Magento: Render static block in a phtml file

Suppose you have created a static block from Magento administration panel (CMS -> Static Blocks) and you want to render its content in some phtml file.

<?php 
	echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')
		->setBlockId('footer_links')
		->toHtml();
?>

Above code will load the static block by its identifier “footer_links”, then produces and returns block’s html output.