CSU PR Grads - Where are they now?

I toddled off to Bathurst last week to graduate in my beautiful gown and silly hat, and discovered that my short visit prevented me from finding out where everyone is at the moment. So here's a bit of an update of what people are up to at the moment, based on what I can remember and what Facebook tells me!

Hannah Dunn, Nea Pilgrim, Peri Muddle & Pip Goldsmith are taking over Burson-Marsteller, well at least their North Sydney Office. Hill & Knowlton still have the talented Jess Hughes on their staff, with Courtney Howard close by at the Department of Lands (sorry if I'm wrong Court, I'm sure it was a government organisation of some sort!).

Elisha Weber has made the trek down south to Melbourne, working in the crazy IT department in house. Someone else who caught the travel bug is Ali Hunter, who hung around in Bathurst to graduate,get her PRIA award & dashed off.

Archer Cox is missing in action, last seen wearing bright fluoro runners. Mitch Hume is still enjoying his picturesque views at Cannings, while Thom Landers continues to work hard at Bang PR.

Kate Leahy & Alex Mayhew are working at Cox Innall and Magnum PR respectively, and both have some attractive bio's up on their agency pages.

I left out almost half of our class, but my memory is a tad stretched and facebook stalking is very time consuming ;)Feel free to flick me an email if you guys have anymore info on where people are.

Marketing social media through traditional press?

I might be a little slow off the mark in blogging about this topic since it's been discussed into depth - but I thought I might provide a little insight into the topic of social media integration in Australian businesses.

Lee Hopkin's post of "Why Don't Australian Companies Get It?" raises some important points of opinion on why it hasn't been adopted within the business world - a question on ROI for most executive management teams.

So if an Australian business is keen to experiment with new social media, just googling it doesn't really help when this is the result of (searching social media services Australia (Have a look at the link provided - so much for SEO!). I am not silly enough to think that a google search is to blame for this - but where are companies getting their information from?

If public relations agencies aren't up to speed or their in-house communications team isn't aware - how are companies going to change if the people leading the pack aren't even skilled up? Then I guess this takes us along the path of educational sessions/programs - not that PRIA is to blame for the Australian industry to catch up, but from my understanding, they only starting hosting seminars on social media this year.

Maybe there's a market out there for social media "experts" or "advisors" to market themselves for Australian businesses through traditional media channels?