Entrepreneur

Business Card Tips for Business Owners

Adam Roberts
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When you’re starting a business, there is a whole host of decisions to make, from the type of business entity to choose or whether to market yourself as a freelancer or a business owner.

If you opt for the latter, it can be difficult to decide on what title to use in your email signature, Twitter bio, or when designing a business card.

Deciding on a title

When ordering those business cards, you might stumble at the job title phase. Are you a founder (may seem unprofessional), an owner (too informal), a president (too regal), or a CEO (may seem childish in a small start-up)?

What else can you do? Here are some ideas:

  • Leave the job title field blank. If you do consulting, design, development, etc and you don’t have any particular area you focus on, then there’s no need to compromise or leave a laundry list of titles.
  • Use web consultant. Or a similar title that defines the work you do, not the position you hold.
  • Use something playful. Chief Executive Philosopher, King Geek, or Mark Zuckerberg’s I’m CEO, b****. Treat the business card as an opportunity to show off your personality, if that suits your business.

Setting up your business card

Whatever you decide to go with, if you decide to print business cards it’s important you put some effort into the design (here’s one guide). If you’d rather go for a stripped back design, keep the font readable and opt for a font size between 7 and 11 points. Set Image Mode to CMYK, resolution to 300 pixels/inch, and the size to 85mm x 55mm.

Here are some simple ideas to make your business cards unique, and eight ways to make them stand out.

Where do you put them?

First of all, carry some on you at all times, to give to potential clients. If you’re at a trade show or other event, hand them out like crazy! Also keep some at your business (if you have a physical address). If you’ve decided to invest in offline marketing, here are some other ideas, ranging from the innovative to the crazy:

  • Leave some at the bank ATM next time you get cash

  • Leave two with your tip the next time you go out to eat

  • Stick one or two in with the bills that you mail out each month?

  • Leave it behind when a receptionist asks you to wait for somebody

Those are some quick tips for working with business cards, we hope they help!