We daily come across Social networking sites and online communities like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, You Tube, MySpace, Linkedin and Digg to mention a few from a comprehensive list of websites which people use to serve their different purposes. They have become an integral part of our lives and are put to use by people in their own individual ways. Some use them just to stay connected with each other or for fun while some use them to share ideas and opinions on serious issues.

The high utility of these sites have paved the way for Social Media Marketing wherein organizations employ these sites as a tool to serve their respective business goals. In other words, Social Media marketing makes use of networking sites, blogs and online communities to propagate the intended messages among the target group to convert them into customers or increase their favorability towards an organization.

Social Media Marketing presents itself as an efficient option to attract maximum traffic to the website not by increasing its visibility on search engine result pages but by providing the important links to the site. It achieves its aim of high traffic by increasing the search and referral traffic to the website which in turn helps a company to achieve its objective.

The amount of traffic that a website gets determines its success rate and Social Media Marketing works on the principle of obtaining maximum exposure for a firm by associating it with a number of prominent sites like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, Linkedin, etc. As the number of visitors to these is already high, it gives an opportunity to an organization to divert some of the visitors to its site by staying actively involved. This in turn attracts primary and referral traffic as well as useful links which ultimately gives a high ranking to a website.

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Orkut and You Tube, to say for example, are well passed their introduction stages and now have become established and trusted names in the online domain. Because of the credibility involved, it is very likely that a visitor will follow the links present on these sites. This factor is utilized by Social Media marketing to maintain contact with the target customers and achieve marketing objectives.

Unlike expensive online ads, Social Media Marketing provides a cost effective means of reaching the target audience and attain a substantial conversion rate. What makes this a favored medium is its easy application. Sometimes an organization can serve its purpose only with good blog posts that interests people and drive them to your site. If applied in combination with other internet marketing strategies, Social Media Marketing is quite capable of producing the desired results.