Business cards are pretty much the entry level marketing tool for any business.

Even if you decide to start a business today, it almost doesn’t seem real until you can add your name to a business card and hand it on to someone to tell them what you do and how to contact you.

For the ‘online only’ among you, virtual business cards are possible, and there are some that will argue that a website can act as a business card too – but there is something so appealing about that familiar card shape to take with you and remember…even if it is shaped like a circle, or has various artistic cut-outs…

And that is the point really. You give a business card to create a memory for whoever you give it to – allowing them to refer back to it and do something about it – contact you, or look you up online.

Which brings me nicely on to 10 ways to market yourself on a business card:

1. Contact me

The absolute minimum – your contact details displayed in a readable font. These days it is common place to leave out traditional information, like an address, but bear in mind that being able to display an address, landline as well as mobile, is a subtle indicator of credibility. Much like how not having a website is too.

2. Simply say what you do

Many businesses assume that once you hand over your card, the recipient will remember what it is that you do, and why you were (or were not) interesting to them when they met you. Far more reliable to say what you do, in simple, plain language, so they can always refer back to it and be clear. If they have collected your card as well as your competitors’, chances are they haven’t bothered to say what they do. When that ideal budget appears… you get the business because you said that you could solve their problem on your card.

3. Friend or follow me on social media

Collecting fans on Facebook? Are you particularly witty and relevant on Twitter? If it is a good channel for you to build relationships, then adding your strongest or preferred social media details could be helpful.

4. Land here

Imagine if you could get visibility of how many people checked you up online after receiving your business card? Imagine no longer – simply direct them to a purpose built landing page. You could get really clever and do a different one for each event you attend. Google analytics will tell you the rest.

5. Show me

An instant window on what you do, and a reminder too, is to display something that shows what you do on the reverse of the card. Spend the money on getting a great photograph, or risk appearing an amateur, or unprofessional.

6. It was good for them

Use the reverse of the card to quote a satisfied customer’s testimonial. If you have particularly strong (and real) testimonials, why not print up a variety?

7. Put a face to the name

A lot of micro businesses are putting their personal photograph on the card. Not for the faint-hearted, it is certainly not recommended unless it is a professional photograph, and preferably a good likeness (airbrushing will not help your case). It reinforces the remember me factor. It is used to best effect if you have struck a good rapport with the person you are giving your card to, and depending on what kind of business you have, it may not be good for your image.

8. An irresistible offer

If it suits your business, promote an exclusive offer (preferably time-limited) on the card. Using a unique code to quote when ordering will help.

9. Credentials

A recognised logo that identifies you as being a quality something is a good thing to put on your card, assuming you are entitled to do so. Like organisations that exist to regulate what you do. It should be discreet, but it will act like a seal of approval. The opposite will be true if you list all the associations you belong to and every possible logo. Let it act for you simply, with strength.

10. Choose us

A clearly articulated point that makes you different, or a strong benefit of doing business with you can be a compelling reason to retain your card, and contact you.

These days, printing business cards is fairly inexpensive. We’d recommend that you get your card professionally designed, simply because it makes a significant difference to the image you present. Of course, as a growing business, you may be a few steps away from that – in which case, finding a provider that allows you to upload your own artwork and print a quality product is a good idea. Have fun with it.

Bronwyn Durand writes the Marketing Ideaology Blog for JupiterJasper, an on-demand marketer service for small businesses.

10 Ways to market yourself on a business card is a post from: JupiterJasper's Marketing Ideaology blog

Personal branding is a serious business these days. Social media has catapaulted the average person into centre stage, making the associations they surround themselves with and way they conduct themselves much more available for public scrutiny. Twitter is an interesting case as the very nature of what you tweet about is so very revealing. As with all social interactions, codes of conduct emerge. In the Twitterverse, the reaction to expect if you don’t tow the social line is ‘unfollow’. Company Twitter accounts are not exempt. So in the mix of individuals and small businesses, how many of the following Tweeter types have you unfollowed? In no particular order…

1. The one hit wonder

One outstanding tweet in the history of all tweets. Make sure you get the one hit before hitting unfollow.

2. The I’m-selling-something-moderately-useful but really don’t have much more to say type

Guilty of repeat the same url/ short url in between random babble.

3. The ‘two word and @ type’, closely followed by ’1 word conversationalist with 1000 tweets and counting type’

No concept of audience – try instant messager, you’ll be much happier.

4. The eat sleep and I said and I watched and I phoned type

Boring. Even if you are a celeb. Most of us are not fanatical fans.

5. The short url repeater or include your url on everything type

Believe it or not, we can tell that you are repeating yourself. It works the first time, but do you think people want to see the same tweets all the time?

6. The I’ve written a blog with a catchy headline and no real content just to show you my ads type

Of course the ad is bigger than the content of the blog entry. Very convincing. Nice work on the headline though.

7. I obsessively RT those I’m stalking

If they tweet it it must be good. Yeah. Good luck to you.

8. You’re pretty awesome

Instant unfollow.

9. Get quazillions of followers

Buy followers, join here to get followers, get followers instantly. Not everyone is interested in followers for the sake of followers. Conversation and relevance make Twitter much more interesting. Decide if you are after a mass medium or a targeted conversation.

10. The persistent self-retweeter

Easily spottable. Why do it? The tweet is devalued with your ego attached.

11.The celebrity everything-i-do-is-amazing type

Twitter has been very useful in demystifying some of the obsession with celebs. Poor celebs get exposed for being the normal folk they are, and in some cases, the annoying idiots they are.

12. The everything I tweet has multiple hashtags type

The blur of hashtags has made your tweet unreadable.

13. The trending topic uberfan

The equivalent of this is walking around with a sign above your head saying “look at me”. Important to distinguish the single trending topic follower from the spammer who might manage to get all the trending topics in one tweet. Someone should do a study.

14. Please retweet

I’ll RT what I want to, thanks.

15. Join my mafia/mobster family

Stop tweeting about being irritated by the invites – it’s free advertising! All power to them for getting so many mentions. Not a way to gain friends and influence, however.

16. No name, no bio, no icon

No follow.

17. No tweets

As riveting as an empty page is, there really isn’t much point in following you if you don’t interact. But I support the idea that some would just prefer to listen and not tweet, in which case your bio will keep you around.

18. Auto tweet

Wouldn’t be so bad if it was relevant, timed, or not a bot pretending to be human. Identify when its auto, or risk the assumption that it is all an auto response. Bots aren’t that engaging. Unless you happen to be one of the plants, houses or other objects that tweet, in which case, the bot is your voice.

19. Multi-tweeter

Identifiable by the concurrent fairly useless tweets. It’s too obvious a tactic to get some visibility. Surefire way to ensure all the tweets are ignored.

20. Other language

Nothing wrong with different languages, love that its a global space. If I can’t understand, well, I’m not following you, if you will excuse the pun.

21. Swearaholics

It demonstrates a serious lack of language ability if you need to waste your 140 characters on swearing. It looks ridiculous.

22. Tasteless self exhibitionists (from the ridiculous to the nude)

No need for additional explanation.

23. Shameless follow me or else types.

OK, so you have 20000 followers. If you don’t tweet anything interesting or relevant, then I’m still going to unfollow. If you have followed me first, then I’ll follow you if doing so is in line with what I want – not just because you have followed me. Worth noting – just because someone does follow you back, doesn’t mean they are reading your tweets.

24. The salesman @mentioner.

You really do get my attention when you use my name to sell your products. Such a useful service – identifying yourself as a spammer. Reaction? It’s wild – I do absolutely nothing. Thanks for the mention, though.

25. The followfriday follow me

There it is, the self-include somewhere near the end of the list. It’s ok to think you are great, but I can see that you think you are great. It actually shows a lack of confidence. You may get away with it once, but not if you do it everytime.

I hope you have enjoyed this tongue-in-cheek ‘unfollow analysis’ that I’ve compiled from various bits of evidence. If you are doing any of the above, it may help you to understand why you do get unfollowed. Focus on your Twitter strategy if you have one, be mindful that others are growing more impatient with the above, and are likely to become more ruthless at pruning their lists.

Feel free to share your personal unfollow tips.

Apply it to your business:

- Consider that you are likely to get a better conversion rate for time spent if you are targeted in your approach to Twitter, and everything else.
- Target audiences tire quickly of underhanded or insincere marketing ploys. Be genuine and upfront and your marketing may have a bigger and more sustainable effect.
- Step back and look at the marketing you are doing with an objective eye. Look at the sum of the whole too. How are you coming across? Would you buy from you?
- Have a strategy. Define what you want to convey, what you want to achieve and how you are going to do it.

Bronwyn Durand writes the Marketing Ideaology blog for JupiterJasper Practical Marketing.

25 Twitter tweeter unfollow behaviours is a post from: JupiterJasper's Marketing Ideaology blog

How deep into social media are you? More importantly, how deep are your customers and future customers?

Articles and tips on how to get the best out of Twitter are everywhere. The micro-blogging tool has enjoyed phenomenal success, despite not yet having a monetising solution.

I’ve been listening to Twitter.

Its one of the wonderful things about it. People say what they think in 140 characters or less, and once you have collected an interesting set of people and organisations to follow, you could just sit back and listen. There are even tools like Twitfeel that can present you with a sea of tweets (and whether there is a positive or negative view) about any topic you desire. Talk about dipstick research.

But be warned!

“Some users are far more active and vocal than others, limiting information gleaned from messages on the site”, said Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, an assistant professor of strategy at Harvard Business School. In a study: is twitter an accurate reflection of your target market – who is generating the content? he commented “If you’re trying to get what a representative cross-section of the public is thinking, you’re probably better off staying away from Twitter”. Piskorski does believe there are other uses for Twitter.

Twitter as a marketing tool

In no particular order, here are some of the marketing uses for Twitter that I’ve observed, with examples where useful:

Networking – This is networking with a difference. Twitter can give access to thinkers. Or celebs. Or people you may ordinarily not get within a ten thousand miles of. The serendipity of coming across an outstanding individual by chance, is especially alluring. If Facebook gave me back everyone I ever knew, Twitter is providing a way of encircling often contradictory thinkers and information that is of my choosing. And as an added bonus, there may be others that are interested in me, or find what I find interesting.

Sharing influence – Like crowdsourcing, its about getting everyone you can reach on side to support your cause. You could even get a Twibbon if you are so inclined. Risky business, and not an avenue for the control freak or those who don’t pay mind to planning. Have a look at what happened to this brand in one of many examples of a Twitter campaign gone bad. To present the opposite side of the ‘group influence’ coin is TED which became a trending topic not too long ago, thanks to supporters and people who found that the ideas shared were indeed worth spreading.

Going viral – The holy grail. A wave gathering its own momentum purely from word of mouth motivated by sharing (and activated by curiosity). Out of sheer jealousy I won’t name any successful campaigns.

Learning about customers – Ask a direct question or simply listen to what they have to say. If they don’t say anything, you can draw your own conclusions. More importantly, listen to them. What a wonderful way to learn more about your audience – what they like, listen to, want and need. Engage them and ask questions.

Entertainment – Comedians are widely followed. Those of the literal persuasion are inventing new ways of amusing and provoking thought with 140 characters. In a more straightforward sense, actual entertainment businesses like @Paramount are informing customers, as are musicians, and venues. Celebs entertain just by being themselves, apparently. If you can find a way to be uniquely entertaining as a company, then you are on a whole new marketing level. See point below about humanising the brand. The ‘quote’ as a thing to share is back. I think I even saw a Twitter profile dedicated to David Ogilvy quotes, and I believe there is one for Charles Darwin.

Recruiting – Real-time opportunities if you are lucky to be following the right person at the right time. Your Twitter prowess can now be used as a skill on your resume for some employers. Beware of calling yourself a guru…just check out your ‘guru’ peers before you label yourself so unattractively. Intriguing possibilities about the power of recommendations start to form – especially if you are struggling to find talented people. It takes the ‘I know someone who knows someone’ to a whole new level…

Creating unique communities – Or Twibes as Seth Godin would call them – even the architects are Tweeting, and if you are in government or an academic, you will find lengthy guides on using Twitter. I am really enjoying finding my marketing community peers. People are drawn together in their quests for knowledge, trends, the hidden cool, or just stuff they like.

Human driven search – Your followers may be a goldmine of useful information (fill in the gaps) “I’m doing xyz…any advice?” “I want…” “Can I help?” “Anyone know a…”. Its a quick method of asking a wide group of people for help.

Self promotion – This list would not be complete without it. You don’t have to go far to find gurus, experts and all manner of geniuses. You’ll especially tell the big self promoters apart from what they send in their auto-responders if you follow them. Yes, you can do that too on Twitter. Forgive me if I don’t promote the auto anythings – I think there is a real danger in collecting followers, following and responding automatically. Eventually only bots will be speaking – where is the point in that? Self promoters are heavy on their selling through their tweets too.

Awareness – You could be the smallest business in the smallest village in England, with the most interesting business. An inspired Twitter strategy could open up your world.

Humanising brands – Giving a brand personality and becoming someone to interact with. Of course, this is generally easier if you have a brand persona to begin with. Big brands that haven’t succeeded in recognising the need to be ‘human’ on Twitter have missed a serious trick. The approachability factor is critical and appealing. If your brand is still a fledgling, managing to communicate your brand effectively on a platform like Twitter could really influence your positioning.

Product brainstorming – Ford’s think tank via @scottmonty is also being used as a way of collecting ideas to feed into product development and customer care.

Announcements – Competitions, vouchers, freebies, new products, where to find products. Even taco trucks and creme brulee carts in the States.

Teaser campaigns – News before its news. The precurser to viral. The ‘watch this space’ of the Twitterverse.

Customer service – This has to be my favourite, high potential use. The possibilities of having an instantaneous customer service channel where someone human listens and deals with the problem in real time…am I dreaming? Its based on the idea that businesses actually do want to help their customers. I believe that having a brilliant customer service channel is a surefire way to convert, retain and improve the relationships you have with loyal customers. BT take note, this could revolutionise you if you dare.

Parcel tracking – As reported by Springwise on the 22 July PackageTrack now tracks parcels of specific courier providers. Electricity meters can Tweet too, so consider the potential applications.

Social experiments – Treehugger’s @tweehive combines human beings and bees social biomimicry, digital experiment and environmental campaigning.

Spread and break news – Real time news updates, a finger on the pulse of whatever could happen at anytime – the fastest way to spread news at the moment? Twitter is an obvious broadcast medium.

Feedback channel for brands – Advertisers incentivise or ask for real comments on what you think about what they are selling. Think of the possibilities of instant reaction measurement. A new kind of focus group? Use Twitter tools with a measure of sense to measure public opinion. A business on Twitter could also be well positioned to deal with and nip any damaging news spreading as a result of any customer service issues.

Encouraging customers or supporters to identify themselves or participate in debate – The DMA 2009 profile is directing hashtag traffic by asking interested parties to use specific named hashtags (#) in answering questions it poses on @2009DMAs. Clicking on the same hashtag will take you through to where you can view everyone else’s opinions on the subject. Hashtags are a Twitter convention for gathering posts around specific issues together, making it easy to browse all posts on the subject.

Expert positioning – Through the Twitter circle you keep, the kinds of things you post and information you have access to, you can build yourself a profile of the ‘expert’ in your chosen field.

If you are now on side and can start to understand the benefit of Twitter, consider the caution I started this post with – make sure you understand how deep your customers and future customers are into social media. If they aren’t, your involvement should be strategic – going to give you and them benefit, not just for the sake of it. I’m reminded of Google’s passer-by research where less than 8% spoken to actually understood what a browser was. What would happen if you did the same with Twitter to potential buyers of what you are selling?

Try these links for Twitter detail:
Twitter applications
Twitter’s Business 101
Mashable’s guide to Twitter

Apply it to your business:

- Understand how your target audience is consuming social media, which ones in what ways. Also look at your stakeholders – shareholders, partners, press, peers. Look at the level of activity of your target market – are they mainly givers or takers, or both, or are they of the try it once variety.
- Do your research. Spend time watching and listening to understand the medium, the language and get some ideas on how you can best leverage it. Make careful experiments until you are more confident. Don’t discount the supporting applications in your strategy – look at Twitpic for instance.
- Think differently. You don’t have to follow the masses – this is emerging communication space. Be creative and find a use for Twitter that extends your business and adds value for your customers. Can Twitter help you to personalise your offering? Once your customers buy your product, how does it fit into their lives? Take it a step further – Mashable has a Twitter ‘brand sponsors’ widget for brands that want to be exposed to their readers.
- Remember the quality of your content is crucial – relevance, relevance, relevance. And then think it through again.

Bronwyn Durand writes the Marketing Ideaology blog for JupiterJasper Practical Marketing.

How Twitter is being used as a marketing tool is a post from: JupiterJasper's Marketing Ideaology blog

Social networking (and the clunky-sounding Web 2.0 catchall) is proving to be a tough nut to crack for marketers. The medium, if you can call it that yet, is all about people expressing themselves and the lifespan of information and its relevance in this world is unbelievably short lived. Using social networks for marketing experiments could be extremely rewarding, a disaster, or worse – a non event.

Some interesting stories doing the rounds are a story of Moonfruit (a hosting service that has a free website creation tool) and Starbucks latest launch of Starbucks icecream through Facebook.

Moonfruit & Twitter
Moonfruit have been doing some good marketing. One of their latest ideas, and certainly the one with most widespread popularity, was to run a competition on micro-blogging site Twitter. Macbooks were up for the winning for the creative use of their brand name in Tweets. It worked like wildfire (and seemingly from Twitter’s perspective, was put out like one too). What a wonderful exercise to take some brilliant learnings from.

You don’t need to be big and powerful to make an impact in your target audience with social media. You need an inspired idea, a very good understanding of the social media platform, and you must be able to manage what happens next. You don’t even need a big budget. But you don’t even qualify if you don’t understand your target audience.

Moonfruit had a wonderful experience, gained massive awareness, and their target market (and more besides) took hold of their brand and made it their own. Their statement on their blog (subsequent to disappearing off the Twitter trending scales) was:
“But given how it has turned out we are also touched by how people have responded to the brand and campaign. We love how they’ve questioned it, played with it, joked about it, sung about it, painted it, made it out of fruit, shouted at it and made it what it is through their participation. We are in awe of the brilliance and creativity of the Twittersphere. So thank you all.” http://www.moonfruitlounge.com/.

Starbucks and Facebook
Starbucks took a more conventional approach in creating a viral wave offering coupons for their new Starbucks icecream through Facebook. Even though this is a US based example, there is no reason why this wouldn’t work anywhere, and I’d be blown away if UK based Starbucks fans didn’t now know all about it too. Their international site describes the promotion for Starbucks® Ice Cream here.

The Facebook page for Starbucks has 3,446,409 fans listed. That is an enormous group of people who have identified themselves as being committed customers, implying their brand loyalty. A ready-made audience to effect a launch of any new idea, assuming they log in to Facebook to see it. All you need is a little of the ‘forward to a friend‘ magic and you suddenly open up untapped parts of your market. WARC says in their article ‘Brands making inroads on social nets’ that ‘more than half of US consumers who regularly use social networking sites have signed up to become “friends” with a brand. What an opportunity.

Thinking about how best to use social media for your marketing? These platforms demand that you have a very good understanding of your target market, or are intent on learning about them from your actions. What is your customer’s motivations for using these social networks?

In some cases they will belong to multiple networks to express the different aspects of who they are. Often their on screen persona is just that, and can even be different between sites. What is very clear is that it is all about participation. If no one passes on your viral idea, it just isn’t viral. If you get no comments on your business’ Facebook page, what is it really doing for you? It clearly isn’t doing anything for your potential customers.

Social networking isn’t just any bandwagon. You need to have a strategy. And a clear idea of what your target audience could get out of the interaction with you. If you can’t offer something that is truly an extension to your brand or business, that gives value, then why are you doing it? If you aren’t in touch with your customers now, then crossing the divide with social networking may leave you pretty exposed. Start smaller if you must. Why not find a way to learn from your customers and give a new way to enjoy your business? Be a little lateral. Try this for an example: If you are a builder, maybe you need to be Facebooking about design trends and economical ideas about rebuilding houses. Or tap into the resources in the local community and do a joint page for potential customers in your local area of work that need you and others of your ilk – you know, the plasterer, the plumber etc. Offer value.

Some points to consider that have been raised by the community analysing social networking trends:

- Which brands aren’t using social media says as much as those that do.
- Its not often about the quality, but the readership.
- The more awareness, the more success, the more precarious being at the top can be.
- What’s popular is rarely what’s good.

Apply it to your business:
* Social network media are a big wake up call to do more to understand your customer, so that you can have an interactive relationship with them. If you aren’t ready to market using these media, you sure can learn more about your customers in terms of their use of them. Which will help you with the marketing you do.
* At a very basic level offering a basic means of sharing feedback is a dialogue starter. Social media may or may not be the ticket for you, but you can reach out to your customer and ask them what they think about you and your products, and if you are very lucky, they will tell you. Be prepared to DO something with what you learn.
* What do people do with your what you sell? Besides buy them. Use that knowledge to help you find your customers, and if you don’t know, find out.

Bronwyn Durand writes the Marketing Ideaology blog for JupiterJasper Practical Marketing.

May the Fruit be with you, and other social networking ideas is a post from: JupiterJasper's Marketing Ideaology blog