Online giving new life to business cards

Conferences, Business After Hours and networking events usually result in the collection of a large selection of business cards.  In the not so distant past they were collated alphabetically and neatly arranged into rollerdecks before gathered dust.  The proactive ones followed up with a DM piece and letter before email made that process easier.  The result rate from these was generally poor as you rarely created any particular link with the person.

Now I notice that after I attend these events that I receive a large number of online requests from LinkedIn, Facebook and an increase in people following me on Twitter.  Aside from the ease these open up real opportunities to connect with people.  Rather than an uninformed cold callesque DM piece you have the real potential to uncover much more about their interest, business model before engaging in real value add conversations.  It also increases traffic to the blog (which is modest at the best of times) but gives people something more concrete to view and help them form a more informed opinion of you and your offerings.

Tip for the day: dont let business card lie on your desk.  Give them more life by

• Immediately loading onto you contacts database
• Search using Spock, Wink or search engines
• Find and read their blogs if any
• Link with them through LinkedIn, Facebook and follow them on Twitter
• Have a look at their networks and areas of interest
• Create a conversation using these tools before blindly pitching your wares

  I have only received a few business cards with the full set of contact details outside of the normal phone, address etc.  There is lots of debate on the merits of too much detail on cards but Hoax Slayer has one peril I never thought of.