Get yourself useful business cards

If you’re going to be networking to drum up business, or just meet people who might want to use your services (that is, potentially everyone you meet) you should get some business cards so they have an easy reminder of who you are and what you do.

On your card you should have:

• Your business’s name (if different)
• Contact details
• What you do

Point 4 is very important – I have bundles of business cards from various networking events, and I have no clue what some of the people do because while they have a very nice looking card, it doesn’t say what they do and I either forgot to write it down, or I couldn’t write on the card because of its finish. This leads me to a final must-have for your cards:

• Have space I can write on

Now, if it says what you do, I might not need to do this, but then again, I might need to remind myself to send you a really good contact. If I want to do that, I’ll probably write on your card, as long as there’s space. If I can’t write on it, I might forget why I want to talk to you again and you’ve lost potential business, so make a gap where I can scribble!

Design

Keep the design simple. As you can see from our picture, certain cards stand out even when they’re very small as they have a bold, uncomplicated design.

If you have a logo for your business, put it on your card and use the same colours in the logo for your text or background colour. If you don’t have a logo and know you’re useless at design, find a local designer (freelance, of course!) and commission a logo and card design from them. See if you have a skill that they want and you may be able to make a deal for a work exchange, so you don’t have to pay for the design.

Ordering

You can get business cards made almost anywhere, and discount printers like printing.com will do you a great deal on production. One of the most popular new printers is start-up Moo.com, they produce half-height cards, which you can see on the right of our picture.

Moo is very popular with the web world at the moment and I can see why – their cards are cheap, good quality, and a doddle to order. You upload a picture (or two, or ten – up to a hundred different ones per order), write a few lines of text for the back of the card, then choose how many you’re going to order. It’s £9.99 plus delivery for a box of a hundred and they arrive in a few days.

Moo card are cheap and simple enough that you can order a batch, see how they go down with people, then order a new set with some changes. I’ve had some made to promote the networking group I run and they’re great for a project with a short, simple message.

Don’t forget to follow Carey’s advice and file the invoices for your cards as you can claim them back as a business expense.

What’s next?

Get your cards done, get out there and meet people. Soon you’ll have given all the cards away and you’ll be ordering a new batch, hopefully paid for from the work produced by all your networking efforts.