RESOLVE Article on Developing a Strong Family Profile
RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, recently published an article I wrote titled “Developing a Strong Family Profile.” They published it in their Spring 2010 newsletter called RESOLVE for the journey and beyond.
In the article I cover 3 important tips that will help prospective adoptive families strengthen their adoption profile.
- Write From the Heart, Not to an Audience. Be genuine with what you write and do not “target” your message to any particular group. Remember, you may just as easily meet a teenager on your adoption journey as you are to meet a 30 year old woman with 2 kids.
- Show More Than Tell. This tip highlights the importance of telling short stories instead of simply listing facts. Anecdotes are more memorable and more likely to strike a connection with the reader. Many families writes a short, factual statement similar to the first example below. Compare this to the second example, however, and you will see the power that even a one-sentence story can have.
- “Sue likes to cook.”
- “Nothing beats the sweet smell of Sue’s homemade caramel rolls fresh out of the oven on a brisk Sunday morning.”
- Include Attention-Grabbing Photographs and Captions. If you were going to read 5, 10, or 15 or more family profiles, would you really read every word from front to back or would you develop some kind of shortcut to get through them more quickly? When you read magazines, newspapers, or websites pages, how do you decide what to read in detail?
The truth is that most of us tend to use pictures to make an immediate judgment as to whether we want to commit to reading an article. The same holds true for expectant parents who are reading tons of profiles. They are likely to look at the first few pictures first, then the captions for those pictures, then the other pictures and captions, and then, only if the pictures and captions are making a connection with the expectant parents, will they commit to reading the text. That’s why pictures are captions are incredibly important.
If you thought these were useful tips, please read the entire article and in fact, read the entire newsletter. RESOLVE always includes some wonderful, thoughtful articles and this edition is no different.
We have all heard the saying that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, right? That is exactly why families must create an outstanding adoption profile.
We offer more tips and many examples in our adoption profile course. We also provide professional profile reviews and graphic design expertise for those who want additional one-on-one support with this important part of the adoption process.
