, its so beneficial for finding resources for your company, and that search we did in class when you could look at the stats. Also the seek and shout thing was really cool! This is definitely something I will take advantage of in the professional world.
had never heard of CisionPoint before our last class. What an incredible networking tool! I learned so much from Cision, to the point where it was slightly overwhelming. To start, I learned what the website even does, and then how it works. The gist of CisionPoint, is that it gives PR practitioners the ability to track interactions with journalists and contact them through email or phone, there by giving you a large media list at your finger tips! It also allows you to see, press release distributions sent by different companies and journalists.
There is such a vast amount of information to utilize and discover that I simply want to learn more about how to use all of the benefits Cision provides to it’s full capacity. A major aspect of public relations is multi-tasking and CisionPoint allows you to do just that! C.P. is designed to handle multiple tasks at the same time. According to a review of CisionPoint done by inc.com, “CisionPoint goes from start to finish of a PR project: a PR professional can research target media using CisionPoint’s extensive media database, contact the media through lists generated using CisionPoint’s robust PowerSearch functionality, schedule the distribution of press releases, track media coverage of a client, and see which PR campaigns are most successful.”
I did research on what employers are looking for in potential PR practitioners and being familiar with CisionPoint or it’s equivalent popped up numerous times in my search. One of the most exciting yet overwhelming aspects of being in public relations is it’s a very fast paced environment where you must handle many tasks at once. Where connections and constant networking is your greatest weapon, CisionPoint creates a place where you can balance many of your “to-do’s” in one place.
I definitely understand by what you mean when you said it was overwhelming. I think it will take some time to get used to, but once it becomes easy to understand and use it could be a so useful. I was a bit taken aback by how many features it encompasses, but with time and use I think it could be very simple to use.
Heard talk about Cision for a long while, but didn’t research it like I usually would.
I am happy to have the experience, but I will need to play around with the site a bit more. Like Abbey said, I found the site to be a little difficult at first. Saving lists and pen pointing my searches wasn’t as easy as I thought! Overall I think that it is a great tool, just as the huge book (the title of it has left my mind) that we used in one of our lessons was. It has the capability to bring our sources our experts together and opens the door to an easier/more efficient way to find the right publications/people.
Aside from the obvious contacts that can be made using Cision, I think that it would be a nice skill to add on a resume… Because it goes beyond a search engine or a contact list. honing it would be beneficial to any PR practitioner.
I hadn’t used Cision before this class but had heard the name before in Gina’s Intro to PR class before I believe. The site was a bit difficult to navigate at first and I’m still trying to understand it.
What I like about it is that it is a way to group those that may blog or write about the topics that interest us like Ashley stated. As PR professionals, we will be living a fast paced life so having our sources at our fingertips is very convenient.
I have to play around with Cision a bit more to get the full affect but I think it will be very helpful in my career.
I had never heard of Cision before discussing it in class last week. But, as we most things we’ve discussed this semester, I can see it becoming a great resource for me in the future!
It was kind of difficult to navigate at first, but once I spend some time surfing around it seemed to make a little more sense. I really liked the feature where you can create a media contact list. It was helpful that you can search specific locations and topics, and find the people who cover exactly what you need.
Given the face paced nature of PR, being able to quickly look that all up and have it in one place is an invaluable resource.
I believe I was first introduced to Cision in my intro to Public Relations class. We played around with it some in there and made a media list for a project we created. So, this was not my first time working with Cision. I think Cision is a great tool for public relations practitioners to use. I found it has many outlets, so many that it gets overwhelming at times but I think after working with it more the overwhelming factor will cease. Being able to create a media contact list is a great feature and very helpful. Having everything at your fingertips, in one place is a great tool to have on hand. But, I think you always have to be mindful of the fact that everything on Cision may not be 100% accurate so double checking your research is a must.
I completely agree that it is important to double check your research rather than just rely on the site for timely information. It is important for us to remember that Cision is a great tool, but the newspaper might have switched editors in the past two days and Cision isn’t going to have the correct contact information if that happened. However, it it great to be able to look for journalists who cover specific topics since there might be times where we need someone who only covers fashion or health, and Cision definitely makes it easy to do that. In addition, I agree that Cision can be overwhelming at first, which is why I think it is best to use it when you know what you are looking for because I think having a plan will help a person remain focused rather than becoming distracted by how much the site offers.
I think Cision is a great resource for public relation practitioners, and I think it would be very useful when having to update a media list for your company. It can be a huge hassle to have to call journalists or look on a website for contact information for a certain journalist or TV/radio personality, which is why Cision is so great. Cision makes the task so much easier by being able to look up journalists that work for a certain company, such as the Detroit News, and it provides important information, such as phone number and email. It is definitely great to have this information all on one website rather than have to go to multiple websites to find the information. It is also worth noting that this is very useful since not every newspaper, TV station or radio station lists the emails for journalists and TV/radio personalities on their sites. However, I also found that not all information is current because some newspapers are changing their staff at such a constant rate that Cision cannot keep up, and this is why I would recommend double checking on a website because it would look silly to send out a news release to the wrong person. For example, I was looking at certain Patch websites and the editor was different on the website than it was on Cision, but I assume the site for the newspaper had to be correct since I doubt they would list the wrong editor. In addition, it seems like Patch is always switching up who covers what area of Michigan, which means that a public relations practitioner really has to constantly go back and look up the information to ensure that it is correct. In conclusion, I think Cision is great because it definitely saves time and makes it easier to find the information that you need for a certain journalist or TV/radio personality, but relying on it alone is not a good idea. I believe you should always ensure the information on the site for the company matches up with Cision since you would never want your news release to bounce back because you wrote down the wrong email.
When I first started to browse through Cision I felt a little bit lost. Cision is so in depth that it seems almost overwhelming at first but then you begin to figure out its many avenues and soon you come to find that with practice it becomes easier to use and quite useful.
I started to search topics to create media lists. I focused mainly on travel and found a lot of useful information. However, I feel that I’ll need a lot more practice in order to become proficient in Cision.
With practice, Cision will be a useful tool in my PR career. I hope to get more practice in Cision before my internship so that I can use it to my advantage and then someday use it at my career as a useful tool to help whichever company I work for.