Every hopeful adoptive parent wants to make their adoption profile stand out.

After all, standing out could help you get noticed, which in turn could help you make a connection with a woman who’s considering adoption for her baby, which in turn could help you find an open adoption match and become a parent.

So how do you do it? How do you set yourself apart and grab the attention of an expectant mother with an adoption plan?

There’s no one way to do it. In fact, there are three ways.

Great writing

Great writing is the foundation of a great profile. It’s the first part of the process and the one ingredient that hold everything together.

Great writing makes a great first impression. It grabs your attention and draws you in. Great adoption profile writing isn’t any different than another other kind of great writing: it’s about telling stories and creating an emotional connection with your reader.

It may sound hard, but it’s actually kind of easy: it starts with writing one sentence, and then another and another, until you reach the end.

Then it’s time to go back to the beginning and start the process all over again, rewriting and refining the parts you’ve already written so that they’re clear and concise.

A profile doesn’t tell your life story. It focuses on three or four key themes and captures the key moments in your life that define you as an individual, as a couple, and as a potential parent.

A good profile is a character sketch made up of snapshots of your life. But it also an exercise in empathy. After all, in order for an expectant mother to care about you, you need to show that you care about her.

Put yourself in her shoes. What kinds of things do you think she’ll want to know? Write about what she needs to know about you, not what you want her to know.

Be sincere and write from the heart, but also be relevant. An expectant mother considering adoption doesn’t care about your wedding. But she does care about how long you’ve been together since that tells about her about the stability of your relationship.

Similarly, an expectant mother considering adoption doesn’t care about the names of your nephews or nieces. But she does care about how you interact with them them and other children since that will give her a sense about how you might relate to her child.

Great Design

Your words could hit all the right notes and cover all the right ground, but if the design doesn’t stand out, you won’t either. So what makes good design? How do you ensure your profile looks as good as it sounds?

Good design is hard to describe yet easy to spot. At the risk of oversimplifying things, good design appeals to your senses. It grabs your attention and gets under your skin.

So how to apply this to your adoption profile? The same way you do with your writing. Great design captures the essence of who you are. It tells your story simply and directly. Layout and typography are important.

But by far the most important design element in your profile are your photos. After all, they’re the first things an expectant mother considering adoption will see when she clicks on your website or flips through your book.

Great photos are evocative. They set scenes and convey emotion. They say things we can’t put into words. So make sure you optimize yours as much as you can and tie them back to your copy.

If you mention how much you love scrapbooking and how you plan to create a lifebook for your baby, don’t forget to include a picture of you scrapbooking in your profile.

If you write about how much you like to sail or bowl or do yoga, make sure there’s at least one picture of you on the water, in a bowling alley or on a yoga mat.

Keep things clean and simple. Rather than dress up your profile with all kinds of colors, fonts and images, keep the spotlight on you.  Weave your words and photos together in a way that’s easy on the eye and tugs at the heart.

Remember, you have only a few seconds to make an impression. The more difficult you make it for an expectant mother to find out about you, the greater the chance she’ll throw her hands up in the air and move on to another profile.

Great marketing

Great writing and design will get you only so far. In order to really stand out and take your profile to the next level, you need to get noticed. After all, if an expectant mother can’t find you, what’s the point of spending all that time searching for the right words and photos for your profile in the first place?

That’s where marketing comes into play. For many, marketing is a dirty word, especially when children are involved. But don’t let that throw you off. You’re not doing anything wrong.

All you want is to become a parent. And that’s a very powerful message. Marketing is simply the way to get your message out there so that the person looking for you can find you.

There are many ways to spread the word. It all depends on how much time and money you have at your disposal and on your creativity and resourcefulness. For today’s Wired generation, having an online presence — through your own website, blog, or on an online parent profile service like ours — is a must. From Weebly to WordPress, there are tons of free tools you can use to establish yourself on the web.

If you think of your website as your central hub, think of social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest as your outposts. They can help you get your message out, and best of all, they won’t cost you a cent.

The only investment is your time. If, on the other hand, you have a budget and money to spend, you might want to consider launching a highly targeted outreach plan with pay-per-click advertsiging tools such as Adwords or Facebook.

When it comes to standing out and getting your profile noticed by an expectant mother considering adoption, doing one thing right just doesn’t cut it.

To really make an impact and set yourself apart, all of the element have to be in place — the writing, the design and the marketing. Think of your profile as a package deal and keep working on it until you’re satisfied that all of the parts fit together.

What do you think makes an adoption profile stand out? What was the hardest part about putting your profile together? What do you think a expectant mother who’s considering adoption for her baby looks for in a parent profile? Share your comments in the space below.