Match Your Adoption For Free

Match Your Adoption for Free

Today’s blog post focuses on how to match your adoption for basically free. No, you don't have to spend years waiting to do so. My clients Sarah and Mark brought home their son in just five months. Matt and Kinsey matched their adoption in just ONE month. And they both did it the same way. They both shared their profile for free on social media. Don't worry, you don't have to only share your profile on social media to match your adoption for free. In this blog, I'm going to walk you through real-life case studies of my clients who've all matched their adoptions for free. 

The first thing that you need to know is that you're going to have to have different types of adoption profiles to do this. The first type that expectant parents want to see is an adoption profile website. You can think of this adoption profile website as being the modern-day version of an adoption profile book. Back in the day, expectant parents would be given a profile book to look through to decide whether or not you are the right family. And some adoption agencies or consultants still use these tools today. 

But I can tell you that expectant families tell me that they would much rather have a profile website just of you and about your family that they can look through any time they want to, and that they don't have to carry this big bulky book with them either. But 85% of expectant families tell me on that profile website, they want to see a profile video. You see video is the more common format these days of people learning and retaining information. Expectant parents tell me that it helps them get to know you on a deeper level. It helps them see your family values and what's important to you as a family when they can see it in live action. It's one thing to hear you say it but the combination of the two makes you way more memorable. 

So let me give you an example from my profile video from several years ago when we were trying to adopt our second child. We talked about how family was really important to us. So we took a video of our daughter playing with her cousins and took pictures of her playing with her cousins. And we incorporated that in our printed profile materials like our brochure, as well as inside our video. Next, we talked about how education was really important to us. That was a key family value for us. So we took videos of us playing with our daughter and going over shapes, colors, and numbers. We incorporated that into our video as well. Finally, I knew how important it was for expectant parents to hear from our friends and family about how we are as parents, so we asked them to speak on our behalf. 

Amanda and Brian were always interacting with our children. They would not so much babysit, but they would take our kids out to the movies out to dinner without us. We included that in our video too. We took that video and it was placed on our agency's website. And if you are working with an agency that allows you to have your own website, I highly suggest that you take the video that you create and put it on your website so that it is easier for expectant parents to get to know you. 

Once you've made this wonderful video and your website, the next thing you need to do is to get people to see it. More specifically people who are considering placing a child for adoption need to see it. Now you may be saying I don't know anybody that's considering placing a child for adoption. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here reading this blog. I get it. You want to make sure that you can share this in different places where people may come across your profile. 

Share Your Profile In Real Life

Let’s talk about ways that you can share your profile. There are non-social media ways to share your profile. You can use things like flyers, postcards, brochures, business cards, and things of that nature that you can share with businesses, churches, local nonprofits, friends, and family. The objective behind any of these ways that you can share your profile is that you make it easy for the person to receive it, and to also share it with someone else. But most importantly, when it gets in the hands of expectant parents, you make it easy for them to get to your website and to your video.

I had a client who posted a flyer on a bulletin board at a laundromat. The flyer was simple. It was just a beautiful photo of them with a headline that said “we are hoping to adopt” with a QR code that allowed someone to scan it from their phone and go to their website and their video. Someone did just that. An expectant parent was there washing her laundry and was considering placing her child for adoption. She scanned the QR code, and in the amount of time that it took for her clothes to wash and dry she read everything on their website, watched both of their videos, and sent a text message to them saying that she wanted to get to know them more. In just two weeks the hopeful adoptive family brought home their baby from a simple flyer that they had placed on a laundromat wall. 

I've also had other clients who have handed out business cards to their OBGYN, to their church, and local nonprofits. They have also followed a similar path with a simple “we are hoping to adopt” message with a QR code for someone to scan to learn more about them. The expectant parents reviewed their information on their website, reached out to them, formed a relationship, and ultimately picked them to parent their child. I’ve had clients match in a multitude of ways. One was simply a grandmother handing out a business card at church. That grandmother shared it with another grandmother who knew that her granddaughter was expecting the child and was considering placement for adoption. This family ultimately brought home that child to become their second daughter. 

Share Your Profile on Social Media

Now let's talk about some social media ways that you can match your adoption. The first and most common place that my clients match on social media is actually in those adoption-specific Facebook groups. I teach a specific formula that you can follow to create content or things that you can post on your adoption-specific Facebook page. I also teach a specific formula for engaging in those groups so that your profile is shown more often. You need to have an adoption-specific Facebook profile. Just posting in those groups from your personal profile isn't going to help someone get to know you. Instead, you want to be intentional about having content or post on an adoption-specific Facebook page. So that if you're in one of those groups, and someone sees you and they want to learn more about you, they'll go to click on your name. When they go to click on your name, they're going to look at your Facebook profile. You want that Facebook profile to be optimized for sharing the story of your family so that they might consider placing their child with you. 

I’ve also had a lot of clients that have matched on Facebook but not in those adoption-specific groups. They have joined other groups in their local community, or they've simply had friends and family share their posts from their Facebook page, and ultimately lead to a connection that way. 

While we're on this subject of social media, let me just answer a question that may be burning in the back of your mind. Do people match on Instagram? The reality is they do but not as frequently as they do on Facebook. There's something about the social nature of a more structured sharing process on Facebook that seems to be leading to more connections in actual adoptions than Instagram. If you want to learn more about how to match your adoption on social media check out this episode where I interviewed my clients Sarah and Mark who brought home their son in just five months.