Social Networking Saves Business Cards

As I was enjoying visiting with our clients and friends during the SpinWeb Christmas Open House, I had a revelation about social networking. As I was talking to a friend of a friend and learning more about his business, we got to the part about exchanging business cards. At that point I was about to walk over to my business card holder and grab one but then I said, “oh, you’re on Smaller Indiana so I’ll find you there.” It occurred to me that there was no need to exchange business cards because we already belonged to the same social network and therefore we could easily find each other.

Now, it’s true that saving a few business cards is not a big deal. However, it was interesting to see how belonging to the right social networks can act as a valuable supplement to “real-world” networking.

Next time you’re at a networking event, try finding the people you meet on Facebook, Smaller Indiana, or ConnectBNI to learn more. You might be surprised at how useful social networks can be when meeting new people.

  • http://blogging.compendiumblogware.com Douglas Karr

    It’s ironic you say that – I was just looking at my box of cards today and surprised at how few I’ve had to use in the last few months!

  • http://duanegran.com/blog/ Duane Gran

    I find that I’m using them less often, but one thing I haven’t effectively replicated digitally is my habit of writing notes on the back of business card. For most people I meet in professional settings I can recall (by reading my notes) when and where we met and sundry other notes of interest.

    Digital contact management tends to democratize the data. I’m sure that personalization and metadata annotation is possible, I just haven’t seen a social networking system take advantage of it yet.

  • Michael Reynolds

    Duane,

    I use Jott:

    http://www.jott.com

    It’s a great way to do ubiquitous capture for those of us who drink the GTD Kool-aid ;-)