I realized today that out of the 144 RSS social media subscriptions and 20 email news subscriptions I browse through every day only a very small percentage, maybe 5%, are content worth reading. Everything else is recycled information, most of it peppered with unintelligible buzz words.

I picked 3 social media quotes (I promise, I did not make up these gems) and I’d like to propose we give them a make-over. Feel free to suggest other ways to talk about these same concepts.

1. The online interaction concept – “Concentrate on genuinely meaningful interactions”

Translation: Social media is about chatting with potential customers online about things they care about in a way that shows you care that they care.

Tip: To learn what your potential clients care about, you first have to learn what they say. If you are a Chicago restaurant, do Twitter searches for “Chicago, eat,” “Chicago, food,” “Chicago, restaurant” and reader the chatter. Then start “genuinely meaningful interactions.”

2. The awareness concept –  “Social is a game-changing awareness medium”

Translation: If traditionally you surveyed customers to get their opinions, now you can  get customer opinions in real-time through social media websites.

Tip: Get in the habit of asking questions through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN etc.  If your business is too small to get many online reviews you can still get useful information by soliciting it. Also watch what people say about the competition. You may learn more about how to do it right which may be more productive than learning what a few of your customers think you’re doing wrong.

3. The engagement concept: “Understand the value of online community engagement.”

Translation: I’d like to think this refers to measuring the benefits of building relationships online. However since this is the most obscure of the three quotes, I am not sure. The words value, community and engagement pop up all over social media talk.

Tip: Ask yourself, what does it mean to your business to have an engaged customer? Is it a customer who visits your site once every month or a customer who shops at your store four times per year? You and your business determine what engagement and value mean to you. It’s not the “social media world” that makes that determination. You do. Once you know what engagement means specifically for your business it will be easier to build an action plan, social or other.

Help me out, can you think of other interpretations of these obscure concepts?