Calling Cards as the New Business Cards

I believe there is a busi­ness card iden­tity prob­lem. In the mod­ern day most folks do more than one thing. In years past you had a busi­ness card from the com­pany you worked for and that was all you needed. Fast for­ward to today and folks may work for a com­pany, have their own busi­ness on the side, be involved in groups and non-profits or even work with other free­lancers in a consortium.

In the past few years I’ve become more and more involved in var­i­ous uncon­fer­ence events, pod­cast­ing and social media groups all while run­ning my B2B online print­ing busi­ness. I have busi­ness cards for my busi­ness, MyLa­bel­Net, my pod­cast: Morn­ing Brew­Cast, my social media groups: Social Media Club San Anto­nio and finally my social media con­sult­ing busi­ness: Brew­ing Media

Other than the fact I had to print all these dif­fer­ent cards, there was also the need to have some of each one when attend­ing net­work­ing func­tions. I never knew who I was going to encounter and which busi­ness or group I would want them to remem­ber. There were many times I was speak­ing to some­one about social media but only had print­ing cards on me. I had to then take the time to explain that this was my print­ing busi­ness and that the main thing was that my con­tact info was the same as for my social media busi­ness. Would the per­son remem­ber that the print­ing busi­ness card was for the social media per­son? I doubt it. I was send­ing a con­flict­ing mes­sage by giv­ing out info that was dif­fer­ent that what the per­son was interested.

So with SXSW com­ing up, I knew I needed to wres­tle the whole busi­ness card iden­tity issue to the ground. My solution?

No busi­ness cards

I’ve opted to go for a Call­ing Card. It has my con­tact infor­ma­tion on the front. On the back I have three of the ten business/group/events I am involved in. I fig­ured out that most of what I do could fit into those three cat­e­gories. It cer­tainly makes it eas­ier to under­stand who I am.

I am an indi­vid­ual who is involved in all sorts of media. From tra­di­tional print media to dig­i­tal media to social media. My hope is that my call­ing card will be the answer to the chal­lenge of being some­one who wears many hats.

Here are a few of the cards I have used in the past:

And now here is my new call­ing card:

I invite your com­ments, sug­ges­tions and cri­tiques on my call­ing card.

Tags: business cards, calling cards, print media, social media, sxsw