How To Make A Great Adoption Video

If you have decided or been asked by your adoption agency to make an adoption profile video, you are likely struggling with what to say, not to say, and what to do in the video. Am I right? Well, I want you to know that is perfectly normal. It can feel pretty overwhelming to think about sitting down to bear your heart and soul, hoping that someone will pick you from a few short minutes of video footage. Or at least that is how I felt and how one of my clients recently described it to me.

Well, don’t worry, friend. You are never alone when it comes to creating and sharing your adoption profile, I am always here to help. In this blog post, I will share how I outline adoption profile videos for my clients and give you a few quick tips to help your video stand out when expectant parents are watching them.

Does your adoption profile stand out?

Having an adoption profile video is a great way to stand out from the crowd of hopeful adoptive families. In fact, many birth families I have spoken with will share memories from the adoption profile videos they watched and compare and contrast the families through that versus their profile books. This is not surprising as the average American watches 19 hours a week of video online, according to Hubspot.

It is important to note that the quality of your video impacts how expectant parents view your family. I have had many expectant parents tell me that when they see a more “high quality” video, they feel like that family put more effort into their adoption profile, and they appreciate that. So being the curious person I am, I had to dig into that with them and understand what those “high quality” profiles had in common and why those videos felt high quality.

So, of course being the step-by-step queen when it comes to adoption profiles, I had to put together an easy-to-follow framework to help my clients with their adoption videos. And because I believe in having your back every step of the way, I wanted to share it with you too!

7 steps to making a great adoption video

Make it feel like an extension of your adoption profile.

Make sure that your adoption profile video feels like it fits with the rest of your adoption profile elements, whether that be your adoption profile book, whether that be through social media sites, your adoption, profile website, or anything of that nature. They all need to feel consistent in one thought. Now, consistency does not mean that it's the same outfits, or that it's the same day, or that it's even the same haircut, for that matter. You just need to consistently tell your story in the same way through all the different touch points to begin to feel familiar and comfortable with the expectant family.

2. Must create an emotional connection (go back to last week’s video to learn more)

If you're struggling with how to make an emotional connection, check out last week's blog post, where you can learn more about the framework that I use with my clients through that. But you want that emotional connection to come through in the story you told in your profile video.

3. Must be focused → have an outline Must tell your story in ACTION → break it into little clips

That focus needs to be on your story. But you won't not only want to share your story, but you want to show it in action. So if one of the key things that you share about your family is that you like to travel, then you want to share clips of a trip that you've taken, something that you've just shot with your iPhone, you guys doing whatever it is on a particular trip that you can share. Now, if you don't have video, don't panic, it could be photos. And it could be a voiceover aspect of something that you're saying share these three photos while I'm saying these two sentences. And so that you're talking about how you love to travel and giving an example of a trip that you've taken or something you learned on a trip that you've taken, whatever it is to show your story in action. But it's not a ton of stories. It's a focused list of stories in action that make a difference in how memorable your adoption profile video will be to expectant families.

4. Filmed vertically with good lighting and sound

The next thing is that you want to make sure from a quality perspective that you're staying focused on filming vertically. So simply holding your phone up or propping your phone up to something to share more about you is a great way to ensure that you're going to end up with a high-quality profile if you have natural light coming at you. So, where I am in this studio at this moment, I have a light on just the other side of this camera right behind me. But you could also be sitting in front of a window with natural lighting coming in. Maybe you want to do that kind of call it earlier in the day, middle of the day. It depends upon the shadows, the trees, and all those types. Then you could simply open your laptop in front of you, use a pop socket on the back of your phone, slide your phone on top of your computer, adjust it to the right angle, and hit record. It can be as simple as that when it comes to creating high-quality content for your profile. You can be sitting and talking to the camera, or if you want to film your family outside playing in the backyard with a dog, then simply take your phone out until that on a bright sunny day. It doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to require a special camera, or God forbid, it does not have to require a camera crew with mics and booms and 1000s of dollars invested.

5. 3-5 minutes in length max

Assign time amounts to each bucket as you write the outline, and make sure you are recording in chunks. This really goes in with the sixth tip at the same time is that you can film each section one at a time.

6. Film each section at a time

When you sit down to think about your video, you want to put down the blank piece of paper and just write out in 30 seconds segments, three to five minutes. You want to sit down and think, what does she need to know about us? Well, she needs to know who we are right? So maybe you take 30 seconds to introduce yourself. Maybe she needs to know where you live. So then you want to take 30 seconds to talk about the state that you live in the home that you live in the neighborhood, the community, and things of that nature. Then when you're thinking about that, think about what could you be showing in action. For example, if you live in a beautiful neighborhood, a family-friendly neighborhood in the suburban Chicago area you can show that.

Sometimes filming it in chunks will give you a moment to shake it off. I don't own the song with Taylor Swift, but kind of imagine that song right, you're gonna shake it off, right? But you kind of get that energy going again to help you film the next chunk. Filming in little chunks is also going to help whoever's editing the video together for you really help you pick out the best clips of the story that you tell.

7. Have a professional video editor put it together.

I suggest you have a high-quality professional video editor put it all together for you. In the end, the stitching of your video together doesn't have to be a huge financial investment. As a matter of fact, you can do it cheap and cheerful for well less than $1,000. Or at least I know that's what we do as a company. And so you can end up with this high-quality profile video that tells your family’s story and these little vignettes you filmed. But in the end, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like something complete, cohesive, and one thought and one breath. And that's what expectant families tell me whenever they review the profile videos we create for our clients. They say it helps them to get a better understanding of who they were. It felt like they put in the extra effort and went the extra mile to make sure that I felt comfortable with what life would be like for this child in their family. And that helps them feel more confident in choosing you as the hopeful adoptive family that they want to match with.

There you have it the 7 steps to making a great adoption profile video. Remember anything is possible with the right plan and support and I have your back every step of the way! See you soon friend!

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