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.