Four Years of ‘Social Content Integration’ – aka Social Media

This week marks the anniversary of our move in 2007 to add social media to Sawmill’s suite of services (media relations, media training and crisis communications were the original three). As an early adopter and one of the first PR firms to go in this direction we gained a lot of attention for the move, and the Baltimore Business Journal marked the occasion with a news story about Sawmill’s role in this emerging trend, headlined: “PR firm trying to get its clients face (book) time with new media”

Back then, we didn’t quite know what to call it and wound up with the moniker “Social Content Integration.” Now everybody calls it Social Media, but we like the original name and that’s what it still says on our agency materials. Since the beginning, we’ve never viewed social media as a separate strategy or tactic. Instead, we believe it should be integrated with traditional communications and that the emphasis should be on solid and authentic content and not on automated or gimmicky Facebook or Twitter promotions that someone sitting in a back office passes off as “engaging in a conversation.”