Towards the Integration of Social Media with Traditional Information Systems

This paper was inspired by the authors' personal experience of using social media systems over the last two years. During that time both authors have used a range of public, private and hosted social media systems for their professional activities and well as for personal use. They and other colleagues are convinced that a unified approach to social media systems can benefit the communications processes within their institution and its interaction with their important existing and potential clients, the students and alumni. After discussing the existing ad hoc use of social media the authors propose an action plan to achieve a cohesive approach to the more effective exploitation of social media.