You need a business card  

Business cards are useful  little things – you can scrawl cartoons and shopping lists on the back of them, use em’ to scrape jam and butter on your toast when the snack van runs out of plastic knives, or even fashion a make-shift finger catapult to flick peas and wads of gravy-soaked bubblegum-wrappers at your baby brother.

Great!  

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I’ve always loved business cards.

There’s just something irrepressibly awesome about them.

Okay, okay - perhaps that’s an ever-so-slight overstatement.

But having a professionally designed, well printed business card in your pocket is certainly a very cool feeling. For better or worse, a business card helps to reinforce your identity – this is who I am, and this is what I do.

But what is the real purpose of a business card exactly?

Most folks in the industry would say that a good business card – or at least, the very best business cards – are designed to say ‘hello’ ( hopefully in the loudest, most pleasant way possible!!).

So picture yourself for a moment –you’re mingling at a party or a meeting –or some other event of a professional nature. You spot someone across the room who you’d really like to know a little better. A potential client, a company CEO, a friend of a friend, Englebert Humperdinck - whatever.  You walk over and say hello in the usual way; reach into your jacket pocket, pull a card out, and -pinched between thumb and forefinger - hand one over. 

Your new acquaintance takes the card, smiles, and rolls it over a few times between their fingers; subconsciously feeling the quality of the card, the thickness of the stock, the glossiness of the finish. Better hope you didn’t get your cards printed up on a library copy machine, or you might be off to a bad start! You never quite know when you're talking to a fellow with the emotional depth of a plastic dog bowl. In any case, cheap cards don’t exactly scream ‘(let's) DO THE BUSINESS' (like that guy with the gravelly voice who used to do the Clare Valley Toyota ads on TV. Do the business!)*

Anyway, after the first few seconds, your potential contact might glance at the card itself –but is the design professional? Eye catching at least? Something they’d be proud to keep in their own wallet - and perhaps even pass onto friends and colleagues in the near future? How thick is the card – will it last? Can you write on it?

If you left a stack in a shop somewhere, would anyone be compelled to pick one up?

And then, there’s the all important issue of communication. What is the card saying? More importantly, what are you trying to say? Here we begin to dabble in the dark-art of branding.  If your business deals in 'fun', one would hope you’ve got a pretty funky looking business card. In contrast, if you happen to ply your trade in a more ‘serious’ line of work – stock brokering or selling patchwork quilt covers stuffed with 100% albino yak-hair for example - a neon pink business card plastered with day-glow Mickey Mouse stickers might not inspire the kind of confidence and credibility you're looking for.

There's always a massive grey area of course - you might be a rock n’ roll funeral director or something,

It just depends on your particular situation and understanding what works, what doesn't - and, more importantly, what's right for you..

More questions to answer: is the information on your card clear and readable?  Do you have a name, email address, post-box number, location and website listed? How about your phone and mobile details? A list of products and services?
Always handy.   

Finally, the most important thing of all is - are your cards environmentally friendly? (Click here to read about my new Carbon offset scheme)

There are so many things to think about when designing an effective business card – but I’m proud to say that it’s one of the things I’m really, really good at. I love designing business cards. I love the smell of a freshly printed box of glossy standard's, and the feel of a well cut matt celloglaze 'slimline'. They can say so much for relatively little money.

In fact, I think business cards are more important than just about everything else in your marketing tool box - aside from a big smile, a warm handshake and a big old bag of confidence.

A good, high quality business card is an absolute must in my opinion.  

They get passed on. People keep and collect them. They last for ages and contain all your contact information. Plus, they make you feel like a million bucks every time you snap your arm forward and pass one on. Business cards, correctly distributed, can directly contribute to your personal and financial success.

So  - if you don’t have a card, or think your company (or boss) could use a new one – get one! Preferably through me!

(not least because in 2009, I personally commit to carbon-offset all my cards through trees for life - gotta look after the environment!)

Cheers everyone -happy..erm..carding.

Note

* that sounds incredibly superficial - not the Clare Valley Toyota reference, but the suggestion that someone could possibly judge your business acumen based on a pissy ten by five centimetre piece of glorified cardboard of all things. I mean, come ooooon.

Fancy someone actually judging you on the car you drive, the house you own (or don’t), the clothes you wear - madness - pure madness I say!

 In fact, if anyone out there ever even attempts to judge your humanity based solely on a business card, let it be known you have my explicit blessing to give them a good (non-lethal) kick in the pants for being such a raving imbecile. Give me call and I’ll be right over with a bag of quick-setting concrete, a twelve by four length of plastic pipe and a big bucket of liquidized cow manure (and I'll leave the rest to your imagination)