Ben Ayers

After about eight years as ‘traditional’ PR chap, it seems I am now more in the market of ‘engagement’ – hence the title of my new role at ITV: Social Media and Online Engagement Manager. Without bleating on about the radical changes to the traditional role of a PR, particularly in a public facing media company, here’s a bit about what I will be doing.

I’ll be based in the beating heart of ITV.com and will have an active role in shaping ITV’s efforts to reach out to online communities – from forums to social networks and bloggers – and communicating ITV’s online developments to fans of ITV shows and anyone else interested who happens to be online. It’s a kind of hybrid between PR and outreach.

For the past nine months I have been handling the trade and consumer PR for the ITV site. Despite the difficulties we have faced as a business reliant on advertising in a really challenging climate, the website hit a record high of over 15 million uniques in November and has seen video views soar by over 300% since August ’07, helping the sales team to outperform the market. I have had lots of positive stories to tell and in the new role I will still feed help to communicate new online initiatives via the more traditional channels, but I will be much more about communicating news about the site directly via social media.

I’ll run and edit an ITV Online blog which will signpost new content and developments on the site and will continue to manage the network’s Twitter feed and official presence on various social media sites, working alongside the brilliant PR website editor Gary Andrews.

In the new role I’ll continue to work with the network’s publicity and marketing teams to drive traffic to ITV.com and will become more aligned to the website’s SEO and customer relations teams.

I’ll be posting more details of what I have planned soon as well as news about Project Penguin – a massive overhaul of key parts of the site. In the meantime don’t forget to check out our Twitter Primeval experiment on Saturday. We’re not expecting thousands to take part but it’s a fun way of exploring how social media and TV can work alongside one another.