Business Cards, Social Networking

Would you believe that we only got business cards today? We found a great printer in our neighborhood named Print Time that did an excellent job. (In fact, there was an issue with how our chosen font printed on his equipment and he was great enough to not only proof it but ask us to come down and figure it out because it wasn't up to his quality standards - that is good service.)
The card looks good eh?

So, now we have cards. What do people need business cards for? I forsook business cards a long time ago in favour of making my website as easily findable on the web as possible. I thought, surely with Google no one will ever have problems finding us if we're memorable enough.

Well, that was kinda dumb. You meet so many people in passing that if you don't give them a card, they don't find it in their pocket later at home while digging for keys or mints, and they never look you up. By the time they remember that they met a guy that had a business, your name, face and location are lost to the winds of time, tiny grains of sand that were scattered amongst a billion others never again to have any recognizable pattern.

(That metaphor was a bit excessive, but if you've studied how human memory works you'll see what I mean.)

So, business cards. I was at Toastmasters the other night which is a club for people who want to learn public speaking and practice it in a formal setting. In this meeting the tables are set up in a long U and the member sit around. As I was making my speech about my business moving around at the front I realized how easy it would be to deal the cards like playing cards along the tables. My speech was excellent and I know everyone would have taken them home.

I'll do that next time. That is just one example of how great cards are.

Social networking, striking up a conversation on a bus, hitting on the counter girl at Starbucks, whatever, business cards are the way to be.