About

Right then, a little bit about me…my name’s Ben Cotton and I work for the Edelman Digital team, Spook Media as a Digital Brand Consultant. This basically means I do monitoring, management, engagement and measurement within social media. This new fangled form of PR gives us some great data from which to draw insights and really add weight to strategic decisions. The old world of Absolutely Fabulous PR is dead. The future is here and it’s data, patterns and networks – those who succeed will be the ones who best make sense of it all and use this information prior to engaging an audience.

But that’s enough of the manifesto; I’m also an Associate of the Centre for Public Relations Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University and in my spare time help demystify social media for the Family Holiday Association, Supporters Direct and Councillor James Bond. For those who are interested, my Linked In profile has a more formal rundown of my background.

I’ve been blogging since 2007, however SWT was born in 2009 as I sought to focus more on social media, the employability angle was accidental, but welcome. Within six months SWT was lucky enough to win a european award at the Euprera Spring Symposium. This was a real surprise and privilege as SWT was up against some really great competition. I’m also an occasional guest blogger for Edelman Digital, Tweasier and Behind the Spin.

Admittedly, I’m a Twitter fanatic (in fact, I ran the Yorkshire CCC account for the 2009 season) and my life is often played out in 140 characters. If I’m not reading other people’s blogs or Tweets, I’m penning my own and along with most Y Gens, I’m on Facebook several times a day. Except, that I’m extremely lucky and get paid to manage communities for some pretty cool clients and big hitters. I also like to keep an eye out for what will be the next ‘big thing’ and working out how this can become a reality for clients, as well as continually learning about the wonder that is Google juice and web culture.

PR-wise I have quite varied experience – I’m currently working for an agency specialising in social media and digital PR, but have been a PR researcher, freelancer, as well as working in a busy press office and a famous cricket club. From these roles I was heavily involved in corporate communications, stakeholder engagement, case study research and social media. However, it’s  the social media side of things coupled with the accompanying data and numbers that interests me most and led me to Edelman.

If you would like to contact me about speaking, consultancy, business opportunities, guest blogging or grabbing a drink, please click here.