The Social Media have changed the power structures in the marketplace; evidence points to a major power migration taking place and to emergence of a new breed of powerful and sophisticated customer, difficult to influence, persuade and retain. The paper outlines the nature, effects and present status of the Social Media, underlying their role as customer empowerment agents. It explains their aptitude and possible roles as part of the corporate Marketing strategy and identifies different ways of engaging them as marketing tools.

The paper proposes two possible Social Media marketing strategies:

1- The passive approach focuses on utilising the Social Media domain as source of customer voice and market intelligence.

2- The active approach i.e. engaging the Social Media as direct marketing and PR channels, as channels of customer influence, as tools of personalising products and last but not least develop them as platforms of co-operation and customer-generated innovation. Finally the paper identifies future research directions around this new element of the marketing landscape. Social media marketing has beneficial impacts on business. It offers an opportunity for the public to find out exactly what they want from social media. Through social media marketing companies can reach their targeted audience. They can stay in touch with the customers, address their queries anytime.

How Social Media impacts marketing strategy

Social media is aiming to bridge the gap between marketers and consumers through persistent dialogue, strengthening trust, and dealing with the right audience in the right way, as fast as possible. It facilitates conversation and connection among people. It comprises popular networking websites, like Facebook and Twitter; as well as Bookmarking sites like Digg or Reddit and uses web page technology. Social media impact on Marketing-A key to success in Business It is a fact that Social media helps in flourishing business tactics and helps the companies to sustain for a longer period. Social media platforms are fruitful in drawing the attention of their target audience and at the same time creating a trustworthy, quality image of the same in the market. It is undeniable that social networks are the ways to channelize various business strategies by creating brand profiles like fan pages, contests, etc. Social Media seems to be a way to discover the likes and dislikes of the target audiences more profoundly and at the same time, it guides the companies to adopt the latest trends preferred by the masses. In short, social media plays a major role in making a strong online presence for any brand/company.