Wikiturfing is, in effect, a sort of marketing campaign. It's a way of advertising something. Wikiturfing is when you take a product, or an idea, or a company, or a person that isn't very well-known, write an article about it or them, and place it on Wikipedia in hopes that it will get a lot of readers and so bloom in popularity. Wikipedia discourages Wikiturfing; they say it's not a very good (or honest) use of the popular online encyclopedia.

People who use Wikiturfing often try to base their articles around things that are already popular. If "comic books" gets a lot of viewers, for example, the Wikiturfing writer will try to use "comic books" in his or her article, so that his or her article comes up as a possibility whenever someone gets onto Wikipedia looking for comic books.
People who use Wikiturfing are basically using it as a marketing idea or an advertising campaign. They hope that Wikipedia's users will stumble onto their article and then tell their friends about it. Their friends will tell their friends, and so forth.

To get more specific, lets take the example of comic books that we used before. So, the subject "comic books" gets a lot of notice on Wikipedia. Lots of people go to it every day. And someone out there (let's call him Rupert) has invented a new casing that protects comic books better than the current common casing does. Rupert then writes an article about his casing. He writes an enthusiastic, glowing article, giving his invention the highest sort of praise and proclaiming it as the new big thing in comic books. He then places his article on Wikipedia in hopes that comic book lovers will come across it and try to find out how to order Rupert's services. Wikiturfing then becomes a free way of advertising a product. Rather than pay for and develop his own website, Rupert, through the process of Wikiturfing, has taken advantage of Wikipedia, trusting the popular website to do his advertising for him.
Even wannabe actors and actresses have used Wikiturfing as a way of advertising themselves. They want to appear as though they're popular already; they want to generate interest in their names and accomplishments. They hope that an agent will stumble across their name and become interested in them.

Businesses have used Wikiturfing as a method of cheap and effective advertising. Businesses have used Wikiturfing as a way to generate name recognition without much effort. A business will hire someone to pinpoint the most popular pages on Wikipedia, and then will design their own pages based around the popular ones. They hope to use Wikiturfing to catch the attention of the average consumer. They hope that Wikiturfing will make the average consumer tell their friends about this new business. John tells Mary, Mary tells Jane, Jane tells Sam, Sam tells Augustine, and so forth.

For more information on Wikiturfing and other marketing campaigns and advertising ideas, please visit these great websites:

http://101publicrelations.com/soloentrepenuer.html
http://101publicrelations.com/sr9.html