As surely as the sun rises, business cards will be eclipsed by technology. Business owners need to begin grappling with this fact.
It really began with the Palm Pilot. You were able to beam information back and forth with it, even though you still had to dock it, to upload new e-mail. The iPhone has the bump feature, where you can swap information easily. But even among techies, I’ve yet to see anyone actually use the service. My guess is it’s still too much of a hassle, and you look pretty silly asking if someone also has an iPhone and if they use the Bump application. It’s much easier to simply exchange business cards.
But how long until the business card loses its relevance? Tough to tell, but if you’re a business, you should definitely be thinking about the transition to electronic contact information transfer options (and bringing your electronic resume to your business card).
Here’s a list of five things you should do today, to prepare for this switch.
1. Secure user names (also called passports) on at least every major site.
There are several tools you can use to help you do this, like http://knowem.com/.Knowem can look your username up on every known social media site, along with looking up all the domain options for that name.
Critical to branding is having one unified name and image on the web. So hurry up and grab yours today, if it’s still available. You can snatch a Facebook name or a web site URL, if you own the trademark, but that’s not true of sites like Twitter, I’ve been told. (I’m not a lawyer, but I do intend to interview a lawyer on the topic of online user names and trademarks, for this blog).
2. Love LinkedIn
Optimize your LinkedIn profile, because often when someone searches for your name, this will come up on the first page of Google, and they don’t need to be a LinkedIn user to read the basic information. Consider it your electronic resume and business card all in one. Your personal Facebook profile shouldn’t come up in Google search (although at times I’ve see it come up. But even if it did, the other person would have to log into Facebook to see it. That’s another hurdle you want to avoid).
3.See What’s Out There About You
Search under your name and see what comes up, just to make sure a potential client doesn’t Google you and discover something embarrassing. After you do this, you can also tell people to “Just Google me” in case you don’t have business cards, or don’t want to carry them. At a conference I attended recently, a speaker told the audience that if we can’t find him online “You’re not trying hard enough.” Many of us can already say the same thing.
If you do see something you’re embarrassed about come up under your name, ask the web master about taking out your name. If the information is extremely old and irrelevant, there’s a good chance they’ll do it.
4. E-mail signature
An easy way to pass along your contact information and advertise your business, is simply by including links to those sites at the bottom of each e-mail, like our CEO Christopher Swanson does. We also track the links in the signatures, so we know how many people actually connect to us through those signatures. Trust me, if we thought it was a waste of time, we wouldn’t do it. (Side note: We can teach your business how to track individual links as well).
5. Add the web to your printed business cards.
If you actively use Twitter, or Facebook or LinkedIn for business, go ahead and add the url or user name.
So for example for me its:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/patrickgarmoe
I don’t use this one though, because I mainly use my Facebook profile to speak with friends.
Another option is to add your business Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/PureDriven
And naturally LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickgarmoe
Or create one page with all your links, and just list that link on your business card.
http://www.google.com/profiles/garmoe
Any other tips you want to throw out there?
