What to Do with all these business cards?
This post is a little PSA:
anybody who knows me, knows I am a life hack guru, I Just got to Orlando Fl for a Convention Photography Job, and about to start networking to build a second market for our event photography business, and I am about to collect a bunch of buisness cards......
Lil back story, I go to about 20-30 networking events a year to market my photography and Photo booth services, If the business cards don't end up going through the washing machine, they end up in a pile on my desktop (in hopes i will get to them later,) I try to go through them for follow ups and truth is, sometimes (most of the time) I don't even get that far before they end up in a box of business cards collected....
Before I go out and get more business cards for my collection. I decided to do something about it. first I went through all the old ones and called them, first off to see if they are still at the same job, (in the service industry, there is a lot of turn over and promotions etc. positions are filled and changed every couple years.) Secondly, I call them to let them know I still have their information, and if they don't mind, let me send them an email about what we've been up-to.
It's a great way to reconnect with someone and if you are in business, it is important to keep those relationships for many reasons. first of all these are people I have already met, I must have engaged with them somehow or another to the degree that they cared for me to give me their contact information. second I just made contact again and let them know I was going to send them an email, which is more likely to be opened now that i called them and let them know I had kept their info, and wanted to maintain the relationship.
which brings me to this, I began a quest of what to do with these business cards now. NOBODY has the time to input all the detail into a spreadsheet. or Contacts, right? .....untill now!
I found an app called Camcard, which is AMAZING, (I had used their other App CamScanner a few times to turn scan signed hard documents to PDF's using only a Phone camera.) I know right NO MORE NEED FOR A CLUNKY SCANNER EITHER! CamCard (also using the phone camera) puts all the business cards in a database, and loads it online, along with a picture of the business card (it does have it's glitches when it comes to fancy fonts and Designs.) You can Download an excel file to pull use the information in different contacts, emails etc. It took all the leg work out of data entry. and it is Free!
extra Tip: I have used it to take a picture of email signature (sometimes I change the text and font before taking the picture, if it has too much color changes etc. ) to transfer all the information to my business contacts Database too
I hope you found this tip helpfull, and feel this was as much a blessing to you as it was to lead me to write this post. feel free to share it with your other business professional friends.
feel free to check out our website and give us a shout for photography services!
P.s. as a photographer I have 3 different Santa Business Cards. my kids know I know Santa.
