The Business Card Game
First of all, if you’re going to attend an event, have business cards that give people a way to contact you. If you’re not going as a representative of your current day job, make your own cards, and put your own sites and links and contact information on them. But then what? Or maybe you’re still stuck on “why?” questions. Let’s talk it over.
- Cards are Good Conversation Starters- If your card isn’t plain white or doesn’t look like you used a built in MS Word template, people will often look at your card the way one looks at a four-year-old’s rendition of a fire truck. “Ohhh, this is gooood.” They nod as they say this. People want to acknowledge you and what your card says you do. It’s almost a ritual thing.
- Cards are Reminders- When you get back from the conference, you’ll fish in your pocket and take that new stack of cards out. You now have X number of new contacts that either seemed interesting, cared about what you were doing, or were looking to use your product, service, brains, whatever.
USE THE CARDS
Let’s talk for a minute. Once you get back from a conference, kiss your significant other. Thank him or her for giving you this opportunity to explore your passion or your vocation or whatever it is that pays the bills. Kiss the kids, pet the gerbil, whatever. And then, march over to your computer and compose some email.
Send “Nice Seeing You at BarCamp Boston” emails to people, with clear subject lines, and then inside, start with telling them who you are again (you ALL met lots of people, right?), what you had to talk about then — and here, include something personal that you learned during the event. Did he mention his four year old daughter? Ask if she was still awake when he got home.
Finish this email with whatever “call to action” you’re hoping for. Even if that’s, “I hope we can talk more in the future about Spaceship construction,” make sure you’ve got some snip in there that gets them wanting to hit reply, and wanting to continue the relationship.
Second, write on the backs of them a reminder or two about what you talked about. You remember NOW, but will you in seven months? How will you remember after the third conference in a row? Put something on the card to remind yourself what went down.
If you’re going to bother attending shows, please realize the meta purposes for being there. You have a few missions all snuck into one event:
1.) Learn new things.
2.) Meet new people.
3.) Make connections.
4.) Develop business or other types of partnerships.
5.) Make friends.
Cards can help with a few of those, if only as props and a way to move conversations forward. The cards end up serving as a micro billboard for what you did, why you attended, and who you met. And they may just be a great start to a new story of your life.
–Chris Brogan collected and and sent email to dozens of new business cards today. He gave everyone a bright cosmic orange card back that pointed people to GrasshopperFactory.com.
Tags: 
Loading ...
Comments
Reg says on June 4th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Re: Filing your cards. I use the small looseleaf rings (1″). I keep a matchbook sized hole punch and pop them on the ring as soon as I collect them. For some reason having them in the order I get them keeps them straight in my mind. Plus, I don’t misplace them if they’re on a ring?
Reinout van Rees says on June 5th, 2006 at 6:46 am
When you give someone a card, write something on it. “We talked about generating code from UML”, “The link you wanted to visit is http://xxx.yyy.zzz“, etc.
That way, your card is not an anonymous “who was that again?” card.
Reinout
Chris Brogan says on June 5th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Reinout- that’s a great idea. Funny, because I write on THEIR cards, so I don’t forget them, but I like the idea of “priming” their card like that.
Chris says on June 5th, 2006 at 9:26 am
Just be careful in which context you “prime” your card or otherwise write on it. We’ve all heard the stories about the faux pas that Americans commit when exchanging business cards with the Japanese. While in the US (and elsewhere) it is entirely acceptable to scribble on the back of a card, its definitely unacceptable with Japanese (and I imagine some other business cultures as well)
JLP at AllFinancialMatters says on June 5th, 2006 at 9:32 am
One other idea for storing business cards is to get one of those business card binders with plastic sheets with slots for cards.
C.C. Chapman says on June 5th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Great tips and dead on advice. Great to know that others see the importance of following up with e-mails afterwards.
Christopher S. Penn, Financial Aid Podcast says on June 5th, 2006 at 10:16 am
One thing you can do – if you scan the cards, toss them into Address Book on the Mac or as an image in Plaxo so you have the image data available as well. They’ll show up as the person’s photo avatar.
Jason Chupick says on June 5th, 2006 at 11:13 am
It’s well worth it to take the time entering the business cards in to Outlook. I use a Neatreceipts scanner (see my blog for info) though I bet I’m faster just typing. If you’re in a business where the connectedness between your contacts counts, don’t stick em in a drawer. I find out all kinds of cool things about poeple by overlaying Plaxo on my Outlook. Keep the cards, chuck the schwag!
Sarah says on June 5th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Try going “paperless” with your business card by getting a “textable” business card. Try texting “dorrian” to 66937. It’s a textable profile that can contain much more information than a paper card, and it’s dynamic and can be updated on the fly from your phone! http://www.mozes.com for more info
Sean Tierney says on June 5th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
@Reinout- i second your idea of writing something unique to that conversation on the card you give the person as well as a few keywords to jog your memory on his/her card for future contact. it’s all about the followup.
@JLP i’ve been using the binder w/ the plastic inserts method you propose for a few yrs now and it’s invaluable for preserving the chronology as you suggest.
i tried scanning cards and found it to be worthless since you only need to preserve the contact info if you have meaningful dialogue after the cards are exchanged and you will have this sent mail folder. You can already mine Outlook correspondance for LinkedIn contacts using their toolbar and I wrote up a technique for doing the same w/ Gmail using their Outlook CSV export here->
http://www.scrollinondubs.com/?p=41
ultimately it’s about cards are about crystallizing a moment with an image and a soundbyte so that you pop into the other person’s mind next time a referral or business opportunity involving your service arises.
sean
Matt says on June 9th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
I attended a conference a few weeks ago and, surprisngly enough, very few people had business cards with them. I carried around 10 or so at a time, but only gave a few out and got fewer back.
Professor Print says on June 15th, 2006 at 9:48 am
I like the part of this that talks about showing appreciation to your family who understand that you are out trying to make a living and are supportive of what you have to do, even if it means you come home later than usual. This defenitely reaches out to entrepreneurs…
Jason says on July 5th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
I just ordered some new business cards. Business cards are a favorite pasttime of mine. Business cards at Agon Studios were really awesome and great.
If you haven’t been to Agon Studios yet, you should really check it out.
Brandon Watts says on September 4th, 2006 at 8:03 am
Another great idea is to easily turn the physical business card information into a digital format by using scanR.
http://www.scanr.com/bc.aspx
Sacramento Business Cards says on January 7th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Writing reminders on the back of cards is a great way “take you back” to where you were when you received it and what you were talking about. When you call them and can site exactly what you were talking about and where you were after 6 mos they will really listen because it shows that you truly cared about them and their company. Great article on business cards, the printing part was good too.
MikeB says on January 19th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I decided to make my cards stand out I would use my own background. I designed it at http://www.printsmadeeasy.com and it came out great, better than I could have expected.
Kate says on February 13th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Another gem from Lifehacker. Whatever did I do without you?
Thanks for the reminders as I head to a conference next week. Long ago, my Discovery Toys supervisor (from whom I learned everything about sales and marketting) taught me to give cards to *everyone.* When I take a card out of politeness that I never intend to use, instead of writing on it, I dogear the corner and throw it away later. Then again, today’s janitor is tomorrow’s boss, and I’m sure s/he’d be glad to know you recognized the hard climb.
I keep mine in an index card type file box tabbed by general area (psychology, computer) and then chronologically. I used to love using quick and easy colored dots on the corner to distinguish categories, but they tend to migrate. Need better glue.
Does anyone beam virtual cards between Treos? I only did this once. Worked fine, but I felt awkward asking people when so many didn’t have a suitable device (you can tell I’m not in the tech field).
Duncan says on March 6th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Some excellent ideas here. Am just getting into postition where I have to take my product design skills and apply them in a real world outside of education, so I am scouring the interweb for all useful networking ideas. These business card thoughts will be very useful I think, I like the scribbling on your card to ‘prime it’.
cheers…