Social media is an effective means of communication between consumers and businesses. Companies use social media to improve consumer engagement and brand building. This essay offers a brief overview of social media platforms and their effectiveness. It proves that the entire concept of marketing has undergone a radical transformation due to interaction with social media. The essay ends with a conclusion that describes what marketers need to watch out for to have a successful social media campaign. Social media is everywhere today and brand pages on sites like Facebook, Google+, YouTube and Twitter have become popular all over the world. The concept of marketing has changed with customer engagement on these platforms. Typically, brands continue to improve relationships and actively communicate with consumers using activities such as rewards programs and direct promotions. In this marketing, customers were passive “recipients” of brand messages and various other activities and therefore companies as such had no control over brand development. Today, consumers engage and involve in creating posts/comments about the brand (Hennig-Thurau, et al., 2010, Kozinets, et al., 2010, Libai, et al., 2010). Every successful business has a brand page on at least one of Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Luxury brands such as Armani, Burberry or Dolce & Gabbana, Armani or Burberry are investing more in social media (Phan, 2011). However, some marketing managers do not approve of social media and question the sensitivity of engaging in these promotions, especially marketers doubt the use of mass media platform for the promotion of exclusive luxury brands (Okonkwo, 2009, Geerts and Veg-Sala, 2011). We have shown that social...... half of the paper......from http://img.constantcontact.com/docs/pdf/extend_your_email_effectiveness.pdf [accessed December 5, 2013].• Chandler, S . (2013), "The Hidden Benefits of Social Media Marketing: Why Your Strategy Might Work Better Than You Think." [Online] available from http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2013/03/12/the-hidden-benefits-of-social-media-marketing-why-your-strategy-may -work-better-than-you-think/ [December 5, 2013]• Gamache, J. (2013), “Social Media Engagement Increases Brand Loyalty.” [Online] available from http://www.comerecommended.com/prblog/2013/07/social-media-engagement-boosts-brand-loyalty/ [accessed December 5, 2013].• Oracle (2008), “ Tutta question of the vendor, who exploits Web 2.0”, An Oracle White Paper, August. [Online] available from http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/051279.pdf [December 5., 2013]