My Business card or yours

Networking is the big thing. Many people attend networking events, or are part of an ever-growing number of social networking sites online. Savvy businesses are using social networks to promote their goods.

Networking allows you to push your business, products, or to make contacts in the supplier/customer chain.

But whose business card is the most useful? Yours or theirs?


Think about it.

You have a stand at an exhibition. Everyone who visits, you press a business card into their hand. They leave.

What happens to your business card? How do you contact them to see whether the discussions on the stand could lead to a successful, and hopefully profitable business relationship?

Did you ask them for their business card? How do you follow it up? Will they remember you, or will you be consigned to a spam filter's deathbox? How long do you leave it before you follow up on their business card? How do you make sure you are remembered?

Exactly the same is valid for your website. Every day, x number of visitors come to your website. Do you ever acquire their business card? Find out their contact details? Establish a personal relationship with them so that when you phone out of the blue they know who you are? (If you have a contact number for them even....)

This week's key conundrum is how to make personal relationships with your customers through your website. How to contact them, after their visit to your site, and engage them in a return visit or a return purchase.

So, today, think about how you ensure you get their business card during their visit to your website. How do you create opportunities to do so? How do you then contact them in a manner that is not spam, or unwanted intrusion? How do you build a customer to your website into a 'customer for life'?