With festival season starting soon, and all the festival parties and networking ahead it’s time to think about designing and printing your business cards.
“Aren’t they old-school?” you ask. “They’ll just throw them out!”
Indeed, you may be right. The business card has a hard time competing with the smart phone, but then again it may not need to.
Previously, I’ve mentioned the strategy of wearing a blazer or similar piece of clothing that has pockets on both sides of your body. Business cards to hand out in the pocket on one side, and business cards collecting in the pocket on the other (so you don’t mistakenly hand out someone else’s card). It’s still a good strategy.
Why?
1. Not everyone has their cell phone handy (to update) at a party.
2. Not everyone wants to pull out their cell phone to add everyone they meet to their cell phone contact list immediately.
3. A business card can be full colour and eye-catching and provide more message about who you are compared with a text note or name and number added to a cell phone.
4. People respond well to pictures. Promoting a film or book? The card can be the film poster or the book cover on one side and information on the flip side.
5. White space on the card or its back is useful for adding extra notes about your networking conversation (so the recipient will have a memory trigger about you after the event is done). Of course, you’ll need a pen with you too to take advantage of such notetaking.
So… call is a business card yesterday or a “promotional you” card today, it’s still a useful networking tool.
Now, it’s over to you! Design an eye-catching “promotional you” card. You know the recipient won’t keep it forever, so it can be business card sized, small bookmark sized, or some other relevant shape that you dream up (but keep it small, pocket-sized).
Then off to the printers before the festival parties begin!
Cheers & happy networking to you,
Deb
“…and uh, I owe you from the thing with the guy in the place and I’ll never forget it.”