Apr 9, 2008 | blog
Today I was curious about business cards. I asked my Twitter friends just how simple (or minimal) in design or information they felt they could go with their business cards.
Of course most businesses include their corporate or brand logo and color scheme on the business card. Information on the business card has grown from the traditional company name, tagline, person’s name, title, and phone number.
Now you’ll find people’s business, mobile and sometimes home phone numbers. You’ll sometimes find more than one fax number. Most often there are more than one email address. Add to that the corporate web address and the space has gotten quite cramped.
For us social media types, you now start adding things like a Twitter address, or your LinkedIn, or Facebook URL. Some people may feel that their FriendFeed, Plaxo, or Xing URLs are of use to people requesting their business card.
With all these things taking up the limited space on a business card and you can see why full color bleed to the edge, and use of both sides are features offered by professional printing services. Seems like too much information to me.
Here were some answers from my Twitter friends to the question “How simple are you willing to go on your biz cards?” (Clicking on the the links below will take you to the individual “tweets” on Twitter.)
As you can see, we had a pretty good conversation on business cards with a number of great viewpoints and ideas. Wondering about that card of Brian Shaler’s that Ryan Kuder mentioned? Check it out here.
Want to have some fun with your business card? Check out GapingVoid where Hugh MacLeod draws “cartoons on the back of business cards“.
What am I thinking of doing on an upcoming version of my business card? I guess this is a first rough draft.
Those of us in the social media sphere have the luxury of expecting people to know how to find us. Google is our friend!
For the rest of the business world, however, the expectation that their time is valuable. That they shouldn’t have to go searching for the information that a “proper” business card should provide. My belief is that there is more information about me that I want a person to find by searching than I can add to my business card.
What’s your take on the topic of business cards? How simple or complex are you comfortable with?
Artwork credit: Hugh MacLeod
Apr 4, 2008 | happiness
Participating in communities like Twitter that continue to find strength in the people that populate them.
Mar 29, 2008 | blog
That’s the question I Friday morning, mainly because I’m just curious what people thought. Originally I had planned to post this later that day, but… life intervened. Anyway, a number of people shared their thoughts and I thought I’d put them together in a short post. So the question was…
What makes today special for you? Is today the day?
I want to say thank you to all my Twitter friends that sent responses, and I really appreciate you letting me share your Friday! I hope that everyone get’s a bit of insight and inspiration from what we share in these Q&A sessions on Twitter – they’re fun!
Mar 6, 2008 | blog
Hello there to all my Twitter budz! As I mentioned yesterday, I’m sharing all the Twitter users that I know are going to be Tweeting from SXSW next week. So, if you’re not following them now, you can now! Also, these are all really great people with a lot of intelligent commentary – and a lot of great wit as well. 😉
In no particular order:
Like many, I’ll be following these fine folks, and others that I’m not aware of that’ll be there, for as much play-by-play that they have time to share with us. If you know of more people that’ll be there, or if you would like to be added to the list, please drop me a line on Twitter – you can find me there at http://twitter.com/rickmahn.com.
UPDATE: Connie Reece pointed out that there is also a wiki that many Twitters that are going to SXSW have left their links on for people to follow! So head over to http://sxswtwitter.pbwiki.com and check it out.
UPDATE II: I noticed Pistachio just Twittered a link that I hadn’t seen before as well: http://www.sxswbaby.com. It’s a blog dedicated to SXSW, loaded with information specifically for the conference, it’s venues and more.
Technorati Tags: Twitter, SXSW, South by Southwest
Mar 4, 2008 | blog
So today marks a full year of Twitter use for me. I posted my first Tweet on 3/4/2007… something about reading feeds.
But that isn’t what I really want to talk about. Rather, I’ve been thinking of how integral Twitter has become as a part of my communications toolkit. It’s changed how I interact with my online friends, heck it’s provided the means to really meet most of them. It provides insight into my fellow social media explorers, and personal branding experts that I follow. It is just as critical to my daily comms as my mobile phone and email.
However, it’s not changed how I communicate with family, or old friends, or some corporate types since they don’t “get it” – or so they say. (That’s another discussion altogether.) However, it has made for interesting conversations with many of these folks. For many the constant barrage of messages, many from people one doesn’t interact with much, seems like a waste of time. They also can’t conceive of a reason that they would want to share their current activities with dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people at once.
Of course those points miss the boat. As I’ve followed more and more people on Twitter, and have more people follow me, I’ve grown in my ability to absorb the data stream. I’ve become accustomed to having bits of information stream past all day. I find it interesting when someone chooses to vent frustrations. I’m invigorated by the short conversations on topics I rarely think about. I get excited to be able to answer someone’s question. I’m happy when I hear good things happen to these people who are familiar to me. I’m proud of the way the community itself pulls together and makes things happen.
Imagine, all this is captured and shared in 140 characters or less.
Technorati Tags: Twitter, Communications
