Now for the one thing that seemed to really set us apart, we made a personal website. It seems crazy that this is not done more often but a number of people were somewhat amazed by this, from the adoption counselor to the judge. It seemed obvious and logical to us and it was something anyone can do in just a little bit of time. We spent so much time on making the book and we already had all of the information typed and ready to go so why not publish it and get it out there? We used Google Sites which can be used very easily to make a very basic website and get it up and running in minutes. We were able to register for www.jaredandkatieadopt.com for $10 for a year and use Sites to make the web page. We did not want anything fancy, just another way for someone to see our bio and have ways to contact us. It was easy to pick a template for the layout and make a page that followed along with the sections in our booklet. Adding pictures is as easy as a few clicks. We put this together in less than two hours by using a template and just copying and pasting the information that we had already typed.
It was also very important to have multiple ways for people to contact us. When we created www.jaredandkatie.com, we also got an email address using the jaredandkatieadopt.com domain name which we made available for anyone looking to email us. We also put up our twitter name, @jaredkatieadopt, as well as a 1-800 number because we did not want to post our personal numbers online. We registered that through Kall8 and if someone called that number it forwarded to Katie’s phone. We also posted the .PDF version of our letter so people could download it as well.
Alright, we have our booklet done and a website done, how do we get people there?
Thursday, February 16, 2012
57 Days
I've been meaning to write a post for a while but with an infant things can be a little hectic. I wanted to share some of the things that we did that helped us welcome our little girl home 57 days after we started actively looking. The main things I'm going to mention are our own website, twitter, Google Adwords and Google Analytics but first, just a little bit of history. I’m going to post each one separately as I finish them but hopefully they should all be done today.
I'm not spend much time on our back story at all but basically we started our adoption journey at the end of June and we currently have a seven week old baby girl. June was our first meeting with the agent that we chose, Adoption Center for Family Building in Skokie, IL, just outside of Chicago. That was the initial consultation and discussions about how this process worked and the next steps. We would have a few more meetings with them as we completed our home study which we finished in October.
The next big step was our Dear Birthmother letter and bio. This took quite a bit of time to get through a couple of revisions of the first draft but once we were satisfied with it we forwarded the wording to our adoption coordinator and set up a meeting for the following week in order to review it. When we sat down with her, we really expected her to want to change a lot of it but lucky she was really pretty happy with it. Some changes were made with how we worded some things and we cleaned up some areas where we maybe had too much detail and added spots that needed a little more explanation. We were really happy with her feedback and we also spent some time looking at examples of other books to get an idea of a layout that we liked and we decided on what pictures to have throughout the book. We left with a good idea of how the book was going to look and we got started on it when we got home.
We used Microsoft Publisher for the layout. If you can use Microsoft Word you can use Publisher. It was very easy to get all of the txt where we wanted it and insert pictures and borders and get everything formatted how we wanted it. Our printed book was done on four pages of legal sized paper, printed on both sides and folded in half for a total of sixteen pages with only the back page left blank. Publisher was great because it set up everything to print automatically to get the pages in the proper ordert o fold into a booklet. That might not sound like anything special but take 4 sheets of paper and fold them into a booklet and then write the page number on each of them just like you were reading it. Now separate them back into individual sheets and you can see where printing double sided and folding it could get messy. It was super easy to take it to Kinkos, stick it in a self service kiosk and have a beautiful book printed in a few minutes. The other very important feature that Publisher has is the ability to export to .PDF format. This was for our agency’s website so it could be downloaded by anyone using their site. Viola! We have a physical and digital copy of our book. Up next, the website.
I'm not spend much time on our back story at all but basically we started our adoption journey at the end of June and we currently have a seven week old baby girl. June was our first meeting with the agent that we chose, Adoption Center for Family Building in Skokie, IL, just outside of Chicago. That was the initial consultation and discussions about how this process worked and the next steps. We would have a few more meetings with them as we completed our home study which we finished in October.
The next big step was our Dear Birthmother letter and bio. This took quite a bit of time to get through a couple of revisions of the first draft but once we were satisfied with it we forwarded the wording to our adoption coordinator and set up a meeting for the following week in order to review it. When we sat down with her, we really expected her to want to change a lot of it but lucky she was really pretty happy with it. Some changes were made with how we worded some things and we cleaned up some areas where we maybe had too much detail and added spots that needed a little more explanation. We were really happy with her feedback and we also spent some time looking at examples of other books to get an idea of a layout that we liked and we decided on what pictures to have throughout the book. We left with a good idea of how the book was going to look and we got started on it when we got home.
We used Microsoft Publisher for the layout. If you can use Microsoft Word you can use Publisher. It was very easy to get all of the txt where we wanted it and insert pictures and borders and get everything formatted how we wanted it. Our printed book was done on four pages of legal sized paper, printed on both sides and folded in half for a total of sixteen pages with only the back page left blank. Publisher was great because it set up everything to print automatically to get the pages in the proper ordert o fold into a booklet. That might not sound like anything special but take 4 sheets of paper and fold them into a booklet and then write the page number on each of them just like you were reading it. Now separate them back into individual sheets and you can see where printing double sided and folding it could get messy. It was super easy to take it to Kinkos, stick it in a self service kiosk and have a beautiful book printed in a few minutes. The other very important feature that Publisher has is the ability to export to .PDF format. This was for our agency’s website so it could be downloaded by anyone using their site. Viola! We have a physical and digital copy of our book. Up next, the website.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Traffic
We've been happy with the traffic we are getting to our site through all of the different avenues we are using to tell our story. It is exciting to see the number of people that are taking a look at our site but just wish we had a more interaction. One view led to a conversation with a birthmother because she found our site which is super encouraging. We have me some great people on twitter and other sites who are in different stages of their journey and we have received comments from birthmothers who have previously placed a child, to people in our situation, to families giving encouragement and sharing their story.We love questions and comments about us and our site, every little bit helps. And, as always, sharing our site and our story with people you know and your followers is something we can't even begin to thank you enough for!
www.jaredandkatieadopt.com
www.jaredandkatieadopt.com
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Another Step Closer
Got a chance to go over the second draft of our Dear Birthmother letter/bio today. We only have a few more tweaks to make before printing a test copy and one final review before printing them and having them ready to go. Once those are ready we will be active on our agency's website, which is www.centerforfamily.com. Also, any potential match that comes to the agency could potentially see us as well. We will keep up with the advertising and twitter posts and blog posts and everything else we are doing.
We've made a few tweaks to our site as we try to improve it, as always let us know what you think! goo.gl/eBRUS
We've made a few tweaks to our site as we try to improve it, as always let us know what you think! goo.gl/eBRUS
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Busy Week with Updates
After having our site up for a little under two weeks we've spent a lot of time changing the format and trying to make it look a little better. Hopefully the changes go over well. It's been exciting seeing that people are looking at our site and spending some time there getting to know us and our story.
We are still finalizing the final copy of our letter with our adoption counselor. As soon as we get it finalized we will get copies printed and it will also go up on their site at www.centerforfamily.com.
We did have our first conversation with a birthmother. It was pretty nerve racking. She came across our site and reached out to us. Don't know where it will end up but maybe, hopefully its the start of something.
We are still finalizing the final copy of our letter with our adoption counselor. As soon as we get it finalized we will get copies printed and it will also go up on their site at www.centerforfamily.com.
We did have our first conversation with a birthmother. It was pretty nerve racking. She came across our site and reached out to us. Don't know where it will end up but maybe, hopefully its the start of something.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Amazing the tools that are available
The tools that are available today are amazing. In just a few days we have received advice and support from complete strangers thanks to this blog and twitter. I'm becoming almost obsessive compulsive checking out our website's traffic. A lot of it is from people checking out our twitter profile but everything helps. It is exciting to see some of our ads getting traffic. Every time I see a little a spike in traffic I wonder if that is the click that bring us together? I hope so.
Our Profile
Our Profile
Monday, October 31, 2011
Big day of Firsts!
A very important day of firsts for us. This is the first day of really started to try and spread our story and bio out. We have our first followers on Twitter, I see that we are having our first visitors to our site, and our Dear Birthmother letter is at least being seen by people. It is exciting and we know if will be challenging and difficult and we are looking forward to this journey greatly.
Please check out our webpage and bio and help spread our story around.
www.jaredandkatieadopt.com
Please check out our webpage and bio and help spread our story around.
www.jaredandkatieadopt.com
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