I work with a number of B2B companies and hear this a lot: “We don’t need social marketing, we only sell to businesses.” It might be true that you don’t sell direct to consumers, but a business doesn’t use your product, people do.

I am a man of many hats. By day I am a technologist, community marketing evangelist, interactive marketer. When I leave my day job I am a second year psychology student. How does this matter to the topic at hand? Well it turns out that we all have an innate need to belong to groups. We search out groups in which to belong. Being in a group is how we define ourselves. We need what is called an ingroup, “a social group towards which an individual feels loyalty and respect, usually due to membership in the group.” It turns out that a brand tends to become an ingroup for us.

Certainly everyone knows of the Microsoft and Apple ingroups. In general, most of us fall into one of these two ingroups whether we have done so consciously or not. Being a member of an ingroup leads us to develop what is called an ingroup bias. Ingroup bias simply means that we favor our own group over another group. If you know of the Microsoft and Apple ingroup’s you certainly have seen how passionate members of each group can get.

By seeking out and fostering these natural ingroups that form around your brand you can develop a stronger ingroup bias. This causes the people actually using your products to recommend your brand more often to those making purchasing decisions. The more often your brand is recommend the more likely a business is to purchase.

B2B companies may not sell directly to consumers, but consumers are the one using, and more importantly recommending, your products. Using social media to strengthen your brand affinity is a fantastic way for a B2B company to market their products.

While Google and Microsoft prepare quotes to purchase Digg (finally), AOL squandered their social news site Netscape .. er .. Propeller.  Yet, while AOL shows us that they have such fine acumen for anything but running an internet business, Yahoo! would rather have AOL kill them off than Microsoft absorb them.  I am no Microsoft fan, though recent internet offerings and courting of more open projects have taken the edge off, but courting a company that so lacks the ability to compete online seems just crazy.  I guess I need to get an MBA so stupid decisions will suddenly make perfect business sense to me.  Who knows, it might help me understand GM’s rebuilding strategy of producing fewer cars that no one wants to buy?

I love these short video’s. This is a great way introduce clients to the possibilities of new applications in a clear plain way that a non-techie can understand.

Here is a Chris Messina presentation on the DiSo Project where they are attempting to shape what a social network should be.

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This may or may not be a viral campaign by Starbucks. If it isn’t, shame on them for not figuring it out first. If it is, fantastic job. This video is funny, well done, and most of all - the Starbucks logo is in front of the camera the whole time.