Creating Business Cards That Get Kept (And Why It Matters to SEO)
So I recently read a fascinating blog post from another Internet marketer where he talked about creating business cards that get kept. He had some good ideas which I’ll share with you in a moment, however that’s not really what I want to focus on here. I want to focus on what this has to do with SEO and with Internet marketing.
Why Business Cards Get Dumped
Go to any conference and you’ll get piles upon piles of business cards stuffed into your hands and you’ll also be handing yours out to everyone you meet. The thing is, these things are so common that people tend to discard most of them because they don’t even remember who it was that gave them out in the first place. Therefore, if you want to get your business cards kept, you need to do something to make them be kept.
Make It Unusual
One of the best ways to get remembered when you’re at a business conference is to have a truly unique looking business card. One which is made of hard plastic, or which has a bow tied around it or some other thing which just makes it incredibly unique is a good way to stand out. The thing of it is, I’m not sure if this is the best way to get your business card kept because it may make you stand out for the wrong reasons.
Make It Useful
My personal favorite way to make your business cards into something which gets kept is to make them useful. You can have fold out business cards which have room for notes, you can have a mini calendar on the opposite side, useful phone numbers, useful websites. All kinds of things can be printed on the back your business cards in fact which will make them more likely to be kept. Combine this with the first suggestion and you may well have a winner.
How SEO Plays Into This
Okay, so I’ve laid out a couple of ideas for you to get your business cards kept. The thing is, this blog is supposed to be about SEO. So what does this have to do with SEO? Well I could tell you that a part of SEO is internet marketing and that a part of internet marketing is networking, which means getting your business cards kept. I could say that and I’d be right. However, I’m trying to draw a more fundamental comparison here than that.
Your Website Is Your Business Card
As I’ve said elsewhere, good SEO will not make up for a junky website. Good SEO will only mean that you get people in the door. Getting them to stay depends on you and what you put out there.
So I like to think of websites as being like those business cards that people press into your hands at conferences. In the course of a day, most people look at dozens of websites and in the course of a year, probably hundreds or even thousands of them.
Most of these will be forgotten the moment the person gets the information they need. But if you want these people to become customers rather than occasional visitors, then you need to do more than simply provide the information. You need to make your site truly memorable and truly useful.
Make Your Site Memorable and Useful
So use the same concepts I outlines above regarding business cards and try to think about how your website can be memorable without being kitcsch (the equivalent of the bow tied around a business card) while also being truly useful and you’ll find that your business cards (i.e. website) get kept all the time (i.e. subscribed to and added to favorites).
Good analogy at least with a website more people might get to see it but very few people will get your amazing business cards.
I have black magnet business card with pretty unusual logo. Most my customers keep this card for years – my phone number is always available.
Logo, name, phone #, site and a-mail. nothing else. No slogans, no too many info.
Yeah, but refrigerator magnets are expensive to make up in mass quantities. Plus, from your title, you offer a service people will need years later. In most cases, the business cards get tossed into a pile and thrown away at the end of a conference unless they are truly memorable or useful.
Exactly my point — but just like your business card, it’s one in a sea of them so you need to be memorable and useful.