These grammatical slights are not creative. They are examples of lazy, uncreative people expressing themselves in lazy, uncreative ways. Like telling an old joke over and over again to the same person, what once was impactful for its uniqueness has become ineffectual by way of ubiquity.

As a brand – you stand for something. You have some concept that you are – or desire to be – tied to, and your messaging reflects it. Google is synonymous with search, in the common vernacular. Mercedes’ name evokes images of luxury, and quality. Harvard and Yale make you think of the best and brightest minds. Victoria’s Secret is sexy. One thing these brands share is a consistency in their messaging. They know their audience – broad or narrow – and they know how to talk to them, but not down to them.

You want to stand apart on Facebook? Stay true to your core message. Know who you are. Know who you want to be seen, as. Ensure that your status updates, wall posts, comments, and photo captions reflect this. Be true to the message you want to convey, and do it in a genuine manner. Own your voice.

I’m all for the creative use and application of language in order to communicate your point. In fact, without a certain irreverence and spontaneity, we’d be stuck with a decidedly restrictive set of words with which to conduct our affairs. Get creative; spread your word, and spread it your way. Toss out the rules that hold back the more artful aspects of your expression. Poetry pwns pedantry, every time.

If you are working as a marketer, PR person, advertiser, or any other related job-type, you might have a hard time making the case to your superiors that your company should create a Facebook fan page or its own Ning group. Why? It is so difficult to measure the effectiveness of social media campaigns, because while they have the ability to create better public perception or increase share of voice, they do a poor job creating sales when they are not managed correctly. And, your managers do not even know those things yet. They likely just have the impression that it is an untested medium largely populated by people talking about how drunk they got last weekend or why they hate Britney Spears.

If you were to propose a new print ad campaign, you would argue for it using numbers: impressions, increased sales due to coupons or announcements, etc.  Why not get some numbers on social media so that you can do the same when you, say, argue your fledgling record label needs to post videos on Vimeo?

One of the biggest movements I believe we will see on the web this year will be an increased need for and discussion around social media analytics.  If you know your customer reps can turn unhappy customers into happy customers on Twitter, great! They should be on Twitter, but are you able to measure how many people you connect with there that are going to buy products from your website?  Do you know if that ability exists?

How about this? Website analytics is fairly well understood now, but what about web (and I mean the WHOLE web) analytics? What about social media analytics? Do you know where people are talking about you and what they are saying? Do you know what people are saying about your competitors? Because, you need to if you are going to try to measure growth in a social media campaign in a serious industry. You need to know the size of the digital footprint your company has on the web and how a social media campaign can change that. Otherwise, when you go to your boss to argue for getting everyone on Twitter, you might be hard pressed to find more reasons than “Well, everyone else is doing it.”

Everyone can sign up for free Google Alerts and Tweet Alerts, but few hardcore social media measurement tools exist, and those that do are primarily used by social media marketing companies that are carving out their places in a field that is set for huge success or huge failure this year. If your company is hesitant to jump into the social media frenzy, that is fine, but when you make an argument for it, realize that people are talking about you and your competitors, and if you do not have the tools, counseling, or skills, you will not be able to participate in the conversation and will therefore miss out on the chance to use social media to grow your business.

Do you know of valuable ways to measure social media impact on your business?  Working in the industry, I am aware of plenty, but so many impressive tools pop up everyday that I cannot always keep track of them.

While you need only be on Twitter for a day or two to see that there’s a great deal of spam and bad corporate Twitter marketing (the exact sort of impersonality that Godin dislikes) there are also a number of companies doing it right. Their Twitter voice–which, importantly, is not a corporate voice but the voice of a real person with a name–is entirely personal. Their updates constitute a very real and genuine conversation. Is there some corporate promotional material mixed in there? Sure, but to no greater degree than in the feeds of the oft-tedious Twitterati or countless entrepreneurs and marketers who pump their blogs and trade links while they complain about their commutes and talk about their weekend skiing trips. That many companies can’t break away from their suited monotone doesn’t mean that ALL companies can’t.

Take Starbucks–or, as I should say, Brad from Starbucks. Considering that over 30,000 people follow Brad, he does an excellent job answering questions and talking to people. His tweets aren’t overly clever or exceptionally charming. But then again, neither are Barack Obama’s, and quite a few people seem to think he’s fantastic at Twitter.

Or take Dunkin’ Donuts. (Full disclosure: We’ve consulted with Dunkin’ Donuts on their Twitter marketing strategy.) Dave over at Dunkin’ Donuts was tweeting about the sub-zero temperatures in Chicago a few days ago, and he even had time to give someone a little ribbing about her math. Again, does he post some promotional information and some business content? Of course. But, as a native Bostonian I can tell you that, while I may not really care to see every link that Chris Brogan thinks is cool or know when ijustine is going running or watching CNN, I definitely want to know if Dunkin’ Donuts is giving away free coffee or opening up a new shop near me.

Godin, who recently treated print journalism on his blog with a similarly dismissive wave of his hand, wants to know why someone is “going to spend time with Dunkin’ Donuts unless there is something in it for you?” With all due respect to his larger point, it doesn’t seem to follow, logically, that anyone on Twitter (or on Social Networks, for that matter) could spend time with someone they get nothing from. The beauty of Twitter is that you can opt-in and opt-out whenever you want. 30,000 people follow Starbucks. Clearly, they see value. More than that follow Chris Brogan and iJustine (even though I don’t). They wouldn’t if they didn’t see value.

While Twitter marketing may not in itself be a direct line to sales, it is a direct line to increased brand loyalty. And when you consider that the cost of creating, designing, and maintaining an interesting Twitter profile is very low, it’s unwise to be as dismissive of the idea as Godin appears to be.