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Common business card mistakes

onesock.net

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Re: Common business card mistakes

#11

Post by aresant »

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" . . .

Re: Common business card mistakes

#12

Post by mseebach »

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.

Re: Common business card mistakes

#13

Post by stretchwithme »

run4yourlives wrote: post #7

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.

Re: Common business card mistakes

#14

Post by dasil003 »

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

Re: Common business card mistakes

#15

Post by X-Istence »

jamesbritt wrote: post #4

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.

Re: Common business card mistakes

#16

Post by quant18 »

epochwolf wrote: post #5

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.

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.

Re: Common business card mistakes

#17

Post by roel_v »

mseebach wrote: post #12

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.

Re: Common business card mistakes

#18

Post by silencio »

dasil003 wrote: post #14

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.

Re: Common business card mistakes

#19

Post by steverb »

silencio wrote: post #18
dasil003 wrote: post #14

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…

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

Re: Common business card mistakes

#20

Post by derefr »

silencio wrote: post #18
dasil003 wrote: post #14

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…

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.
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