Personal Business Cards » Card Business

The Relation Between You and Your Business Card

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:49:28 +0000

Business cards can be a very personal kind of marketing, and can act as an extension of yourself in a way most other marketing isn’t capable of achieving.

Even if you work for a large company you can still be designing your own business card, which means that your card is going to be a reflection of you and your tastes. With the rise in custom business cards this becomes even more pressing of a concern and a bigger presence in the marketplace. The less personality your card contains the less personality people might start to attribute to you, and that can kill a lot of future sales.

This connection between yourself and your business card is only made more significant by the fact that you are very likely to actually be there when handing out your cards. You will be personally placing that card into a person’s hand, and when they first see your card it might even be after a conversation they just had with you.

This means your business card will be affected by what you’ve been saying and what impression a person has of you. If your business card is particularly plain or boring and they were expecting something a little more interesting, it might harm their impression of you.

On the reverse side of things if you hand them a very interesting custom business card I can bet you the first thing they’ll do is look right back up at you, their opinion of you now altered by the card you gave them.

This is the power of strong color business cards when put to good use. You affect your card and your card affects you. Each can help make up for something lacking in the other, but only to an extent. If your card is particularly poorly put together you might very well lose a sale no matter how good of an impression you just made.

Your goal needs to be to make sure that both you and your full color business cards are up to the task and good at grabbing attention. You want to wow people with your first interaction and first impression on them, only to then surprise them again by giving them a very unique business card they’ve never seen before.

This helps you to build upon your first good impression and leave them walking away impressed by what they saw. If you can accomplish that than you can be certain that they’re going to be that much more likely to call you up later. If nothing else you’ve ensured that when they look at your card in the future, they’ll remember who it gave it to them, which is a very nice thing. The first step towards accomplishing this is understanding just how important the business card can be.

By: Colleen Davis

A Beginner’s Guide to Creating the Perfect Business Card

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:40:22 +0000

Business cards are one of the most well-known and valuable marketing strategies that you can use. Not only are they portable, but they are affordable and resourceful. A variety of different people use business cards, such as small or large businesses, entrepreneurs, or even for personal use.

Some things you might find on a business card would be business information or personal information, a company logo, and contact information. People use to believe that business cards should be plain black text on white card stock, but today, professional business cards can include more colors, nicely designed logos along with other business details.

Business cards are used to give the customers or potential customer information on how to contact the business or a certain representative of that particular business. This is a convenient way to help recall who they were talking to.

There are many great places to keep business cards ready and available, such as, in your pocket or purse, on your desk, or in your car. It’s good to have business cards always on hand so you can give one to new people that you meet. Make sure to have business cards available all the time. If you are running low, be sure to order or print more before you actually run out.

An excellent place to advertise with business cards is any where that has a bulletin board such as your local restaurants, supermarkets, or libraries. Some places will even hand out your business cards in return for handing out theirs.

When you give someone your business card hand write something on the back such as your cell phone number, email address (if its not already on there), this will give them a good reason to keep the card. If you are helping someone out with say directions or something, instead of letting them write down the directions offer to write it down for them and use one of your business cards instead of a napkin or scrap paper. You never know they might just call you.

As a business manager it is a good idea to have personalized business cards for each of your staff members. They can give out their contact information and advertise for your business at the same time. This also makes your staff feel more appreciated and important. Since your employees are part of your network it is good to use that network to produce more business for you and your company.

By: Dario Paolini

Tamerica Instant Card Desktop Business Card Slitter Review

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:13:09 +0000

Overview:

The Tamerica Instant Card business card slitter is designed to help you quickly and easily cut your own short runs of business cards that you print in house.

This will allow you to create business cards for your employees or for yourself in just minutes without the need to involve a professional printing company.

Creating your own business cards not only allows you to save money but it also helps to ensure that business cards are available for employees immediately and helps to reduce waste by preventing you from having to order more business cards than you actually need.

Strengths / Features:

The Tamerica Instant Card business card slitter is designed to cut business cards that are printed 10 up on a sheet of paper. This means that a single printed sheet of business cards can yield ten business cards. With this system you can use standard business card templates in Microsoft Word (it even shows you how in the instructions) and can start creating your own business cards in no time at all.

The Tamerica Instant Card is the most inexpensive business card slitter that I have seen on the market. It is designed for home and small office use and really makes the possibility of creating your own business cards a reality. It is small, and really doesn’t require a lot of expertise to operate. All you need to do is turn it on, feed your sheets into the slot to cut them the long way and then feed the cut strips into the machine to finish the cutting process.

The Tamerica Instant Card business card slitter says that it is rated to cut papers that are between 150 gsm and 300 gsm which means that it can handle heavy index stocks and cover stocks up to 110lb. I tested it with 110lb index and it did fine. However, there is a warning on the top of the machine that states that you should not cut more than 50 sheets of heavy card stock paper at a time without leaving the machine and the motor to rest.

The InstantCard is rated to cut up to 6 sheets of business cards per minute. This means that you could potentially cut up to 60 business cards per minute. These numbers are probably somewhat exaggerated for the average user, however it should still be able to tackle moderate sized jobs fairly quickly. That being said, this is not a commercial grade machine and should not be used for high volume applications. It will not hold up.

Weaknesses / Limitations:

The Tamerica Instantcard business card slitter does not have any adjustments on it to allow you to change the slitters to adjust for your printer or for any variations that might occur during printing. This means that you will need to try and adjust the settings in your software if the cards are not placed exactly in the correct positions on your printed sheets. This can be somewhat tedious but isn’t a huge deal.

The Instantcard says that it can handle glossy paper, photo paper, magnetic paper, plain paper and coated paper. Most of the stocks that I used with the instantcard seemed to work fine. However, laminated sheets did not run very well through this machine. Additionally, you will need to be careful about using really heavy stocks. The motor in this machine can be damaged and ruined if you use stocks that are too heavy or if you attempt to cut too many sheets in a row without giving the cutter a break.

This is a small plastic business card slitter and it is probably fine for cutting a few hundred cards a week in an office setting. However, trying to use this type of machine in a commercial printing environment would be foolish. It is simply not constructed to handle high volumes of cutting and will not last.

Recommendation:

For small offices and home offices that are looking for a way to cut their own business cards on the spot, this is a great solution. Its price point and features make it a wonderful option for the creation of short run business cards and even magnets.

For commercial printers and large volume users this machine will be a huge disappointment. It is meant as a personal business card slitter and is really best when used as one.

Still, the Instantcard business card slitter is by far the cheapest business card slitter available on the market, is easy to use and is definitely a tool that you might want to consider for your office.

By: Jeff McRitchie

Getting Ready to Make Your First Professional Business Card

admin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:40:31 +0000

Are you ready to make your first professional business card? Business card printing is for all. You just need to be ready and to know the steps on how to create your own personal business cards.

To be ready for it, you have to do a few initial things to make sure that the design is well thought of and well made.

Below is a small checklist that I use to check my concepts and design to prepare the way for the printing process. Try to use this list as well to make sure you are ready to create the design for your very first professional business card.

1. A proper business image concept: The first thing that you need to decide on your own is the business image that you want to show. This is basically your own view of yourself as a businessperson. You must decide if you want to look professional, creative, stable, dynamic or any other good business trait. Establishing this is important since this will color the way your cards are designed.

2. Properly composed information: It is also good to collect and refine the information that you need such as contact numbers, titles and even company information that should help you create. By collecting all this data early on, you can lessen all the secondary research involved as the layout process itself is happening. Make sure of course that all information is in the right format with formal sounding text.

3. Important images: Try also to get the important images that you need in high resolution. This can be something like your company’s logo or the project mascot. It might also be a special symbol or maybe even your own picture that is significant with your business personality. Whatever the case, it is important to get these images as soon as possible so that you will not need to go back to taking pictures when you do start the printing process.

4. A template you like: You may also need a template. Templates help you prepare your business card design by giving a nice foundation from which to build your own layout. It provides the right dimensions, guidelines and layouts that should make the design process very smooth.

5. Appropriate preferences for the features: You should also think about your preferences in terms of features. For example, you should know if you want thick paper or standard paper for your business card.

Do you need moisture resistant coatings, special inks and other added design features to make your design very personal? Once you have a list of your preferences, you should be able to easily tell this to your business card printer so that all the features you want is added correctly.

6. Affordable printer service: Finally, it never hurts to scout early and find an affordable printing service. By having a printer ready, you should be able to consult with them about the proper dimensions, file formats and settings that your business card draft needs to make it work in printing. This should lessen all the editing and revisions that you might experience once you send your designs for online printing.

Great! If you have all these elements ready, then more or less you should be able to create your first professional business card with relative ease indeed. You can now start designing and printing. Good Luck!

Learn about the developments in business cards or business card printing industry.

By: Kaye Z. Marks

Enhance your Corporate Identity with your Business Card

admin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:30:10 +0000

Business Cards and the Home Business Equation

Whether you are an event planner, a restaurant owner, or a freelance writer, owning a business card is a must to define your explicit brand value. The visual imagery on your business card is a great way of conveying across a set of principles and a sense of purpose to your clients. We are here to tell you how to go about acquiring this strong corporate identity through your new business card.

Significance of Business Cards

Business cards can become a powerful medium of advertizing for your small business, if handled correctly. The design of your business card articulates personal business values that you want your target customer base to associate with your products and services.

Your business card is also responsible for bringing consistency to all the out going communication from your company. It represents your true corporate identity especially when you distribute it during business round tables and during your local chamber of commerce meetings.

What to Include in Business Cards To start with, the heading of a business card will constitute the name of your company followed by your name. The heading can also be your job title. This piece of important information is usually in the center or at the top of the card with large and bold formatting. Next, your business card should communicate information about the product or service you are selling through an appealing visual statement. This can be done by using an eye-catching logo, a compelling picture, or a combination of colors. A slogan gets across the main purpose of your business, or your personal/ company value. While providing your contact details, try to include as many avenues to reach you as possible. A cell phone number, a voicemail number, an e-mail ID, a website address and perhaps a Twitter address are all indispensable today. What to Watch Out for in Business Cards

• A clear and straightforward design to convey your precise message to your customer community

• A standard size 3.5” by 2” business card for it to fit in a wallet, or a card organizer

• A large supply of your business cards available with you at all times

• A professional quality print job to signal that you are a dedicated home business owner and mean real business

• Use of a paper or any other writable surface on the reverse side to note down any impromptu information

Methods of Designing Business cards

There are several online business card designing systems that will guide you to create professional looking business cards on your own. A step by step wizard will guide you through the process to generate affordable and personalized business cards.

Besides these systems, there are a number of business card software packages in the market. The programs allow you to explore the potential hidden artist with in you, or simply work with the many templates, images, and logos offered. Most of the software packages also provide additional options for creating envelopes, greeting cards, etc. You can print them out using a desktop printer on business card stock. The benefit is the amount of time that you save. If you haven’t used any of these packages before, your best bet is to use the templates available in MS word and print your business cards. MS word does an excellent job of printing business cards on business card stock. You can also customize each print run for specific applications. Use a color laser printer if possible and search the MS Word help system to learn how to use these templates.

You can also go the traditional route and hire an experienced graphics designer and printer. Make sure that the designer understands your company message and your personal vision. After meticulous planning, researching, and designing, your new identity is established.

By: Stuart Rubenstein

Business Card Printing At Home

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:42:44 +0000

Banners, television and commercials, print ads, pop-ups – these are just a few of the gimmicks that draw people to patronize the products and services of a certain company. Even if producing these advertisements means spending a lot of cash, companies still take the risk. After all, informing the public about their products and services is a major part of running a business. Another way to attract customers to check out one’s business is through the business card.

Business cards are made of special paper or cardboard, usually stiff in texture. Often, they are similarly shaped to credit cards. Business cards are very handy and can be kept in a person’s wallet or organizer for easy reference. Personal contact information is printed directly on the card.

Take a look at a regular business card. Information that can be found on it often includes the name of the person who gave it to you, the company where that person works, the occupation and position of that person, the address of his place of work, his mailing address, his office number, his home number, his mobile phone number, and his email address. Sometimes, there are also graphics or logos that are part of the whole design of the business card.

If you are interested in having your own business cards, you can actually design and print them yourself. Business card printing at home is fairly easy. All you need to have are a design for your business card, a computer, printer, and your choice of paper or cardboard. After you have finalized the design and your contact details on your computer, you can then set up your printer and print out your business cards. Later on, you can cut them into individual pieces. Business card printing at home is much cheaper than having companies or businesses do it for you.

By: Seth Miller

Different Types of Business Cards For Different Types of Businesses

admin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:28:45 +0000

Some people may not realize it, but there are different types of business cards that are used for different kinds of purposes. Each type of card can be adapted to a particular type of person or profession. In addition, everyone can have a look at some standard or design that maximizes its potential. Knowing each type of business card can help you in your strategy card printing company. This determines the design of your custom cards and ensures their full effect when you give them.

Below are several common types of business cards that companies produce prints cards for people. Try to determine what type is you and your goals.

The trade Business Cards

People from a trade or industry have their own type of card. For example, if you are a manufacturer of plastic card business commerce is usually given to your suppliers, competitors, vendors and investors. These types of business cards embody particular trade of their owners. Their design must be related or have symbolism to the profession. If you are in the plastic you may have a plastic card. If you are a baker, why not print cards in the form of bread? Basically, business cards should give the image of a particular trade, so you can easily be remembered as part of this industry.

Corporate Business Cards

Business cards in the world of business is to cure a whole other kind of quite. They differ from commercial card business since the middle of a card company is the company and not the entire business itself. As a result, the company logo has a central role in designing these cards. Usually, they have a perfect design for serious and just the most formal spirit corporate culture. Companies may even make a uniform design for their employees to use, especially if they are representatives. Cards business are typically given to key business contacts and potential employees.

Personal Business Cards

Many people have personal cards personalized business. This is the most common type. Their design does not focus on a particular trade or business. The emphasis here is occupation and personality of the holder card itself. Because this card personal usually have the most beautiful, interesting and different designs. When you print your personalized cards that you can give virtually anyone, including your family and friends.

Marketing Business Cards

A card marketing is a type in itself because it can change certain conventions of a typical business card. In addition to selling “the person” who has the card, card marketing can announce a product, service or event. For example, your business card for marketing your product will have your name and the phrase “provider of the best computer in the state, the PC4000.” Marketing cards have different tricks and different models of this kind.

These are the types of companies most current maps. Have you seen the right kind of card for you? Choosing the right type for you and you will make contacts, new relationships and business opportunities in no time.

By: Alexa M Smith