In a recent reputation study for IT Ukraine Association, we analyzed 32,500 media mentions and over 150,000 social media mentions.

The media monitoring results will be helpful for IT companies to adjust their communication strategies and projects timely and bring them closer to achieving priorities and business objectives.

Find out more on how you can use media and social media monitoring in the IT sector below.

Tracking the employer brand

A strong employer brand is a valuable reputational asset, which determines a company's market success. In the IT sector, work with the employer's brand takes one of the key positions of the communication strategy, as it affects the outflow of talent, which is high in this sphere, and the attractiveness of employment for new specialists, which is largely based on what the media and social networks write and publish about the company. Therefore, monitoring the media and social networks of the employer brand for IT companies is not a whim attributed to trends but a pressing need that affects their productivity and image.

You can track the employer brand using the formula:

Monitoring object + thematic tags

Employer brand-themed tags may include:

● working conditions (full-time, part-time, remote format, project-based format);

● place of work (one office or several, in Ukraine or abroad);

● reviews of employees (former and current);

● corporate culture (internal events and external activities: participation in exhibitions, forums, hackathons, etc.).

● compensation;

● career development system.

LOOQME monitoring tracks social networks, forums, and review sites that may host such content and marks it with the appropriate tone. This helps to immediately see the negative mentions, identify their cause, and adjust the strategy and communications with employees accordingly. You can accomplish other objectives here as well. For example, by tracking thematic tags of the employer's brand, you can find out what makes your employees happy and what impressions they have about the events you organized. This information will help identify strengths in your corporate culture and plan future events taking into account your team’s wishes.

Another use of media monitoring in working with the employer brand is the option to set up keywords that will indicate a potential crisis. For example, many IT companies have to deal with the fact that disgruntled former employees leave biased feedback about them on professional forums, review sites, or social networks. In such situations, a timely reaction to negative mentions will help the company avoid unjustified hate and prevent its further spread.
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Monitoring of internal activities, collaborations, educational and charitable projects

IT companies take an active part in internal and external communications. This applies primarily to educational and charitable projects, courses, and collaborations. Each of these activities has its unique role in the media field and carries a certain informational value for the image of the company. It is convenient to process all the listed activities in a single space and evaluate their effectiveness with the help of the LOOQME hub. Here you can analyze the dynamics of either a particular event or several activities by comparing them. With the help of tags, for example, you can break one project or event into smaller information drives and see which of them worked better. With the help of media monitoring, you can easily monitor collaborations and joint projects. When working together with other brands from the same or a different field, you can identify which collaborations proved to be more profitable and visible in the media. This will help to develop a more effective model of partnership projects and to obtain better results from their implementation in the future.

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Market analytics and analysis

Understanding the market comes from the analysis of your and your competitors’ activities, as well as customers and consumers. Monitoring media and social networks is a powerful tool for market analysis, as it allows companies to monitor and evaluate their behavior, assess competitors, identify major market trends, and respond to changes in consumer and customer demand.

The State of PR 2022 study showed that 95% of Ukrainian PR professionals monitor the activity of competitors. This data proves that it is important for companies to understand what other players in the industry are doing, how they behave in the media, etc. You can assess competitors according to a number of criteria, for example, by comparing employer brands, the CEO's media activity, or the effectiveness of events. Moreover, you can track and compare data by specific metrics, such as share of voice, number of mentions, audience reach, or sentiment. This will help to better navigate the media indicators of the market and discover valuable insights to improve communications in the future.

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Filters are another useful market analysis tool. They help to isolate data by a specific feature - location, social network audience, or source type. Filters significantly speed up the search for the necessary data. For example, by choosing a country, region, and city, you can localize the search if you are interested in regional media, or on the contrary, expand it if you focus on international media.
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Tracking negative mentions by own brand, competitors, and industry

Monitoring negative mentions in the media and social networks is a routine systematic work that makes it possible to build a strong IT brand. The source of negative mentions can be users of products or services, disgruntled current or former employees, global or local customers, competitors, etc. It is difficult to protect yourself from hate, indignation, misunderstandings, or other manifestations of negativity that harm the brand, especially if the distribution channel is social networks, where the reaction of the audience is many times faster than in traditional media. However, you can make the process of tracking negative mentions more convenient and efficient by setting up specific alerts. For example, for negative alerts, it is enough to choose a keyword for the query and as soon as the news is marked as negative, you will immediately receive a notification on Telegram or by mail.

You can track negative mentions not only by your brand but also by industry or competitors. With the help of broader media monitoring, it is possible to better navigate the crisis information drives of the industry and protect yourself from potentially negative influences caused by external factors.

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Tracking media activity by company representatives

The CEO of the company has a lot of responsibility when it comes to not only business aspects but also the media. The development of the personal brand of the CEO and the brand of the company are often closely related. This way, you can build a unified communication strategy for media presence and avoid unpleasant surprises. You can assess the media activity of the brand and the CEO with Industry Watcher.

To do this, you should select the metrics you are interested in, for example, audience, analysis of mentions, geography, sources, and channels, and wait for the results of the completed research.

Your team’s media presence and activity on social networks are no less important for the reputation and image of the company than the media influence of the CEO. You can learn a lot about successes and achievements, scandals or failures of your employees on social media. So team-focused social media monitoring also proves to be effective. You can track the company's team media presence through its top management and other team members by setting up keywords for specific people. It allows you to compare the results of the team with the results of the CEO activity and comprehensively evaluate the impact on the company. The data you obtain can also help create a personal brand development strategy for those team members who need it.

You can also supplement monitoring and media analytics with a sociological survey on brand recognition and trust. For IT companies, this is an opportunity to comprehensively evaluate the media result and reputation and use the obtained data to plan future communications.

‍R-index - the brand’s reputation evaluation metric

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