How To Make A Great Adoption Profile

Do you ever wonder what makes an excellent adoption profile? If you are trying to self-match, private match, independently match or use an agency, attorney, or consultant, I am sure you have wondered that a time or two, am I right? When you are working on your adoption profile, you probably worry if it is good enough and deep down inside you just want someone to tell you what to say so you will get picked.  

Or at least that was what I wanted in my own adoption journey. What I wanted more than anything was for someone to spell out exactly what made a great adoption profile so I could follow that model with our story. Well, you are in luck, friend, because that is precisely what I am going to tell you in today’s blog.

Step One: It is clear and concise

The first step in creating an excellent adoption profile is that it needs to be clear and concise. Your profile can have so much in it that it can make it hard for someone to understand who you are. The real reason why that can prove to be a challenge for you is that your profile can come off as shouting at expectant parents, which can turn them away from the very beginning. 

Having a plan before you actually create your profile and knowing what you're going to share is really important. It allows you to have a clear and concise profile. I like to be able to think about adoption profiles as stackable units with a little bit of information in them. That way, when you go to create your elements, you're just picking off the bits of information you need. Hopefully, what sticks with you is that you need to have clear and concise information in your adoption profile. 

Step Two: It allows her to clearly see what life is like in your family

Next, you must consider how your adoption profile allows the expectant mother to take a little peek into who you are. Consider if your adoption profile is set up right and if it is set up to make it a high-quality adoption profile. This is going to more easily allow her to feel comfortable getting to know you because depending upon what element she's looking at, she is going to get to know you a little bit more. You need to share varying levels of depth about who you are as a family in your profile based on each element. You're going to have your little clear containers all laid out with the core information about you and you're going to have varying levels of depth. You’re going to share more and more information about your family. That way, depending upon which journey or which path she takes to get to know you, she pulls out the right container that she is interested in seeing. 

Step Three: Needs to be visually appealing

The third thing to making sure that your adoption profile really is great is to make sure it is visually appealing. Now, this can feel really challenging and it's not intended to be that way at all. You need to start with some core kind of color palettes to establish the brand of your family. I know you're probably wondering why I am talking marketing speak and it may now make sense to you, so let me give you an example. 

If I were having adoption profile photos taken with my family, and we all use a blue shirt, that could be a significant element or color palette to build the visually appealing content around. It would also be a good color to use on your website, on your social media graphics, and on your adoption profile. It helps you start to create who you are as a brand because you're going to take those core photos that you're going to use throughout your adoption profile. You want to take those core photos to create your branding palette, and then you want to take that branding palette and use that to own all of your adoption profile elements. 

Once you're creating those elements, you want to make sure and apply our clutter-free clear container strategy against that as well. That way you are making visually appealing elements. When someone sees you in different areas, either on an adoption profile book or on a social media page, they see that color of blue and they'll know that it's you because it starts to make sense from a brand perspective. It’s about being intentional in the way you visually show up and the way it matches your core content. Having that common thread between all of them really does make a difference in having a great high-quality adoption profile. 

Step Four: It needs to be easy to engage with

Next, your adoption profile needs to be easy to engage with. When I talked with expectant parents and asked them what the reasons are as to why they didn't choose one family over another, the first thing they say is that the adoption profiles were too confusing. They also talk about how it was really hard to get to know them, and it was just too hard to engage with their profile. There are a few different variations of this that come up quite often. 

First, if you're matching with an agency attorney or consultant, they will often say that it was too hard to get to their profile because there was a PDF that was emailed to them, and it took too long to download. So they couldn't really get a complete experience, or they were trying to download it on their phone and it was a poor experience because they were trying to like expand it and like pinch it in and zoom in and try to move all around on a piece of paper that wasn't meant to really kind of live on their phone. They also say that there was just so much information and it was just too overwhelming. 

So having your profile be intentional about what you're sharing to what level of detail based upon the way that they're going to be consuming your profile really makes a difference. If it's not engaging and easy to engage with, then it is not a profile that someone will continue to spend the effort and time into getting to know you. That is the bottom line behind a lot of it. If they have to spend a lot of effort and time getting to know you, then they're going to move on to someone else because that is just human nature. 

Step Five: The content needs to fit the context around it

Finally, step number five is the content needs to fit the context around it. This means you need to have the right content based on what they're looking for at the moment. Now you may say, how in the world do I figure that out? There's a little bit of common sense that goes into this. If they are looking at hopeful adoptive families in a Facebook group that have posted on an opportunity, they want to know the basic information about you. They don't want 12 paragraphs and 20 pictures. They want to know something that is specific to what they've posted and shared, what the question that they have asked or what they're looking for. So being fit to the context is really important. Again, I've shared that the level of depth of the information that you share should vary based on the profile element. And that is entirely true when it comes to the context as well. The context has a large part to do with what you're sharing. 

Making A Great Adoption Profile

Well, there you have it, 5 steps to make an excellent adoption profile. I trust that this has been very valuable for you and if so, jump into the Facebook group where we will be deep diving on this even more through this upcoming week.

Remember, anything is possible with the right plan and support, and I have got your back every step of the way. See you soon, friend!

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!