By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Another week in the books at The Community Roundtable – and it seems like the second week of the New Year had people thinking more about some of the fundamental questions about community value. Rachel sparked one of the bigger reactions of the week with a post in CMSWire, Customer Communities: Strategy or Tactic, which looked at the fundamental shift from building relationships with customers to building your customer base with relationships – a fundamental change in the social media era. The critical importance of shared value is not new to fans of TheCR – we have talked about it for years – but it’s great to see the theme reach new audiences, along with its companion, shared purpose.

If you’re struggling with the shared value discussion, you may want to connect your audience with our Community Fundamentals deck. We gave it a little polishing up in 2014.

Within TheCR Network, a couple of blog posts elsewhere have sparked thoughtful discussions on some of the basics of community, and a number of members had their minds opened (or blown) by Peter Gloor of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. Any one sentence summary I tried to give of the presentation wouldn’t do it justice – so I’ll just recommend you look at his books, or better yet, sign up for TheCR Network and read the Roundtable summary notes when they become available. (Did you know that one of the valuable assets of the Network is that all our programming is summarized for you to digest at your convenience or when you need it most?)

Looking ahead – we are just a little over a week from CMAD on Monday, January 26, and we have our locations set for all six of our CMAD events with Higher Logic. There’s still time to sign up to join us for food, drinks and discussion in Boston, New York, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Washington, DC on the 26th. However, there’s apparently no such thing as a free lunch in San Francisco, where tickets for our free lunch were snapped up in record time.

CMAD will also be the day we kick off our survey for our most established research, the 6th annual State of Community Management. SOCM 2015 is only as good as the data you provide, so we hope you’ll take the time to fill out the SOCM survey, and spread the word with your fellow community professionals when the survey link goes live.

Lastly, we shared a couple of other pieces on the blog this week. Shannon noted that there is one way for you to stand out from the crowd when applying for community manager positions, and I suggested a practical strategy for taking those big ideas for your community in 2015 to fruition.

Now on to some other good reads!

Some Other Interesting Readings This Week

It’s Time to Flip the Social Media & Community ROI Equation on its Head: It’s no secret that many Brands realize tremendous value from their social media and online community efforts. Value in the form of cost-reduction for support and service, ideas for and feedback on products, product and brand advocacy… the list goes on and on. Unfortunately, there is also a problem with the current approach Brands take: it’s unsustainable – unsustainable because it is predicated on Customers doing valuable work for free.

Facebook Where? The Enterprise Reacts To Facebook At Work: Enterprise Social as a category has been with us for almost a decade, with companies like Jive, Yammer (now part of Microsoft) and Socialcast (now part of VMware) trying hard to get organizations to embrace social tools — often being sold ironically as “Facebook for the enterprise.” Facebook is jumping feet-first into this existing market with all of its baggage and trying to show it can make the transition to a business product and all that entails. While the Facebook enterprise product has many advantages, there are also many unanswered questions.

Internal communications predictions for 2015: For its part, 2014 was a growth year for internal collaboration, as the platforms matured and companies continued to deploy new and updated tools, usually with a special emphasis on social and mobile collaboration. The good news: Overall, growth in newer forms of internal collaboration tools continued on a double digit year-over-year pace according to market research firms. This growth trend will actually ramp up into 2015 as organizations get more proactive about getting ahead of digital workplace change.

New Community and Social Media Jobs

Community Management Fellow (Paid) – The Community Roundtable, remote

Research Fellow (Paid) – The Community Roundtable, remote

Sales/Marketing Fellow (Paid) – The Community Roundtable, remote

Community Manager — i2Coalition, Washington, DC

Zoe Community Manager — HTC, Seattle, WA

US Digital Social Engagement Lead – McDonalds, Oak Brook, IL

North American Gaming Community Manager – Nvidia, Santa Clara, CA

Online Community Coordinator – Melanoma Research Foundation, Washington, DC

Manager, Community Management – Ignite Social Media, Birmingham, MI or Cary, NC

Content and Online Community Manager – ANZ, Melbourne, Australia

Community Manger (bilingual) – Wanderu, Boston, MA

Digital Client Engagement Strategist – Fleishman Hillard, Dallas, TX

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Looking to break new ground in your community in 2015. Maybe one of our community toolkits could help! They provide information and strategic guidance for starting, building and improving your community.