Excitement and Struggles with Social Networks

Today’s guest blogger is Zach Maurin, an AmeriCorps alum who co-founded and co-directs ServeNext.org. Recently, ServeNext completed a 30-city, 60-day Greyhound bus tour across America to unite citizens to advocate for the expansion of national service programs. The tour was just featured by the Chronicle of Philanthropy: Road Trip With a Mission: Expanding National Service

Eighteen months ago I started an organization, ServeNext.org, with a couple of friends to help put national service expansion (AmeriCorps, City Year, Teach for America, etc.) atop our country’s to-do list. Our strategy, from afar, is simple: unite a critical mass of constituents who, through collective action, can advance national service legislation.

Starting ServeNext poses a lot of challenges that I expect and welcome: strategic planning, fundraising, and the like. But there is one challenge that I did not expect: keeping up with and strategizing around the social web.

The explosion of social networks, social network applications, and even social change social networks makes me equally dizzy and intrigued. There is great opportunity to more efficiently spread the word to more people about ServeNext, but there is also great opportunity to waste a lot of time and energy trying to keep up with it all.

Because ServeNext is small we have to carefully decide where we want to spend our time online. Everyone knows the big players in the social network space, but now there is a growing number of social change social networks, including Razoo, Change.org, Youth Noise, MTV’s Think, and just two weeks ago I met the founder of MyGoodDeed.org, which is gearing up to launch their own social network. Perhaps more challenging than maintaining a presence on a few of these is getting an accurate sense of the return on investment.

From what I understand, Facebook’s fan pages aren’t terribly successful for businesses. Is that an indication that they won’t be successful for ServeNext when we have less staff to maintain it and no marketing budget to go along with it? Or, conversely, does that make it essential for us since we have no marketing budget?

There seems to be an over-hyped and under-proven energy in this space when it comes to advancing social causes. Don’t get me wrong, many more people know about ServeNext because of Facebook than without it, and that’s a really good thing. And there are some really great examples of other causes using these networks to make the world more just. My point, though, will spending five hours (ten? twenty?) per week maintaining ServeNext’s identity on social networks help pass national service legislation (our goal)?

The social web is changing rapidly, and for a small organization it’s hard to keep up with. We just welcomed a great cohort of interns whom I will be working with to maintain our space on many of these networks. This summer we will be putting an earnest effort into our presence on them. Come fall, I hope many of my questions are answered. But my prediction is that this space is evolving so rapidly that I will have more questions.