Today I have only 2 business cards left after free business owner network last month. Designer asked me to provide him with content for new ones.

While front of the card is more or less clear (basic person / company information), back of the card is always a challenge. All my previous cards had blank backside and I think it is waste of paper.

So I did my little research going through 500+ cards I have collected over past 2 years and sorted them by back idea.

Quick tip: When designing cards, keep in mind to leave space for receiver to put notes on. They would like to remind themselves where they met you and how can they benefit from you. Glossy cards that you can’t write on is a bad solution.

Colorful background or Irrelevant photos

If you really want to spend money on printing bacground black, at least put logo on it or link to your website.

Colorful background and logo and/or slogon

This is very powerful solution if you want to remind people of your brand. Very often you can put there link or other contact information in small print below logo.

Bullet points

Be careful with bullet points as there isn’t much place at the back of the card. If you want to put 10 bullet points – don’t! Nobody will be able to read it. Three to five bullet points are the best.

Tag clouds

Pretty good as it tells people what can you do and highlights things you want them to notice.

Client names

I actually don’t know why people put their clients on the back of the cards. If they are popular – I don’t believe person really worked with all of them. If they are unpopular – I won’t even know them. I think tag cloud is much more beneficial than client names.

Request for action

If you are in medical, training or service business, then making next appointment, scheduling meeting or writing down next training session is a good selling point.

Product photo & slogon

If you selling product then photo with slogon should do it. And don’t forget your contact information

Unique

The more unique is card, the more there is possibility that it won’t be thrown away later in the evening. Think about how to make people to keep your card. Some make it bigger or smaller so it won’t fit with other business cards. Some make it transparent or opening like book. Maybe there is something that you can do with your card because of your business that some others can’t?

For more successful networking read 9 Networking Success Tips.

Update: Designer created design of my business card. I love it. It can have 3 different backgrounds. I love first one, others love 3rd one. How do you think? See my Business card (PDF)

Photo is from our companies 2y anniversary newsletter – I just love this cupcake

Lately I haven’t been writing much into my blog as I was working on our company website. I know the basics around social media marketing, but its just coming all together now in my head. I’m writing new content for our new homepage (its not released yet), creating twitter account, facebook page for company. Filling that with content and contacts… and that’s just start of all it. I still have to write some blog posts (as we will have blog in new website) and create LinkedIn page (and I get error all the time and support doesn’t support me). I went through different web development companies websites, got some ideas of keywords, descriptions and titles of pages. And then this weekend I have meeting with designer, who has his unique ideas about our website (and he is best designer I know, no offense). This is why I’m sorry for slacking on my own blog. I know that it’s about time to release new event list and I will do that… just give me some time.

p.s. if anyone is free enough to help me with some English texts, I would really appreciate it!

This month I got struck by social media and it’s importance in future business networking and advertising. While few people still use TV, radio and newspapers, most of us have moved to world wide web.

I listened to really good video conference from HubSpot few weeks ago – marketing in recession webinar. They have different webinars over the site about blogging, reading and advertising online. I would recommend those as they are quite good. Or just subscribe and watch them later.

Social media is getting more and more advertised even in events around the Ireland. For example, I went to mini conference and expo for digital media companies last week. I was amazed by Sofia’s Diary presentation and how they in such a short time have made it so popular. It’s quite amazing phenomena that should be adopted by everyone. World already is made of digital content, we spend hours and hours of our time just browsing Internet.

The most challenge for me at the moment is:
1) Reserve time to read all stuff over the web
2) Reserve time to create something over the web (which comes after first point, because to write stuff people are interested in, you have to know what they are interested in)
3) Reserve time to build profile online (by building profile I understand – advertising content I created over different social media channels, answer to people in forums and blogs, connect to everyone and just let people know me)

When you have your own business there is so much things you want and have to do that sometimes priorities slip. Maybe I should just reserve one day per week for social media?