Last week in Are You Setting the Right Kind of Goals for This Year we discussed the importance of setting goals for online communications. We looked specifically the difference between outcome goals and process goals and said:
[Outcome] goals are like the steering wheel of a car while [process goals or] habits are the engine. A car with a steering wheel but no engine is useless, while a car with an engine but no steering wheel is pointless.
To help you along in your goal-setting, I thought some examples might help further clarify the difference plus provide some ideas.
Setting Outcome Goals
Let’s say you’re in charge of online communications for your church. Start by setting the outcome goals for your online communications.
Setting outcome goals is not something you should do on a whim. It’s important to get input from others, think about how they align with your church’s mission and other goals, pray and make sure your goals are Spirit led.
Some possible outcome goals might include:
- Increase the number of first time visitors to a worship service who found our church through the website.
- Increase social media engagement among church members.
Setting Process Goals
Once the outcome goals have been decided, the next question to ask is, “How are we going to accomplish our outcome goals?”
If your outcome goal is “Increase the number of first time visitors to a worship service who found our church through the website.” Some of your process goals might include:
- Get our church website listed and ranking well in search engines for relevant phrases (or hire an SEO company that specializes in helping churches to do this).
- Monitor our church’s search rankings every month and make adjustments and improvements so we continue to have good search rankings.
- Do a usability test of your church website with 2 people who are not a part of our church to get honest, unbiased opinion of the impressions it gives of the church and any important info that may be missing or hard to find. Make improvements based on the feedback.
- In the announcements in every worship service, ask the entire congregation to complete a communications card, which asks people to indicate if they are new and if so how they heard about the church.
- Every week, processes the cards and note the sources of new visitors in a spreadsheet.
- Every week, provide teaser/promotional material on the website and in social media, which members can use to invite their friends to church via email or social media.
Note that some of the process goals are one-time projects while others are monthly or weekly processes (aka habits.)
If your outcome goal is “Increase social media engagement among church members” Some of your process goals might include:
- Develop weekly editorial schedule for social media content.
- Put together a social media “street team” that is committed to engaging with your content and other people.
- Do a Google+ hangout meeting with the social media street team once a month
- Post to the church blog 2x a week
- Post to social media profiles at least once a day
- At least once a day read and respond to all comments, messages, etc on the blog and social media profiles
In part 3 of this series, we’ll talk about metrics, numerical goals and defining a win.
Discuss
- How important do you think it is to have outcome goals?
- How important do you think it is to have process goals?
- Which type of goals do you need to put some more thought into
Nice [post, thanks for sharing Paul
Goals give direction and focus so they are necessary. You have here a very good example.
Thanks Mary!
Very informative post and good examples, thanks, Paul!
You're welcome, Late Boomers. Glad you found it helpful.
This is a helpful list! It's always great to be reminded of the importance of goal setting. I find that reviewing my yearly goals at the end of each month helps keep me on track as well.