3 Ways to Make Your Business Card Stand Out

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Have you ever wondered how to make your business card stand out? In this training, I'm going to talk to you about three ways that you can stand out with your business card, especially at networking events. Hi, my name is Shelley Hitz. I'm an awesome coach and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. And in this training, I'm going to go through three different ways I've used to make my business card stand out. I'm still exploring new ways. I'm always open to new things because marketing many times is gaining attention. It's getting someone's attention. So many times that means doing something new. So the first way you can make your business card stand out is by having different quotes or to have something different on all of your business cards. That way people are going to come up to you and want to pick which one they want. You can actually do this@moo.com m o o.com they will let you choose different types of quotes, different things, and you can rotate them on your business cards. And I have not specifically done that at moo, but I just returned from a business networking event and what I did was I took custom art pieces. And what I did is on the back, I put my business contact information. I have my name, my title, my email, website, and how I could help them. So what I did is at this business event, I just at a break, I said, hey, I have custom art pieces and first come, first serve. So whoever would like one of these, just come up. You can choose which one you want. And everyone rushed over to me to choose which one they wanted. And everyone took a card. It wasn't pushy because, hey, they're getting an art piece for free. And this to me, I create our art on a daily basis and I don't currently sell my prints. And so it was an easy way for me to offer value. And it really worked. I mean, people just flooded over really quickly to pick which one they wanted. So you can do this in a multitude of ways, but have something different on your business card so that people get to pick which one they like. The second way you can make your business cards stand out is by just creating something that's more handwritten, so different than my artwork. You could actually just create a little thing that looks that's Origami. I just looked up origami for envelopes on Google and I created these little business cards. So this one has Author Audience Academy on it, and some of these. Then what I did is on the inside I wrote a custom message, and on the back I have a little sticker that I added my information. So you can do it however you want, but make something a little more personalized or do something that's just different, that catches someone's attention differently just than the standard business card. And the other thing I want you to think about is not trying to give your business card to every single person you meet, but instead really being strategic on who you give your business card to. So if you have 10 business cards like this, it doesn't mean you have to go and fold 100 of these. You're looking for 10 people, strategically looking for 10 people that you want to give those to. And then the third way to make your business card stand out is just to do a different size or a different thing that someone's expecting. So I had these wee little cards. They're just small. They're almost half the size of a regular business card. I had these printed@moo.com and on the back is like a journal cover. So since I'm an author coach, that worked perfectly. And it's just different. It's small. It's like, oh, this is kind of different. And I don't know that I will get this exact business card again, but it's just an idea. Maybe as an author, your business card could be a bookmark. That's really smart. And you can have your bookmark be a business card or something else, but think outside the box. I challenge you. What can you do to stand out? When you're at networking events, you're giving out business cards, you're giving out information. What is something you can do? Something I see a lot of authors do is on the traditional business card, one side is their cover. Because if you set it up vertically, your cover will look really nice on there. That's an idea just for something simple. But I encourage you to really brainstorm, really think outside the box. Think what would fit your branding, what would fit your style, and try something new. Let me know in the comments ideas you have for standing out with your business cards. Also on this podcast, I just also wanted to share an update on the branding tip for authors of multiple genres that I shared earlier in an earlier training. I currently have updated my site. So because I was going to a business conference this last weekend, it motivated me and I updated my website so you can go to it now. Shellyhits.com and s h e l l e y h I-t z.com and you'll see what I have done on the landing page. Now there is an option to either go where my training is for authors, to get connected with some inspiration with my broken crayons, still color books and podcasts, or to take art classes from me since I'm now teaching those. So you can kind of see how I am directing the traffic. I'm keeping everything under my personal brand shellyhits.com so trying not to complicate it too much and you can see what I've done there to see if that's something that you're interested in. I will plan on still updating the landing pages for those three things eventually. But for right now I was like it's good to go. This is good for right now and for the conference that I was doing. And so I just wanted to share those tips because when I was at this conference this last weekend, I realized having these custom art pieces and everyone getting to pick their own, that was huge. If even if I was at a bigger conference, this was a small one. But even if I was at a bigger conference and I had these and people started going back to their tables and say oh look which one I got. And they'd be like, well where'd you get that? You know, it's really, it can be a really effective strategy and it worked really, really well. So I wanted to share that with you. And also because I'd updated my website before going to the conference, I wanted to give you that update as well. So I hope that you found this training helpful and I will see you next. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Author Audience. I would like to invite you to attend one of my free trainings all about how to sell more books without being pushy or self promotional. It's called amplify your message. Plus I will give you two free gifts just for attending. No credit card required. First you'll get my best selling book 9 Strategies to Build and grow your author Platform. And you'll also get my ebook titled List 5 Powerful Emails you can use immediately to grow your business. These are basically fill in the blank style templates and they are yours at no charge when you join us for the training. You can sign up for my free training by going to shellyhits.com/ that's shellyhits.com S H E L L E Y.

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Amplify this training and the two bonus ebooks are free and I would love to help you sell more books.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.