Social media is a phenomenon. No one will argue with it’s popularity, traffic, and continued monopoly over people’s time on the web. For marketers, this is wonderful as it offsets the loss of access to consumers due to declining television ratings and diminished popularity of radio. Google grew to monopolize advertising in web 1.0, and traditional marketers missed the boat. Now, all eyes are on social media and marketers are ready to react.

The question is, now that everyone is participating, networking, tweeting and friending…what are companies going to do to leverage these tools?

Twitter is a great example of a popular social media tool that is ripe for creativity. Twitter can be used to build a community, network directly with consumers, share PR news and updates, add personality to your company’s brand, provide status updates related to your company or service, and probably a litany of things that have yet to be discovered. For all it’s traffic and users, Twitter is missing 2 significant things that made companies like Google and Yahoo! successful - it has yet to provide a clear way for anyone to make money using it in the way that Google Adwords and Overture did before.

Let’s explore options on Twitter that could create value for businesses. There are the less creative things like sponsorship and advertising. Twitter could require company or branded accounts to pay, versus their current unlimited free model. I think one of the more creative ways to leverage Twitter would be to build communities.

This is The Community Model:

For the Community Model, let’s take a popular brand, website or blog with a growing but dedicated following. Rather than create it’s own branded social network, why not leverage Twitter to extend the blog and build a community of readers. This way, readers with like interests could begin to follow the blog’s Tweets and the connect with each other. The blog or website could use Twitter to give additional insight, live blog special events, provide a “behind the scenes” look at activities at the blog, and pre-release teasers to articles.

How does this create value for companies?

The Community Model would help distance blogging from social media, allowing companies to make it a mainstream form of publication. For established brands, this could be especially useful since their blog likely resides on a subdomain and is closely tied to the main website and brand. Leveraging Twitter in this way would allow them to frequently update without having to post directly to the blog, but still keeping up frequent connections with consumers.

Why would consumers do this?

Consumers are capable of brand loyalty, but more than anything this gives uninitiated consumers an entry into Twitter and a way to connect with like-minded people in a non-brand specific way. Forums on websites have proven successful, but by participating in forums you are tied to a particular website or brand. Twitter provides an ability to go beyond that company and continue growing your own personal network (this also benefits the companies involved as well, since it amplifies the network effects of each member. Thanks to Yoan Blanc or his excellent visual representation.)

This is just one example of way to leverage Twitter to build a community around a blog or website. Do you have any ideas of how Twitter can be used to create branding or marketing opportunities beyond just posting Tweets?