Knowing what IT directors read is essential if you want to know how IT directors think. Political, economic, and industry developments affect their budgets, their strategies, and their willingness to buy or sell your product.

So where do IT directors source their news?

According to our survey of 504 UK IT Directors:

  • 60% cited TV news like that offered by the BBC and Sky in their top three.
  • 53% cited national newspapers. The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph etc. all remain very important to IT directors, even as digital media expands their available options.
  • 38% cited social media. Platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook provide a vital connection to the latest goings-on in the IT industry (defo time to review your B2B social media strategy if you haven’t recently).

The absence of trade publications might seem strange, but it’s worth mentioning that general business media, IT media, and industry-specific media were in the top three news sources for 25% of those surveyed.

Popular as these channels are, you shouldn’t favour any one too heavily. “There’s no single outlet that’s perfect for every individual”, says Adam Palmer, who heads up IT and software development at ResponseSource. “We all use a different mixture of tools, techniques, and technologies, and require a custom stream of industry news to keep us informed of changes.”

In other words, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Any marketing campaign worth rolling out is going to require a multi-channel approach that covers all the most important bases.

This mostly definitely includes older publications, which are nowhere near as obsolete as you may have been led to think. Traditional mainstream news outlets remain an important source of information for many IT directors.

These three outlets are the most important:

  • The BBC (according to 45% of IT directors surveyed)
  • The Telegraph (12%)
  • The Financial Times (11%).

Print impresses

And though there’s been plenty of alarmist talk about how ‘print is dead’, don’t start preparing any obituaries just yet. Among our respondents, 33% read print news daily, 17% read it weekly, and 41% read it occasionally. Only 8% of IT directors claim to never read it at all.