The adoption profile world has changed over the last few years. If you are not using a mixture of different profile types, then it's simply going to take longer for you to adopt. 

I'm an adoption profile expert who has helped over 1000 families bring home their baby and 95% of them have brought home their baby in less than one year. Today, I'm breaking down the different types of adoption profiles and exactly what you need to include in them so that you'll be picked by an expectant family. 

To make it easier for us to stay on the same page together, we're going to break this down into two big categories. The first category is going to be physical profile elements. These would be things that you could physically hand to someone in real life. So we're going to call those real-life elements. 

The second big category is going to be digital elements. These are things that you're going to access from your phone or computer, and that's going to be the way that you're going to share those things.

But before we dive into those, I want to give you just a little heads up on a special training that I have coming up. In this training, I'm going to be sharing with you the three things that you need to have inside your profile to be picked by an expected family. If you want to join us at the free live training and ask me any questions that you have, you can head on over to myadoptioncoach.com/training to grab your seat.

Real-Life Elements

So the first big category that we're going to start with is the real-life element. Depending on what type of matching you are using, you're going to need different profile elements. We'll save that complication for another blog post on another day. Instead, let's talk about the big, broad buckets.

Adoption Profile Book

The first bucket is going to be things that you're naturally going to think of when you think of adoption profiles. That's going to be an adoption profile book. And the adoption profile book is going to be the story of your family. You're going to tell a little bit about who you are and about each person in the family. You're going to tell me a little bit about what you'd like to do. You're going to share more about what's important to your family and what you want this child's life to be like with you.

I will also give you just one little bonus tip to tell you that in a profile book, you also want to include a way for someone to get to know you on a digital basis if that's what they want to do. Specifically, you want to include a link or QR code, depending on how they're getting that book out to your profile video. I can tell you that expectant parents tell me that profile videos make a huge difference in who they pick and who they don’t pick because that allows them to build a different level of comfort with you. We'll talk more about profile videos in the next few blogs. So make sure you come back for that.

Business Cards

Okay, the next physical profile element that you might be handing someone in real life is going to be kind of on the opposite end of that spectrum, which would be a business card. A business card is now a great tool for someone to carry around in their purse or wallet for those kinds of impromptu opportunities that come up, where you can share that you're hoping to adopt. Now, if you're working with an agency, they might not want you to do this. But if you're self-matching your adoption, you're going to want to do this. On the business card, you're going to include a photo of you and contact information. Just the sentence, “We're hoping to adopt; please pass this along to someone who might be considering placing a child for adoption.” Something straightforward and to the point, but with a way for someone to get to know you, is critical when it comes to using a business card.

Flyers

You want to take that same approach when it comes to using our next element, which would be a flyer. You're going to think of a flyer as something that you would put up on a bulletin board. This may seem really old-school and like something that you wouldn't do. But I cannot count the number of clients who match a flyer that they've left on a physical job board, on a cork board at a laundromat, in a doctor's office just lying on the counter, or on a hairdresser window as someone walks by.

You just never know where those connections are going to come from. And I've had clients match in all of those places from a simple flyer that had a picture of them that said, “We are hoping to adopt”” and it had that QR code that directed them to their website to learn more about them.

Brochures

Now let's talk about the remaining physical element that you might have someone share with you in real life when it comes to your adoption profile: a brochure. Now these brochures can come in a multitude of forms. It can be something as simple as an eight-and-a-half by 11 piece of paper that's front and back that has information about you or a couple of pieces of paper. It could be something that's a trifold piece of paper that you've made yourself on your computer or followed and used one of my templates that you can buy from my template shop. It could be something that you just print out yourself and share. The idea with the brochure is that it's not as detailed as what's inside a profile book or maybe even on a website. But it's a lot more detailed than what's on your flyer or your business card. Inside, you're going to want to include things like the fact that you're hoping to adopt a baby, your contact information, and a little bit about your family. Then you want them to go somewhere else to get to know you more, whether that be to call you or something that might be a little bit easier of a step and less intimidating of a step for an expectant family to go watch your video on your website or go look at your website.

So when it comes to all of the real-life adoption profile details, those are kind of the ends of the spectrum. You're going to start with an adoption profile book, which is going to have the most information about you. Then pare that back pretty dramatically into a brochure and even further back into a flyer or a business card. Now, again, depending upon how you are matching your adoption and how you feel comfortable sharing your adoption profile will drive the decision as to which one of those elements you need.

Digital Elements

Now let's move on to the second big category, which is going to be those digital profile elements. Now, when it comes to digital profile elements, there are only three. We're going to focus on my clients. I have experimented with a bunch of different profile elements in the digital space over the past eight years. We've honed it down to these three, which are the ones that work the best.

Website

The very first form is going to be more similar to the profile book. That is going to be your adoption profile website. We are going to treat the website like a book, given the level of depth of the information that we share about you and your family on it. But we're going to make it highly interactive and something that you would expect to see when you visit a website. You're going to have something very open and welcoming. Something that very quickly lets the audience know that you're hoping to adopt a baby. Then we're going to share some high-level information about your family so that someone can do what I call the initial homepage scroll. They're just scrolling and flipping up the page on their phone, most likely, and looking to see if you feel like a good fit. Do they make a connection with you? Do they feel like you could potentially be somebody that they would want to get to know a little bit more? If so, then we're going to have it structured so that they can click in certain areas and dive a little bit deeper into your story.

Let’s make up an example. If you talk about some things that are important to your family, and one of them is travel,. You mention that on that homepage, then someone could click on that button that says travel and then go learn more about the things that you like to do when you travel or some trips that you've taken or trips that you hope to take. This allows someone to get to know you at their own pace without feeling like they're lugging around this big book. It also allows someone to very discreetly check you out without them committing to taking a book and risking someone seeing that book in their bag if they're not ready to share with anybody else that they're considering making an adoption plan. Adoption profile websites allow them to get to know you on a deeper level based on the way that you are telling your story. Especially because you can use interactive elements. You can use simple things like the ability to click to learn more, or you can use something a little bit more emotive, which would be an adoption profile video.

Profile Videos

That is the second digital element to discuss. 90% of the expectant families that I have spoken with that watched someone's adoption profile video told me that they ended up choosing that family because of that video. The reason why they say that it is really important to them is because it allows them to get to know people on a deeper level. They got to hear what their voice sounded like. They got a feel for their home. They got to understand who the family was in general without having to fill in those links you don't get by just staring at a screen or flipping through a book. That is an important element to include in your adoption profile.

Social Media

The next type of adoption profile that you may need to consider for your adoption is using social media. Now, social media is not legal in every state when it comes to using your adoption profile. So you need to make sure and check with your adoption attorney to make sure it is legal. But it is a great way to quickly share the fact that you are hoping to adopt and enlist your friends and family to share it as well. Then hopefully you can get connected faster with an expectant parent. Now, my clients and I use something called the adoption social media workshop to help us stay focused on what we need to post, when we need to post, and where we need to be posting so that they can match more quickly with expectant parents.

I do have a lot of clients that match on social media. But I also have a lot of clients that match off on social media. It all depends on what you are comfortable with, how we design your profile elements, and how you're sharing them, which ultimately leads you to match. But when it comes to social media, in particular, you want to use the same core principles that we've used in your other profile elements. It should be easy for someone to get to know who you are as a family, who each of you is as an individual, and what life would be like for this child in your family.

In all of these different adoption profile types, there is one overarching framework that my clients have used to see success. That is called the emotionally connected adoption profile process.

This is a step-by-step process where you can either build it yourself or I can help build it for you. There's one unifying framework that I have created that has helped all of my clients get to the heart of what to say and not to say in their profiles, and that is called the emotionally connected adoption profile process. I know it's a mouthful, but it gets to the heart of what we're trying to do, which is create an emotional connection with an expectant family and a hopeful adoptive family so you can ultimately create the life that you both want for this child. The very first step in that process is deciding which types of profiles you need to have based on how you plan to adopt them. If you want to learn what type of adoption profile you need based on how you are matching your adoption, then check out the video on how to match your adoption in 2024 where I break down for you the different types of profiles and how my clients have matched using those over the last eight years.