2 Steps to Make Your Adoption Waiting Period Shorter
2 Steps To Make Your Adoption Waiting Period Shorter
Are you struggling in the adoption waiting period? If you are, it’s ok and normal. Let's start this blog by acknowledging the elephant in the room. Many things are well beyond your control regarding your adoption journey. We know that, right? But we have two options based upon that, and we can either sit around worry and wonder and throw our hands up and say, well, it's out of my control. Or we can take action on those things that are in our control.
I know that you are an action taker; otherwise, you wouldn't be here. Otherwise, you may just be sitting in a Facebook group complaining and throwing your hands up. But, I can tell you are not that way, my friend. You are an action taker, and you are looking to do everything in your power that is ethical to make your adoption easier, faster, and more affordable. That's precisely what I'm here to help you with. We're going to talk about two things in this blog that really will make a difference in your adoption journey, and they both relate to your adoption profile.
Have an Adoption Profile Expert review your profile
Make your story clear.
I want you to first think about your profile. Does it clearly tell the story of your family? For example, if you were trying to describe your family when introducing yourself to somebody, what would you say about your family? Is it clear? Is it easy to follow? After you have your answer reflect if that comes through in your adoption profile. If it doesn't, or if your profile isn't clear, concise, and easy to follow, then it's time to edit it. It doesn't have to be a complete overhaul. It can be just a few tweaks. If you can't clearly look at the profile book, website, or you know your social media accounts and see that this family loves to travel, and this family loves to do these things, then you need to do some work.
Effectively share it in a way that creates an emotional connection.
The next thing that we need to think about when we're looking at our profile is whether or not it creates an emotional connection. Now, when I talk about creating an emotional connection, I am not asking you to manipulate the expectant family's emotions. I want to be really clear about that. We want to have an ethical adoption, and we want to share our profile in a way that helps them get to know us a little bit better. We want them to like you for you, and it is alright that there are people in this world that don't like you. But, when you are creating an emotional connection through your profile, you're only going to be able to create that with people that are the right fit for you.
There are different ways to have your profile set up, even to have a shot at making that emotional connection with expectant parents. First, you have to write or share your profile so that when people are reading the content, watching it, and hearing it, they can take the information on board. If not, you're confusing them or making them follow this zigzaggy pattern throughout what you're sharing, which then makes it much more difficult for someone to make that connection with you.
There are specific patterns and ways in which you need to write, film, and audio narrate what you're sharing with them. This helps make it easy from a structure standpoint to share it easily, no matter their learning style. Each one of us has this filter that is custom to us. If you're not writing or sharing content in a way that can navigate or permeate through that emotional filter, then you can't create an emotional connection. So when you think about your profile, the sub-steps within this first section is to tell your story clearly and make an emotional connection.
Is it easy to engage with for expectant parents?
The last thing for reviewing your profile is to look at how easy it is to engage with your profile. The best way for me to teach you about this is to share a story with you. I was talking with an unexpected family the other day because I wanted to understand why they had chosen a particular family to match with versus another. They were so excited and proud to share their hopeful adoptive family with me because they were excited about the life that their child was going to have. They told me stories about all of the places they were going to travel to and how all of their holidays would be surrounded by family and full of love. They were doing this with such great detail. I asked them what it was like to have a very clear picture of what life would be like for this child and where that came from. They said that the hopeful parents had an amazing video where they talked about their life, and they showed pictures and video clips of them actually doing these things. She described in detail stuff from the video that influenced her to reach out to the hopeful parents and built on that emotional connection.
So don't underestimate how easy it is to engage with your profile. If they have to click around and zoom and stretch and make things smaller or wait for things to download on their phone, they may get irritated. All of those things really take away from the amount of time that it could be engaging with you and, quite frankly, frustrate expectant families, and rightfully so.
Share your story
It is your job to share it everywhere with intention and measure the effectiveness of what you are doing. If you're sitting around waiting for your agency to share your profile and thus have to wait to get picked, then don't complain about it. If you are not doing everything in your power to match your adoption, you have zero right to complain.
When you are sharing your story, your very first thing is to share it with intention. You need to be mindful of where you're sharing it, what you are sharing, and how you can track the feedback from what you are sharing. It is your job to say I will share this with this place through this method. And I'm going to then follow up and determine if there's been any feedback on that.
Here are a few benefits of sharing it yourself.
You know the focus is on you and not other families
You have the ability to measure it
You can make changes
Share your profile in real life.
Do you feel comfortable walking around and handing out a business card, a brochure, or some other small little method of sharing your profile with others? I want you to make a list of where you are comfortable sharing your profile. You can also check out this guide that walks you through this aspect of the adoption profile process.
Here are a few ideas of places to share your profile in real life.
OBGYN
Dentist
Hairdresser
Church
Local community support centers
For example, you will share it with the hairdresser by giving her 10 business cards. You would then follow up bi-weekly and ask her if she needs more. Next, you're going to ask her if anybody seemed interested or if there is anybody she thinks you should follow up with. That's the real-life bucket way you will share your adoption profile.
Share your profile digitally.
The following way you will share your adoption profile is through digital media. When it comes to digital media, you will leverage social media accounts. You will use Facebook by creating a Facebook page specific to your adoption. You can use Facebook group posts, Instagram, and maybe even use TikTok. I'm not sure that I quite recommend TikTok yet, as I do not see any success with it so far. You're going to use different ways on social platforms to share your profile. If you can, you will also use paid ads on social media. I highly recommend paid ads over the batching sites that are out there. This is because you're more in control of what is shown, and you get the direct analytics of what's working and what's not. Ads are easy to do and are also a great way to share your profile on digital media. I must note that you are NOT sharing your profile digitally on matching sites.
There are all things within your control, but don't sit around and complain. Take action, and I know you're an action taker. I hope this has been incredibly helpful. More than anything. I want you to know that anything's possible, and I'm here with you every step of the way. Join my Facebook group to chat about any questions you may have about sharing your adoption profile. If you need help with your adoption profile, you can check out my resources for more information.
Hi, I Am Amanda
I am an adoption profile expert on a mission to help you create and share your family's story more affordably!
