The advent of New Media and entertainment technologies such as the Internet and digital broadcasting gave rise to various social media sites such as Orkut, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Hi5 and Facebook being the few famous examples.
Among them, Facebook is currently the most popular one.
Social networking sites are websites where people across all continents meet and share their views, news, photos, videos, links and messages.
Social Media Marketing has become a buzzword among Internet marketers as they began to woo the users of such sites.
The very nature of social networking sites - i.
e.
virtually free and instant recognition - is the main draw.
The power of SMO was recently felt during social unrest in Egypt, Libya and other countries.
Although the possibility of content in any form - be it in text, picture, audio, or video going viral is as remote as an oasis in the desert.
It has been observed that marketing over these social networking sites bear excellent results like no other medium on the Internet currently.
An aggressive and vigorous online marketing strategy does help in the end.
Start-up businesses, especially online sellers of goods or services should allocate a portion of their budget towards social media marketing, especially on Facebook.
Compared to other media forms, and considering cost-to-benefit ratios, Facebook marketing is the most cost-effective and powerful form of advertising.
The following Facebook marketing tactics may be employed by start-up enterprises:

• Open an account in company's name or brand / trade name and make as many 'friends' as possible through your friends, relatives, supporters and employees and keep enlarging the circle.
  
• Upload photos or demo videos of products or services.
  These are highly effective as everybody loves to watch photos and videos, which helps them to relax and enjoy and at the same time they are feed with required information.
  Text reading is considered as boring though it's always good.
  
• Post humorous, witty and satirical, philosophical and spiritual content.
  Run a series of posts to appear daily, if possible.
  
• Post company/ employee events, especially those about award giving and philanthropic activities.
  
• Encourage your friends to 'like', share or comment.
  
• Keep changing your profile pictures.
  
• In short, remain in news.
  All the activities above entail no expenditure.
  If that fails you can always bank upon paid or pay per click (where you need to pay only if users click on it) advertisements.
  

Facebook Marketing is, thus, the quickest, craziest and the most effective medium of social media marketing.
With its universal reach growing at breakneck speed, start-up businesses should take the opportunity.