Common business card mistakes | Hacker News Reader

Common business card mistakes

onesock.net

19 pointsblewis23 comments

The only purpose of a business card isn't to get scanned into a system and stored away in a CRM. Another purpose of a business card is to extend the brief encounter that started the process. A catchy and well designed business card should jump out and be remembered so when the recipient is going through the people he recently met, that card serves as a reminder and hopefully elevates your name above the others.

They're also good for writing notes for people, such as a web site to visit or a map or some book title or whatever. And now the recipient has something with your name on it so they can recall where they got some useful info.

I always make sure my cards have plenty of white space and no gloss to impede writing.

These reasons seem more than a little bit outdated in the modern age of ubiquitous cell phones, blackberries, and smart phones.

I and probably most people I deal with have smart phones, etc., and yet I still find a need to be jotting down something quick.

And the situation is quite different when I am looking to do business with a non-tech person. Things are not always so ubiquitous in different groups of people, "modern age" not withstanding.

And even if you could get the same results using a device, there are business/social reasons to hand someone a note written on your business card.

Some inefficiencies have value. Don't be blind to them.

If you are getting so many business cards that you can't take 5 minutes to type in my address into your precious CRM system, perhaps the connection isn't as strong as I thought it was when I handed you my info.

My business card is not an invitation to spam me.

maybe that's a good reason to violate most of these rules, except for those that respect the ordinary card recipient.

Good lord, why not just rewrite it as "How your business card must be!" and list the specs:

* 14-pt Arial * one datum per line * 1cm margins * white 100-lb card stock * logos acceptable if and only if they do not resemble characters that may be recognized by my OCR software you inconsiderate asshole

white 100-lb card stock

On a sidenote, there are legitimate issues with some colors of business cards...I speak from personal experience. I thought it would be soooooo coooool to have an all black personal business card. I was oh-so-very-wrong. It is nearly impossible to write anything on a black card, not only to add more info (like another phone number) to give to the other person, but also for that other person to jot down things. I know I often like to write about who gave me the card to help me remember later on - twitter/irc names if it's not on their card, where I met them and when, and so on...black doesn't work so well for that. And I almost never write on my own card, so I never really thought about it.

Reordering business cards soon, and I'm definitely skipping the all black this time around.

I like mine black on front, white on back. That way there is a surface you can write stuff on.

As long as it's not all black, half colors/mixed colors should be fine for most uses, no? Mine had a small stripe of a different color on the front that most people used to write anything on, but was otherwise black. Bad idea :)

Alternatively: square, thin, two-sided card stock: glossy black front, matte/unfinished white back. Fold them in half, and they become regular, all-black cards which have an "inside" for writing.

If you want people to be able to electronically import your data, why not stick an artful qrcode on your card?

This is exactly what I do on my business cards. Scan in the QR code and you have all of my data in an easy machine readable format that can easily be stored.

Not everyone scans cards. Most of these are only issues for people like that author that scan business cards and then destroy them.

That said, it's important to have a blank back you can write on if you need to.

More people scan cards than write on the back of them, but then, maybe I'm just saying that because there are ASCII charts on the backs of our cards.

In non-Roman-alphabet countries, it's quite common to have two-sided business cards with English on one side and the local language on the other.

Which is terrible. If you really need business cards in two languages, just order two different sets.

"... Because we (people I met) don’t have standards and simple process for exchanging information electronically, business cards are still critically important. ..."

Today most people I know their twitter address is sufficient. As for business cards, I've never worked in a situation where I've needed or been given them. I do however give away half size Moo cards ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157616147825654... Each card has a unique photo & I get people to choose some they like.

Makes for a good conversation point as @brolewis mentions.

How many people actually scan business cards? I may be a hacker, but most of my business contacts are not. My cards are optimized for them, not for me.

If you want to make your own business cards with a QR code here is a QR code business card site: www.b2vcard.com it lets you upload your own art or you can use one of the templates. best of all it creates your QR code from your profile so if something changes you can update your profile for free and your QR code on your old cards scan your new info!

His no. 10 is wrong. That's a perfectly valid, and, in fact, the expected way to print phonenumbers in systems that has a long-distance selector. It's his scanner-software that isn't up for the job.

The rest of his points are mostly valid, and examples of sacrificing usefulness over artfulness.

May be perfectly valid, but many people don't know how to handle the 0 if they rarely make international phone calls. I agree with the article's authors on this point, albeit not for OCR reasons - if you've got an international phone nr on your card, leave out the 0, so that people only have to type what's actually on the card and don't have to think about archaic implementation details of phone systems.

Title needs to tell people what sort of a relationship they're going to have with you, and who you are.

A common mistake is with selecting an overblown "corporate" title when you're tiny.

For instance I'd suggest "Founder" rather than "CEO" - speaking from personal experience here:

When I started my first business in the late 90’s I listed my title as "General Partner" (it was an LLC, made sense to me) and had more than a few people raise eyebrows, smile knowingly at the amateur hour that had just handed them a card.

My other favorite ambiguous but accurate title that's not overblown is "Business Development" . . .

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