Business Card Etiquette for Consultants and Freelancers

Sam Zipursky is a Brand Consultant, Internet Marketer, and aspiring Digital Nomad. He spends most of his time focusing on the connection between internet, branding, design and marketing. He is one of the authors from the become a consultant blog Business Consulting Buzz. He is also a Co-Founder with Advicetap – The place where Canadian marketing and creative professionals find gigs and build connections with other professionals.

Although many (including myself) may argue that the Internet is making traditional business cards almost irrelevant, they still play an important role in business communications and promotion. If we can agree with this, then why do so many consultants, freelancers, professionals, and business owners that I meet do not have any business card etiquette?

After doing business in Japan for many years, I came to see the giving and receiving of business cards in a new way. Today I wanted to share some simple but powerful techniques you can use here in North America when you out and about business networking and meeting people - using your biz cards!

Express your interest
Most people I meet with simply take my card and put it directly in their pocket without even giving it any kind of attention. Others just hold on to it, play with it a bit, bend it, you name it...I know you folks have experienced this and it's just plain rude!

5 Best Practices for Longer Documents

(For Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org Writer)

Set up all styles as soon as possible. Most users type the content and then format the document. Whenever possible, plan out the styles first using a couple of pages of content. When someone wants a change, now you can update the style quickly even if it’s 200 pages.

Free Social Non-Media

I began micro-blogging on Twitter when I started my business full-time. At the time I was ghost writing for other blogs and didn't have a lot of time for my own blog. Plus, I really wanted to get paid for what I wrote.

Now that I'm a little further along in my business journey, I have been able to reflect on how Twitter, face-to-face networking, and just providing information for free has increased my sales.

It's what Michael Banofsky said: "your brand is what you give away for free". This statement has had a great impact on me since I'm very focused on sales and so are my clients. It was actually very shocking to hear since I thought my true brand value was only available to (paying) clients.

Wordtree's eNews: Now Public

It was this time last year that I started a monthly electronic newsletter sent by email to my clients and business associates. My goal was to bring something of value to my subscribers every month - something from a business person's perspective.

Elie's Return on his Time Investment

Elie Kochman, owner of Optimal Upgrade Consulting, is a prolific and articulate writer who also happens to be a technology guru (who’s not afraid of a challenge). I found him on AdviceTap.com and the name of his company intrigued me. Contact Elie before you upgrade that system and be sure to read his own blog at Business and Networking: Advice to Home-based and Small Businesses.

In January 2009, I launched my consulting company, Optimal Upgrade Consulting. As part of the launch, I created a website that described my background and the services I offered. Additionally, the site had a blog, which quickly became the focal point of the entire site.

Initially, the topics I wrote about were as varied as the schedule, but after a couple months of wandering through a variety of topics, I settled on writing about issues facing the owners of small businesses. Not a huge surprise, considering that my target audience is small business owners.

Researching Tablets

On "Technology Day" at Seneca College (last Monday), I attended a workshop where the whole "class" was provided with an HP tablet.
 
The experience of using a stylus, tablet screen and the software behind the wired classroom had a profound impact on me as an educator and consultant.
 

Would you like APIs with that?

With the rise of third-party application development, people are starting to understand how information-based sites (like Twitter) can generate a huge variety of spin-off applications. Just think to yourself how many Twitter clients are available right now for every device, every user.
 

The Word Olympics: UK vs. Canada

Colum McAndrew is a Senior Technical Author for IDBS, a global supplier of innovative data management and analytics solutions for R&D organisations worldwide. Based in Surrey, England he has more than ten years of front line authoring experience and many more producing training documentation.  He also writes the RoboColum(n) technical authoring blog. Follow him on Twitter and please visit his blog

Language. I end up convulsed in laughter over seamlessly inane word misuse or a subtle idiosyncrasy. What does an occasional table do the rest of the time? How come abbreviation is such a long word? Yet language, together with all of its glorious absurdities, is essential for effective communication. Badly communicated and the result is confusion. Good communication makes the world a better, richer and more enjoyable place.