How to write the ideal Facebook post

In the Sperm Donation World online communities, there is a donor list to scroll through and private message from, however this is only a voluntarily list to be on and not all donors elect to be on it. It is no secret that recipients outweigh the number of donors and that many donors don’t wish to be inundated by every single member that joins as it becomes very time consuming for them and they can only help so many people at any one time. There are many picky donors (and recipients for that matter) that lurk on the page waiting for that ideal post to pop up that intrigues them into potentially reaching out. Ultimately the more thorough your post is the more responses you’re going to receive therefore giving you the most amount options in picking your potential ideal match.

Mandatory Post Requirements

In our communities there are only 2 mandatory post requirements they’re.

• Location: Because your donor/recipient needs to know if you’re accessible to them.
• Methods: The methods you’re open to using eg. Clinic, Artificial Insemination, Natural Insemination or open to discussion can be listed. It is important for the integrity of the group that right people are contacting you and you’re being approached by the right people who respect your boundaries, and it helps avoid uncomfortable encounters. If a person ignores your methods in post they will be hit with a ban, it’s a great way of keeping the standards of the group high.

These 2 mandatory requirements should be listed at the top of your post for several tactical reasons. Firstly, many people get into the groove writing paragraphs upon paragraphs all about themselves, then miss out one of those details all for that post not to be accepted. Secondly it’s courtesy a person reading your post shouldn’t have to read a long winded post that goes for 5 minutes, just to find out you don’t apply to them because of location etc. So correct format is Location…. Tick! Methods….. Tick! Now let’s read about you!

Short but Sweet Posts

Because there are only 2 mandatory requirements you can technically write a short post, but you still must ensure that it is sweet and by that, I mean Manners. A please and Thankyou doesn’t go astray.

An Example of a short but sweet post would be as follows.

“Hello potential donors, I am located in Beverly Hills, California and I am open to discussing methods. Thankyou.”

Something as simple and nice as a greeting, a please or thankyou helps sets the mood, and helps make the post look sincere. You don’t want to come across as if you’re barking orders, or being seen as entitled it simply isn’t appealing or enticing for anyone to want to reach out and respond to your post and for the community as a whole it simply isn’t a great look.

Some people have the idea of wanting to be private, and that they will share more details in private message, the problem with that theory is if you get no one responding to your post you then have no one to share that info with. Short but sweet posts, while accepted are not great or ideal they signify a lack of effort, that perhaps a baby does not mean as much to you as the next person who has posted below. The Facebook like button function is a good measuring tool on how good a post might be, and short but sweet posts seem to lack the same amount of likes as a well thought out post does.

Serial donors prefer short but sweet posts, because they’re more likely happy to donate to you regardless.

Adding content to your post

Although short but sweet posts come across as effortless, most of the time they are due to not knowing what to write in a post, being flustered, overwhelmed, paranoid about coming across corny. Hopefully, these suggestions will help add fulfilling content to your post that makes your post to irresistible for them to turn their back on.  Although this guide is written as if it perhaps you’re a recipient you can make the modifications to suit for donors.

• Travelling:  Are you looking for a donor within a certain set distance? Or are you willing to travel to other states? Are you willing to pay for your donor to fly to you? If you’re open to travelling, then that allows others to inquire that might not normally would. Are you willing to cover costs for your donor to travel eg. Fuel money. If you don’t want to travel then that avoids wasting your time talking to people that couldn’t realistically help you. If a person doesn’t wish to travel or pay for a donor to travel and states that, then that should be respected unless the donor wants to cover the cost himself.
• Marital Status: Are you planning on the Single Mother by Choice option, Are you in a relationship? How long have you been in a relationship? How long have you been thinking about having a baby? Have you given up on dating?
• Family and Friend Network: Does your family and friends know are they supportive? Do you have a good support network?
• Time frame: Are you looking at starting immediately? Do you have something that is tying you down that needs to get out of the way first? Time frames should be respected in posts, you start trying to have a baby at a time that suits you and others should be respectful of that.
• Positive types of future contact: We keep our posts positive only so if you’re happy for a donor, to be an uncle figure, co-parenter, meet up for periodic visits, or just internet updates and photos. Open to contact once child asks for it and Happy to negotiate and chat further about level of contact are all options that can be included in your post.
• Age: If you are more older listing your age can be beneficial as it indicates you need a serious donor that recognizes that you may not have a lot of time left. Also, men with average or below average counts tend to not waste yours or their time as a chance of conception can be quite low and men with high counts are more confident in being able to successfully help you achieve the result. You can also request an age limit or range on the other party.
• Health: Prospective parties ideally want there to be a pregnancy sooner rather than later so it’s less time consuming on them and also, they’re lured by hearing you doing the right things to improve your chances of conception. Taking Vitamins and Supplements is a major draw card and shows a person’s determination in creating a baby. While some people may have fertility issues, if a person sees they’re going into great efforts to increase fertility they’re more inspired to help.
• Future help: It may be important to you that the donor you use the first time is open to helping you or your partner to future siblings. Or if you’re the donor posting you will honour siblings.
• Contract: While we don’t go into specifics of contracts and what we believe they’re for in our posts, we can declare are intent to want to have one and all the rest is left to private discussion.
• Testing: Genetic testing can be requested and often paid for by the recipient if it hasn’t been done previously. Sexual health testing for STD’s can be requested in post, Sperm Analysis also (A sperm concentration test can be found in the Grand Daddy Insemination kit)
• What you are looking for: While some people might call it design a baby, it’s your baby and you’re entitled to make choices on features you’re looking for. You may have preference to a certain ethnicity, ancestry origin, height, eye colour, hair colour, blood type etc. Be careful of wording you could say preferably or must have. If you’re being direct respecting one’s post to save both parties time should be respected.
• Photos: Including photos of yourself can showcase the life you live and the things you enjoy, that help capture the attention of potential matches.
• About you: This paints a picture of who you’re and what type of life you could give your child.
• Your Personality, Were you a nerd or a class clown at school? Are you introverted or extroverted? Are you shy, funny, quirky?
•  What are your hobbies? Do you like reading books, relaxing, gardening, cooking? Or are you outdoorsy camping, sporty, hiking. Do you have fur-babies?
• Your Career/Occupation? How do you plan on supporting the child and give it everything it needs.
• Your culture and background? Diversity is fascinating and interesting.

Things to Avoid in Posts

• Negative/No Contact: In our communities, we have Donor Conceived People and other child welfare advocates that deem it offensive and unsuitable to suggest such a thing. Level of contact or lack of contact is something that needs to be recorded in your chat history as evidence to your agreement. So keep this type of negotiation to private message, as the post won’t get accepted in the group.
• Poor Grammar: It can be easy to do, I am guilty of it also time to time, especially on a small device such as a phone. Before hitting the submit button, have a read of your post and make sure you’re happy with it.
• Wrong terminology: Don’t try and reinvent the wheel or write something that is banned in a cryptic manner. No slang words, No Racism (Correct terminology eg. Caucasian instead of white)
• Last-minute donor requests: Sometimes a donor might not be able to make it for whatever reason that cycle and you have baby fever and want to go for the hail Mary. Unfortunately, group and integrity safety measures won’t allow last-minute posts. So, when you do your first post identify possible donors that are happy to be a backup option. (Anything under a week won’t be accepted)
• Previous negative experiences: Coming across as a negative Nancy in a post that is meant to inspire people to want to help you, doesn’t help your cause and people will be less inclined to message you. We have reporting measures in this group that deal with issues, and more often than not the negative experience came from an unregulated page or app that had nothing to do with this community. Keep the postpositive, so don’t be judged as negative.
• Threatening Behaviour: You’re free from discriminatory behavior, so don’t threaten people against doing it, if it was to happen send screenshots to the admin and appropriate action will take place. Coming across as aggressive and confronting in a post isn’t a good look, so keep it all positive.
• Posting for someone else: As adults, we should all be able to speak for ourselves, nothing worst for a donor to be talking to someone they aren’t directly helping it’s just impractical. If you want to help a friend or family member out that is fine, you can write the post together, but it is to be submitted by their account. From there if the other party is cool with it, you can then add this 3rd party into a group chat.
• If you’re going through a clinic that’s fine but no shout-outs in the post, we’re not a free advertising service for them, specific clinic details can be sorted in a private message.
• Requests for an Anonymous Post: These are not accepted either. They simply do not work in a massive community, the admin gets all the notifications in their newsfeed and all the people messaging and inquiring to us, we simply do not have the time to facilitate this in such a massive community. This is a closed group, so it will not appear on the newsfeed. If you have peers in the group and you want to post, I suggest temporarily blocking them.
• Outside Facebook contacting eg. phone number, email addresses, other platforms such as Instagram. (In order to run a functional community, we try to keep everything via messenger as a transcript record)
• Don’t list a restriction or pre-requisite of donations that you expect donors to limit themselves to as all donors have different ways of doing things and you may find that a donor with higher numbers may be more transparent and honest than a donor who may “claim” they have lower numbers, regardless this is a conversation left to be had in private not in your post, things that are good to ask your potential donor in private are “Are you open to disclosing a list of your other recipients and donor children’s names for the safety of all involved”, “Do you run a facebook mothers group to allow all mothers to communicate freely between each other”.

Once your post has been accepted

Facebook has to deal with lots of spam from spam accounts, so they have set up a message request folder, a lot of the messages will be found there, so be sure to check it. Many of you will not know about it! Remember the group is what you make it if you feel someone ignores your post requests and contacts you feel free to be firm with them and also report them to the admin, screenshots are great for painting a clear story. We want to keep the standards high and have good people in the community that respects everyone’s posts. If a person is not respecting you Facebook has this awesome thing called the block feature.

If your method is Ai you may want to get your order in for the relevant kit that suits you if you haven’t already. Many have left it to the very last minute and in covid times with slower transport shipments are arriving slower.

Start chatting, be considerate that the person contacting you might not be for you but they have feelings as well. If you’re not interested in someone for example you can say thank you for your offer but I have started chatting to someone else already, or I will get back to you in due course.

Remember to report any inappropriate behavior.

If you see a peer or friend post

While your friends and family on your Facebook friends list can’t see you post from their newsfeed, members of the group can. As this method continues to grow in popularity you may have a friend or peer in the community. Their privacy is to be respected it’s not a gossip session. Something about planning a family is a special memorable moment that you have no right is spoiling for them. So remain considerate, until they make a public announcement of it.