If you’re wondering what to put on a personal business card, this article is for you. Personal business cards are a terrific marketing tool for today's professionals.
You’d use your company’s business card when doing business on behalf of the company. Likewise, you need a personal contact card to promote your services if you’re an entrepreneur, a freelancer, looking for a new job, or looking for a side gig.
A business card promotes a business and the services it provides. Your personal card promotes you and helps you network in your niche.
In this article we'll explore the benefits of having a personal business card. Then I'll share a collection of templates you can use to create your own personal business card along with an online business card maker.
5 Top Benefits of Having a Personal Business Card
Think of your personal cards as networking business cards. You should never leave home without them because you never know who you’ll meet and where you'll meet them.
Some of the great benefits of using these networking personal cards are that you’ll:
1. Look Like a Pro
Have a personal contact card to hand out at networking, social, and other important events. This gives off an air of competence and professionalism. It helps you establish relationships and can help you develop your career.
2. Create a Positive First Impression
A well-designed personalised business card can communicate your personality, work, and style. With the right card you can create a positive and lasting impression.
3. Promote Awareness of Your Brand
Networking business cards are a tiny form of advertising that create more awareness of your personal brand. They should be distinct to help you stand out from the crowd.
4. Turn Chance Encounters Into Networking Opportunities
Think of all the random encounters you have in your day to day life. Try taking a you-never-know attitude. Genuinely engage with the people you cross paths within the course of your day. You actually increase your opportunities to promote yourself. Share your designed personal card when appropriate.
5. Help People Remember You & the Services You Provide
A beautifully designed personalised business card is pocket and wallet friendly. It tells people your name and what you do. It's also eye catching and memorable. This creates a greater chance of using the personal card information on it to get in touch with you later.
7 Personal Details to Put on Your Personal Business Card
So, now you know what a personal contact card is and what the benefits of having one is. You're probably wondering what to put on your personal business card. Well, the key thing is to keep your personal card information simple. Here's what to put on your personal business card:
1. Your Name
This is obvious, but still needs to be mentioned. Your personal networking cards should contain the name you want clients to identify you by. This could be your given name or a name you’ve chosen for professional reasons.
2. Your Title or Area of Expertise
Regardless of your industry, your card should make clear what your specialty is. That is, what service you’re selling. Make sure this content is clear and easy to understand.
3. Contact Details
You need to provide contact details so the prospective clients can reach you quickly and easily. Your contact details can be an email address you’ve created for business purposes and/or a phone number. You don’t need to include a physical address unless your services are location based, such as a photo studio.
4. Social Media
If you've got an Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media account, definitely include your handle on your card. Remember though, even though this is a personal card, no one wants to see endless photos of your cat or lunch for the past year. So, only share accounts that give information that'll enhance your professional image and show off your skills.
Let's think about a makeup artist, as an example. You could create an Instagram account that shows some of your process. You could include before and after photos. You could also try short quotes from testimonials.
5. Website
If you've got a professional website that shows off your work or promotes your services, you should also include the web address on your card.
Here are a few optional categories you can add to your personal cards:
6. Photo/Illustrations
Don’t add photos to networking business cards just for the sake of it. If you add photos or illustrations, they should add visual clues and information about the services you provide.
7. Personal Logo
If you had a logo created as part of your brand, then by all means add it to your personalised business cards to keep your materials consistent. Remember though you don’t need a logo for a personal card. So, if you don’t have one, that’s fine.
Personal Details to Exclude From Personal Business Cards
Just as it’s important to know what to put on a business card, it’s also important to know what you should avoid putting on your card.
1. Typos and Misspelt Words
First and most obvious are any kind of mistakes like misspelt words, typos and grammatical mistakes. These signal carelessness and unprofessionalism and are off putting.
2. Incorrect Information
Your personalised business cards help prospective clients get in touch with you. If you’ve included incorrect contact information on your card, you will miss out. Your personalised business cards won't meet their objective.
3. Too Small Print
Don’t use type size smaller than 8 points. You want people to be able to read the information on your card without using a magnifying glass.
4. Fussy or Cluttered Cards
When it comes to personal business card designs, the best rule of thumb is to keep things simple. The goal of the card is to provide a few pieces of information clearly and accessibly. Fussy designs or cards with too much information just get in the way of that. If you've got no idea how to approach personal business card design, then let templates do the heavy lifting for you. Here are some terrific examples of personal business cards templates that you can check out.
5. Think About Practicality
Be careful not to get so wrapped up in what to put on personal business cards that you forget about practicality. Think about what to put on a business card for networking purposes. What will the viewer need to see? What might be best saved for later or more long form content?
How to Make a Great Business Card in Adobe Photoshop Quickly
Now that we've explored what to put on a personal business card, let's work with one. A template can be a fast and fun way to explore personal business cards ideas. It can also be a good way to explore what to put on personal business cards.
Here's the business card personal template we'll use for this demonstration:
1. View Both Sides of Your Personal Business Card Template
Open your personal business card template by going to File > Open. Then, select the file from your computer.
You'll need to do this for both sides of your business card. Then, click and drag to undock the design documents. Resize and rearrange them in any way you like. This can be beneficial when making design adjustments. Seeing both sides at the same time can help you make design choices that match.
2. Turn to Your Layers Panel
The Layers panel is often an essential part of working in Photoshop. Open it up by going to Window > Layers. In most personal name card templates, you'll likely see the content separated into layers, like we see here.
This is important, because we can select a layer here and then use the Move tool, in our Tools panel, to reposition content. It's all dependent on which layer we select. So, for example, selecting a text layer and then using the Move tool would let me reposition this text. Just click and drag with the Move tool selected to move content.
3. Easily Edit Text With the Type Tool
Next, let's edit the text in our personal name card template. Select the Type tool in your Tools panel.
Then, click on the type you'd like to edit. Edit and type as you would in most word processing software. This is a good technique for making quick, simple edits.
4. Change the Font With the Character Panel
But let's say you'd like to make a bigger change, like selecting a new font. In this case, let's turn to the Character panel. Go to Window > Character to open it up.
Then, select the text layer that contains the text you'd like to customise. It's important that the text you want to change is selected first. Then, we can select a new font in the Character panel. You can also adjust the font size and other attributes here too.
5. Change the Color of Your Text
We can also use the Character panel to change the color of our text. Looking at the Character panel, note the colored box towards the bottom.
Start by making sure you have the right text layer selected in your Layers panel. Then, click on the colored rectangle at the bottom of the Character panel. This will activate our color picker.
Select a new color, click OK, and it'll be applied to your text.
5 Top Examples of Great Personal Business Card Template Designs (2021)
Envato Elements has plenty of terrific personal business cards examples. They will get you up and running with your own business card in no time. There's content for Photoshop, Illustrator, and more.
There are so many awesome examples of personal business cards to check out. The best part is, you can download as many personal cards templates as you want, all for one, low price. Envato Elements provides unlimited downloads. That means unlimited access to personal business cards examples, templates, fonts, stock photos, and much more.
Here are just a few of the awesome business card templates you can find there:
1. Twister Personal Business Card (Personal Name Card)
Twister Personal Business Card is a simple and stylish template. The layered PSD files is simple to edit and can easily be customised to meet your needs.
2. Portman Personal Business Card Template
Portman Personal Business Card Template is a personal business card template. It is well suited to creative industries. The placeholder photos and text can all be easily change for your own.
3. Elegant Personal Business Card Template
Elegant Business Card Template is a well-organised, fully editable PSD template. The template comes with full instructions and font file web links.
4. Business Personal Card Template
This Business Card uses a simple modern layout. The clean typography creates a portrait format business card. Customise the fully editable files by updating the text with your own business card info.
5. Minimal Business Card Personal Template
Use this Minimal Business Card Template to create personal cards for your business. Just add your own text and drag and drop your preferred image to make the template yours.
6. Flat Minimal Business Card (Personal Cards Templates)
Another great resource for personal contact cards ideas and templates is Envato Market. You can also find a wide range of easy to use Photoshop and Illustrator templates such as the Flat Minimal Business Card template shown above.
How to Make Professional Business Cards at Home Quickly (Online)
If you don't know your way around Photoshop or Illustrator not to worry, we've got the perfect solution for you: the Placeit Business Card Maker. The Business Card Maker is a simple and hassle-free tool. It'll help you design your personal business cards for networking quickly and easily. To find out more about how to use this online tool check out the article below.
How & When to Use Your Personal Business Cards
Here are some personal business card tips on how to get the most from them:
1. Keep Your Contact Cards Fresh and Clean
The easiest way to keep your personalised business cards in great shape is to store them in a protective case. You may want to have a few cases that you can store backup supplies in your car, in your desk drawer, or other convenient places.
2. Always Have Your Personal Cards With You
Networking is vital if you want to get ahead in business. You can't network effectively if you never have your personal business cards with you. So, always make sure you've got a good supply of cards before you leave home and a backup supply as well.
3. Seek Opportunities to Exchange Business Cards
Be proactive in looking for opportunities to share your personalised business cards. Networking takes time and energy. You need to put yourself out there if you want to broaden your client base. Obvious places to use your card are at:
- one-on-one meetings with someone new
- social events
- trade conventions
- mixers
- and so on
Less obvious places might be at your child's school, when running errands or at and evening class.
4. Hand Your Cards Out With Discretion
Just because you're always on the lookout for opportunities to share your card, doesn't mean that you should hand your cards out willy nilly. You're actually connecting with people to see if you might be able to do business together in some way. So, have a conversation and assess the potential for a relationship before you make your move.
5. Exchange Cards at The End of a Conversation
Exchanging personalised business cards at the end of a conversation is usually more graceful than at the beginning. Having a conversation first gives you the opportunity to connect with the other person. It gives you both time to determine if you want to exchange cards. At the very least, it protects you from ambushing unsuspecting recipients with your card.
6. Make the Card Exchange Meaningful
Look the person you're giving your card to in the eye and smile. Hold your card at the top corners with the card facing the recipient so that your fingers aren't covering the details and it can be easily read.
Learn More About Business Cards
Want to learn more about what to put on business card designs and how to create them? If you're interested in learning more about creating your own business cards check out this selection of other great articles on the subject.
Business Cards24 Premium Business Card Templates (In Photoshop, Illustrator, & InDesign Formats)
Business Cards10 Quick Tips: How to Design Good Business Cards (With Guidelines for 2019)
Business Cards8 Quick Tips on What Information to Put on Your Business Card
Business Cards25+ Professional Business Card Designs (2021 Best Ideas & Examples)
Create Your Very Own Personal Business Card Today
There are many great templates available to help you design your own personal business cards. If you're proficient in Photoshop or Illustrator, try one of the amazing templates at Envato Elements or Envato Market. And if you're looking for a simpler and more intuitive tool for creating networking cards, why not try the Placeit Business Card Maker?
I hope these personal business card tips and examples have made you excited about creating your very own personal cards. Remember to think about what to put on a personal business card for your goals. This is especially important in considering what to put on a business card for networking. Good luck, and happy designing!
Editorial Note: This post has been updated with contributions from Daisy Ein. Daisy is a freelance instructor for Envato Tuts+.
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