Here’s the thing, business cards are weird.
They need your name and some form of contact info and then some way of communicating what the hell you do.
They also need to be visually appealing in a way that properly communicates the personality of what it is you do.
They’re double-sided so it’s best you split up the pertinent information in a way that’s logical and give both sides visual appeal. Or have all the basic info on one side and then showcase something in particular you have done/are doing in order to take advantage of all that “real estate.”
There are lots of sites with guides on how to do it, even providing templates. And it’s the combination of all those thousands of templates multiplied by all the various things I have done and am doing that has made trying to make a business card one of my favorite writerly tasks to avoid.
The one and only time I’ve ever made business cards in the past, they linked to my currently-on-hiatus-ish Patreon page on one side and then I had quotes from my Wonder Tales on the other side. They were small and charming and completely pointless when I realized send folks straight to Patreon was not an effective use of my business card.
Because business cards, books, and social media profile blurbs all serve one function: to make an introduction.
An introduction’s job is to lead into where someone can get to know you better: your direct contact info, your website, and or your blog/primary platform of consistent content-sharing.
My books and social media are all pointing toward my site, so why do I need business cards?
- Jermusyk isn’t the easiest thing in the world to expect new people to remember how to spell;
- Googling “better storytelling” doesn’t send people to my site straightaway; and,
- business cards are a lot lighter and less expensive to carry around as “networking” shorthand than any of my books.
So, with everything else squared away, it’s time to square away this.
Also published on Medium.