Home / Branding, Entrepreneur, Marketing+Technology / Personal Branding & the Business Card: Tips for Appearing More Professional, Legit and/or Possibly Employable. PLUS! Dead Give-A-Ways of the Dangleberries and other Personal Branding Screw-ups You Want to Avoid!

Personal Branding & the Business Card: Tips for Appearing More Professional, Legit and/or Possibly Employable. PLUS! Dead Give-A-Ways of the Dangleberries and other Personal Branding Screw-ups You Want to Avoid!

OK, take that swank bluetooth dangle-dongle berry outta your ear and read’up! That plan of yours to have you’re next professional Sears photo-session for your “Avery print-at-home business card” sporting that killa’ bluetooth headset of yours is a bad bad very very bad bad idea. Bad idea. True story. Bad idea. Here’s some other tips you should know/consider:

#1: ‘Get Yo’ Global Look On’ your business card

A 44-year-old unemployed ’seasoned senior executive vice president of sales’ person says to me, “Why’s there a plus sign in your phone number? Is that a typo?” Nooooo!

Business cards that are “global friendly” immediately communicate that you have a passport and are capable of surviving outside the US on your own. Or that you’re aware that the US is not the only place in the world that has phones. That maybe you actually know/interact with someone outside the US.

More than likely, you are experienced/capable of interacting with other professionals outside of the US and you do that frequently enough that it’s important to have a global-friendly phone numbers that include the country-code. I can run through a pile of 1,000 business cards from folks I’ve met recently and immediately tell you who has gold/platinum status on United and is capable of speaking in front of large audiences by this simple little trait alone. (For now, I guess. I just blew the secret!)

The international seasoned professional simply includes the mobile-phone friendly country code, i.e: +1.775.555.5555. The key here is to simply include the County Code (CC). Here in the US it’s “1″. +1 on mobile devices. We do this because phone numbers in pretty much every country outside of the US and Canada are totally f’n confusing. Want to send a txt to someone in another country? You have to use the +CC.86.311.456.12345

(BTW, seasoned globe-trotters carry ATT or T-Mobile phones. Sprint & Verizon largely don’t work outside the US.)

#2: UPPER CASE EMAIL ADDRESS IS BAD. lowercase everything communicates way emo-hip-startup-with-not-a-lot-of-revenue

You’re email address should always be all lower case. BAD: DAVID@IMADORK.COM. Weak: David@ImADork.com. good: david@imadork.com. Punctuation still matters on everything. Typically well designed business cards that are in all lower case shouts: Hey! I work at a small start-up where we jobbed our corporate collateral to an emo identity designer/we’re trying waaaayyyyy to hard to be hip and cool!!! Companies over 10million in revenue largely care about proper punctuation on their business cards. Startups that are too cool for school are less than 1 million in revenue.

#3: No mobile phone number on the business card.

This guy interviewing with us sporting a sweet Motorola Star-Tac said to me: “I’m sorry, I keep my mobile phone number private and only give it out to my close friends and family.” That was in 1994.

Sorry to bust out the big news on some of you: <cough> It’s 2007. If you still have a land-line, you’re getting kinda weird. I absolutely think it’s quaint of those folks that still think of their mobile phone a private luxury only to be used to call AAA for a flat tire or to let their honey know they’ll be late for dinner. Yeah, back in 1992 when I paid CellularOne $1.25 a minute with “no free anytime minutes” (yeah, shocking!) I was kinda stingy too. Now I chaw down 2000 minutes, 3000 sms and an all-u-can-eat data plan for ~$100.00/month. And guess what? You can too! 

Seriously, get over it. Give it up. There’s nothing gained by being stingy with that mobile phone of yours. And guess what, it get’s stranger: I actually don’t want to call you! I’ll be more likely sending you a text message.

No text messaging plan? Great! I can’t think of a better way to nonverbally tell someone, “Hello. I stopped evolving as a functional part of the professional business world in 1999 and please consider me to be unemployable. Dude, let’s trade voicemails and faxes!!!” C’mon. 33% of the kids 12 and under are more freakin’ connected than you. Get with the ’00’s.

#4: Print-at-home says “Unemployable”

Word.

#5. Kill your FAX number.

Get rid of the fax. Shoot it. Blow it up. And PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t put it on your card business card unless you’re a lawyer who still uses Word Perfect 5.1.

Fortunately the folks who still send/receive fax’s don’t read blogs so I don’t need to hammer down this point to much. I’m pretty sure I’ve “faxed” two people in the last year. One was a practical joke. I typed up an email, printed it, and then faxed it to a friend who works for a prominent US Senator who employes interns to print his email for him and then called him and left a long voice mail asking him if he got my email. hahaha!

In a world where we send/receive hundreds of email, + txt, IM, facebook, myspace, do we really need to send/receive faxes? Replace that with your Yahoo!, AIM, Skype, Gtalk!

#6. Holy-mother-of-all sweet receding hairlines/sick vertical bang factor 10x! Dump that photo!

This is rather narrow nit and aimed particularly at my black-turtleneck-wearing real-estate/insurance/human resources bro’s. Leave the photo off the business card. Seriously. That Sears model look you’re sporting ultimately does you more harm than good unless you moonlight at Tao in a bathtub. Replace that photo and reclaim that space with links to your facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn/Flickr/Tumblr/WordPress/Typepad/etc. so we can see some better photos of you and your family/friends and validate you’re not a total dangleberrier freak.

Oddly enough, not having an online avatar/profile photo on the social networking sites says “I’m a freak/lurker.” Again, it’s 2007. Something’s wrong if you don’t have a digital photo of yourself at all. One that’s semi pro looking or minimally visually complimentary says a lot about to the degree to which you clean up and care to function professionally.

#7. Serif Type Face or an ignorant use of MS Comic Sans, Hobo or Arial Black

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of serif types that kick-ass and I love it and it looks awesome. But on a business card that will more-than-likely be scanned, serif gets hard to read and is totally the civil engineer, tax attorney or banking/finance look. That’s OK if you’re one of them kind of folk. If you don’t know why using Hobo is like writing “I’m a dumbass” on your forehead and hanging out in front of Hot Topic at the mall with an OrangeJulius in your hand then go right ahead and use it. Or hire a trained professional identity designer. Best case: copy as close as you can that card from Deloitte.

#8. Test Drive that sucka on Card-Scan and make sure it scans 99% accurate.

Word.

#9. Quality says quality

Business cards printed on nice recycled stock with a matte/gloss finish say “I’m a clean, contemporary and professional.” Some people complain that gloss scratches. That was back in 1992. They fixed that. Now it protects that card. 

If you’re coated cards are getting bent/scratched then you don’t give out enough cards/party/meet people. Certain businesses can get away with rough, uncoated stock — like a concrete manufacturer, dog-groomer or the carrot-juice supervisor at Wild Oats.

Anything that can easily be confused with print-at-home stock is simply a business card personal branding death sentence. If you can’t be bothered with getting professionally printed business cards, you’re killing your professional brand. C’mon, there’s like 5,000 places on the Web (Flickr has a cool service) that can do this in 1 week or less and you won’t look like a total goober dangleberry!

#10. Some random nits for people looking for employment or a sales pitch appointment beyond the business card but related enough for this post:

• Got a sooper slick resume and absolutely no Google Juice? You’re either spooky, strange, of no social relevance or just plain out-of-date.
• Don’t be stupid. Get your Google on. Google me. See what Page 1 looks like. I own my Page 1. And Page 2…
• Google yourself before you go meet a potential employer or sales prospect. What you see (or don’t) is what they see (or don’t).
• Research who you’re talking to! I have pretty much laid out my whole personal life online; you should be able to find something to talk about/have in common.
• Resume’s are dead. Don’t send me a resume. Point me to your Facebook/Myspace/LinkedIn/ClaimID/OpenID/etc.
• I had a 55 year-old former CFO/business executive complain I was hard to reach. hahahahah! I had a 17 year old high school kid reach me out of the blue about an internship in 60 seconds flat.
• If you want employment at my company, it’s not my responsibility to conform to how you communicate best.
• Don’t EVER EVER EVER EVER be anything but sweet, humble, gracious and courteous with anyone at the Company — especially my assistant or the receptionist. Here’s how they relay your message to me: “Some total ass-wipe dickhead just called you from Wall Street Mergers & Acquisitions. Do you want me schedule him to call you in January of 2032?”
• Talk to the people who talk to me. Talk to the people who talk to the business leaders. It’s not so important that you talk to me more than anyone else…or even exclusively. Do you honestly believe I walk out after meeting with someone and give a unilateral order: “Hey, you in that cube. I just hired this guy. He reports to you know.” hahaha! I look to my team to be the social filters. How someone interacts with my team is 99% more important than how much they interact with me. It really doesn’t matter if I like you. If my team can’t like you, that’s an insurmountable problem.
• I ultimately look to my team that I trust to filter and opine their impressions of anyone. Getting a glowing recommendation from Steph at the front-desk is worth more than an hour my time telling me your five-year plan and your summa-cumma-humma claude thingy you did in college.
• Overt attempts to hide your personal life and go for the Sears model look work against you these days. Businesses are more than ever not interested in homogenized drones with no personality. Birds of feather flock together. Everyone at my company is sooper cool. I love hanging out with everyone at my company. They’re all cool. You’d better be too! We want real people with really cool/interesting personal lives that make our lives richer and more interesting. But don’t tell us how cool you are, show us!
• What are you hiding that can be all that negative today that Google can’t find? By the way, we do a standard 10-year background checks on pretty much everyone. The HR Scare-mongers of the 80’s got everyone all screwed up on union-driven fear. All the old hangups (you’re gay, you’re divorced, you’re a single mom, you’re pagan, you like to go to burning man, you have tats all over you, you accidentally voted for GW, you were in a Sorority, you hunt, you support PETA, it’s not your natural hair color, you drink soy milk) have soooo little bearing on what really matters. Great companies are filled with great people who could largely give a crap about whether any of that. What matters? (a) Are you congruent with the company’s brand? (b) Do you present any significant HR issues/risks? (c) Will you attract other good people to the team instead of driving good team members away? (d) Are you really good at what you do and willing to learn to do other things? (e) Are you socially conscious and willing to invest in and give back to your community?
• Get a Gmail account for personal email and get it out of the work email. ’nuff said.

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