Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead

I was never a Deadhead but the MBA in me perked up at this article’s title in The Atlantic. Not one to tinker with perfection, I kept it for this blog post.

Who knew?

The Dead incorporated and pulled board members  from the band, its road crew and other members of their organization. They rotated the CEO position.

The ran a profitable merchandising division and “peace and love notwithstanding did not hesitate to sue those who violated their copyrights.”

They made the strategic decision to let fans tape their shows, which on one hand gave away recording revenues, but on the other, widened their audience. They figured (rightly) that “a ban would be unenforceable, and anyone inclined to tape a show would probably spend money elsewhere, such as on merchandise or tickets.”

A management professor quoted in the story called the Dead’s approach “strategic improvisation,” and observed that people are eager to attend his lectures on the band. “People are just so tired of hearing about GE and Southwest Airlines.”

It’s one of the most profitable bands of all time.

John Perry Barlow, the group’s lyricist cum-Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, observed

What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then — the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value…if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced.

So perhaps it’s karma, not just deliciousness, that made Wavy Gravy and Cherry Garcia bestsellers for Ben & Jerry’s?

Prompts for Professionals

• If you’ve read this far, it probably has something to do with the novel nature of the subject. Try something refreshing for your next blog post or newsletter.
• The article said that the band pioneered ideas and practices that have been embraced by corporate America, most famously the Dead’s intense focus on its most loyal fans. Ask your blog or newsletter readers  what they would like you to do in addition to or instead of what you’re doing for them now. If you don’t, someone else will.
• The University of California at Santa Cruz is curating the band’s archive of commercial recordings, videos, press clippings, stage sets, business records and correspondence using a form of crowdsourcing. They’ll post as much as possible online and let Deadheads contribute what they know about the items. If you don’t have a blog, get one and start crowdsourcing best practices, war stories, whatever. If you work at it, your blog could become the go-to place for existing and prospective clients to search for answers and community.  I do this with my occasional posting of WORST communications practices by financial professionals — people inevitably chime in.

Oriental Rugs & Business Writing

True story: I was once written up for using college level vocabulary on the job. Yes, it was in a written performance evaluation. No, I was not writing for a living at the time; was running a line of business. You might not guess that my employer was a bank, where most workers had some college and many had MBAs. Go figure. Just one of the reasons I’m forever freelance.

There’s a place for arabesques in writing — that place is usually literature or narrative nonfiction. When I write for business I’ve learned to use them sparingly (or link to the definition!).

Business writers need to err on the side of spartan communications. Well-written, engaging and action-oriented, while spartan.

Trim the fat

Teaching by example, I edited the opening sentences of this WordPress blog post to rid it of verbal flourishes and the loathsome passive voice. I kept “nascent” for the paragraph’s arabesque.

It is with extremely great pleasure that I point you to the first post at the new I’m pleased to introduce you to the WordPress Foundation site. Not only am I excited about the things that will happen under the auspices of the Foundation, I’m proud of what the Foundation will do, and excited to see a site running the 3.0 development version and the nascent theme called 2010.

In the edited post above, “extremely great pleasure” and “under the auspices of” belong in a royal decree, not a business message.

Boilerplate blight

Since business communications are usually intended to sell something — an idea, product, feeling or investment — stick with the big picture or high concept.

I’ll make my point visually, with Oriental rugs (below). The closeup on the left shows intricate detail, but you can’t see the whole rug, whereas the photo on the right gives you the big picture at the cost of the individual motifs.

There’s an ideal use for each photo. If you were a rug merchant who had to choose between the two, you’d use the larger one to entice your prospective client into the store to examine the design and craftsmanship. Same with business communications, which are ultimately designed to sell anything from a product to a feeling to an investment. The goal of written communications is usually to get people to make the next step, which might be making the purchase or calling for more information.

Financial communications often require the equivalent of both photos (detail and big picture). If you’re writing something with boilerplate requirements, write less and use visuals like sidebars, graphics and headers to keep the reader’s attention on your pitch and off the fine print.

Visual perspective

When you look at the closeup of the rug to the left, you know you’re not looking at the entire rug because there are enough visual cues that it’s a part of the whole (no border, no symmetry of design, etc).

The photo to the right might be the rug’s border or the entire rug, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a closeup of the border because if it were the entire rug the right and left ends wouldn’t be chopped off.

This photo clearly shows the entire rug, but you have no way to know if it’ll fit in your dining room. If it had been photographed with a dog, human or piece of furniture — better yet, a dining room table and chairs — you’d have a clue.

Whole-brain communications note: this post taught about writing but did so in a visual manner.

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Burned by Boilerplate

As we hurtle towards 2010 some financial advisors and life insurance agents keep communicating like it’s 1999.

The boilerplate communications racket

In the past week I got two identical Thanksgiving e-cards from different reps of the same general agency. Uh oh. It started with an email inviting me to “click here and view the card on a secured site…” which launched a browser, inside of which played a little flash file of autumnal photos — an animated version of the cheesiest Hallmark card ever printed. It was “customized” with the name of its sender.

Awash in meaninglessness

This week I got this email from a rep that said:  “Every few months, I try to keep my clients and friends up-to-date with current financial issues or critical concerns…” and once again I was invited to view this important update by linking to a secured site.

She set my expectations right up front by promising “up-to-date with current financial issues or critical trends.” I don’t know about you, but I thought  “financial issues or critical trends” might include  something like financial services reform and how this rep is going to go above and beyond the  regs to assure my confidence. Or perhaps a report on how how certain classes of annuities performed… How naive of me.

I clicked the link and got a flash-powered thingy that looked like a PowerPoint deck. The lead screen made the further promise “Providing valuable information of particular interest to you.” Wow, to me!

I then learned that (gasp) “Most people are frustrated by the amount of income tax they’re paying.” Really?

Next came a little lesson on the miracle of compounding interest. Be still my beating heart.

At the end I learned that there was a difference between tax-deferred and taxable income. A targeted message if ever there was one.

And what was the conclusion?  “There could be ways to reduce your tax liability and optimize growth!“  You’re kidding!  Somebody thought of that?

Then there was the lame call to action “Please provide information.” Clicking through I faced a comment box and the warning that I should allow 48 hours for a representative to get back to me. 48 hours? No one in 2009 is going to be that patient. If they want a product they could already buy it online in 48 hours.

You need to stop this. Right now!

I know you work under compliance regs and some companies and agencies are tougher than others.

I also know that these boilerplate services cut deals with the companies and agencies.

Still, there’s no excuse for sending out crap, absolute crap. If your compliance department won’t allow anything besides this boilerplate pablum, abstain altogether.

If your company has an approval process for customized communications, get on the stick! If not, pick the phone off  its cradle and call your clients to wish them a happy new year. THAT will get their attention.

Authenticity can’t be bought, but is priceless

If you’re doing a mass customization communications campaign, do the job properly. For clues of where this boilerplate went into the ditch, look for my snarky comments above in blue.

If this all sounds like work, you’re right. Tell you what, give me a copy of your compliance requirements and I’ll devise a compliant communications strategy.

Low-Jargon Financial Blogs & Newsletters

I write blogs and newsletters for attorneys, advisors and accountants. These professionals often need to provide complex information without making their clients’ eyes glaze over.

Professionals  with compliance/malpractice concerns  too often navigate the middle of the road where nothing meaningful is communicated. Some admit they hope readers will pick up the phone and call for clarification “on the clock.” Bad strategy.

Everyone faces this challenge of writing thorough-yet-understandable communications  from time to time. Here are writing tips for newsletter or blog writers who aspire to communicate without using jargon on one hand, or dumbing down the message on the other.

It’s a conversation, not a treatise

• Provide links to jargon, technical definitions and 50-cent SAT words like “treatise.” This way, everyone can get as much info as they need on their own and your writing doesn’t bog down
• Don’t mistake your articles for term papers!
  • Use headers, bolds and links to enable (gasp) skimming
  • Avoid passive voice; use active voice
  • Write to the appropriate reading level of your audience
    • Run your copy through a fog index calculator (tells the number of years of education needed to understand what you’ve written)
    • If you use Google Docs, click Tools>Word Count and find the analysis at the bottom
• You’re not a professor
  • Don’t try to tell everything you know about the subject. Pare it down to the essentials
  • For weighty topics, write a series of short articles
  • Provide an intro to the topic in your newsletter and link to your blog/elsewhere for details. If you can find a video (or make one yourself) your audience will be grateful. Here’s how one of my clients does it
  • Leverage industry videos and handouts (be sure to comply with licensing and copyrights)

Engage readers

• Invite them to leave comments and comment on those of others
• Offer a free worksheet to help them apply the information to their lives — invite them to review the information with you off the clock, if appropriate
• Ask readers to weigh in on a topic by linking to a survey that gives them the option to see how their answers compare to those of other respondents
• Poll readers for future articles on similar/related subjects

Brains need variety

• 

  This infographic is from a parody site

  Use stories – our brains are wired for stories -and people “find” themselves in them.

• Use case studies for the same reasons

• Link to a narrated presentation deck or video to stimulate the story-receptive part of readers’ brains. One of my clients does this very well

• Use  infographics or produce your own charts and tables. FlowingData is a great resource to learn about them and you might find one to use there

What techniques have you or others used to make complex information digestible? What have you seen out there that turns you off? 

Die Broke Blogger

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls ~Joseph Campbell

This month I began blogging on small business and the meltdown on the Die Broke blog, part of the StockTwits network.  My focus is helping small business owners deal with creditors, the IRS, family members and their own inner demons.

What qualifies me for this assignment? Personal experience.

Since shuttering the industrial cleaning businesses in 2007 I’ve continued to deal with creditors (including friends and family), the IRS and a loss of face.  I’ve learned a great deal about financial law, pondered business ethics and done a lot of navel gazing.

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure ~Joseph Campbell

I won’t chronicle the whole debacle here…it will unfold over time over on Die Broke. But I will say that my entrepreneurial “failure” freed me to pursue the writing career I was always told would never be mine.  How?  Janis Joplin’s raspy lyric explains it best: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

In 2008, with no money to invest in a different company, a dismal job market and absolute loathing of corporate America anyway, I gave myself permission to hang out my shingle as a business writer.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are ~ Joseph Campbell

Fortunately my husband still has a job. The best off-balance-sheet asset an entrepreneur has is someone who lets them bunk in rent free.  Thanks, Matt.

More Joseph Campbell bon mots:

• We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us

• Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself

• I think the person who takes a job in order to live – that is to say, for the money – has turned himself into a slave

• Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?

• Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging

• The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure

• The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature

My NPR 3-minute Fiction Entry

I entered NPR’s Three Minute Fiction contest.  The rules are straightforward: using a prescribed first sentence, write a short story in less than 600 words. If I’m the big winner, I’ll be interviewed and have my story read on-air during Weekend All Things Considered and receive an autographed copy of the book “How Fiction Works” by  The New Yorker’s James Wood, who’s judging the contest.

Here’s my submission:

The nurse left work at five o’clock.  He knew what he was doing, leaving mid-shift, but it was time for a change. A mid-shift departure would make change inevitable.

Leaving the employee parking lot, he waived at the attendant and switched on the news.  More reports of layoffs, expiring unemployment benefits, bank failures…yet, he’d walked out.  Mid-shift.

Pulling into the potholed parking lot, he scanned the fenced-in runs to see if it really was Scamp they’d brought in.  “Puppy prison,” he’d called it when his parents took him to the pound to choose a dog for his 8^th birthday.

Prison. Maybe he’d apply for a job at a prison – plenty of job security in a growth industry like that. Maybe he could get a job working on death row, keeping the guys alive until the state could have its justice. He might enjoy working with those who’d accepted their ultimate fate, for a change.

Just an hour before, he’d advised the Johnson family that without a Do Not Resuscitate Order on file, the staff was obliged to keep their mother alive if possible.  Of course he didn’t go running to an administrator just because Mrs. Johnson’s daughter slapped him, but his former co-workers would draw the conclusion that it was the “Johnson family incident” that finally took him over the edge.  Cardiology was notorious for unruly family outbursts. Was it because there was usually no time to plan?

Death row. Opening the door to Puppy Prison he wondered how many they’d gassed today.  The uniformed clerk looked up from her filing and smiled as if she worked at Dairy Queen, not Auschwitz. “Here to pick out a pet?”

“No, my vet called to say you might have picked up my dog – a beagle mix with an attitude.”

“Oh, yes, good thing he had a rabies tag. C’mon back.”

Fifteen minutes later and $50 lighter, he and Scamp merged back into traffic.  Fondling Scamp’s notched ear from a long-ago-lost battle, he mused what a perfect match they were – their sweet faces belied a tendency to pick fights they couldn’t win.

Moving his hand to his own lightly-califlowered ear, acquired four days after he’d started the job he’d just essentially quit, he felt the irony that in that case, he’d tried keep a patient from taking his own life. God, that guy was strong. A monster.

Swerving to miss a kid on a skateboard, the sudden jolt swept Scamp and the cell phone onto the passenger floor.  Scamp was no worse for the wear, but the nurse wondered if this was the last tumble for his old phone. He’d resisted replacing it because all the new phones had features he didn’t want.  “Simplicity” was his new watchword.  Life had gotten too complicated.

After a traffic report, NPR ran a story on the nation’s death panel hysteria. Yeah, everyone’s a little crazy right now. The living take their lives and the dieing want to prolong theirs. Whatever happened to the role of Providence in these things?

Pulling into his driveway alongside the lime green Beetle driven by the home health aide, he was glad his father was past noticing the early hour of his arrival. Pop’s days and nights were indistinguishable to him now.

Scamp pushed past his master. Trotting straight to the living room where they’d set up Pop’s hospital bed, the dog uncharacteristically stopped and whimpered.  The aide looked up; “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, “I tried calling your cell phone ten minutes ago.”

Play Piano, Outrun Mean Dogs: All in your Brain

Turns out my parents could have saved the money they spent on a piano.  I could have learned to play almost as well in my imagination.

In a chapter of The Brain That Changes Itself, I learned about an experiment where a “mental practice” group sat in front of an electric piano keyboard for two hours a day and imagined playing a sequence of notes and hearing them played, while the other “practice group” actually played the music on the keyboard.

Both groups had their brains mapped before the experiment, each day during it, and afterward. When each group played the sequence of notes they’d been imagining or practicing, the computer measured accuracy.

By the third day, the imagined group played as accurately as the practiced group. By the fifth day the practiced group made gains, but those gains were overcome by the imagined group with a single two-hour physical practice session.

What this means to business communicators

This goes way beyond the so-called power of positive thinking. The book reported on a study where the subjects who did physical exercise of a sort increased their muscular strength by 30% while those who only imagined the same exercises increased theirs by 22%.

This has real implications for business communicators. For example, if you were selling widgets or sports drinks to kids in tough neighborhoods, instead of making general claims like “Widget will make you run faster & jump higher,” you should try “Buy Widget to outrun mean neighborhood dogs — even while jumping trashbags and open manholes.”

Not only would more kids try Widget, the visual image of them navigating the urban obstacle course might convince their brains they could do it.

What’s next for Widget? Maybe the kids would start a viral marketing campaign…

Papal White Paper

Papal  encyclicals don’t normally hit my radar.  But this summer, when the Vatican released what some called a papal white paper on globalization and ethics, I took note for two reasons.  First, the subject is one of my favorites, and second, because so many people ask me “What’s a white paper?”

Since so few white papers garner any publicity, I’m commenting on this one, timed perfectly to coincide with the G8 meeting in Italy.

Please note that my comments intend no disrespect to the church — centuries of papal correspondence dictate the form this encyclical takes.  My intent is educating business communicators on the places where a business white paper will align and diverge from the style perpetuated by Pope Benedict XVI.

Telegraph with a great title

The official title of the work is Latin, CARITAS IN VERITATE (”Charity in Truth”).  I can’t criticize the church for using its official language, but I can advise business communicators to go with something catchier.

Define the audience and focus on its needs

The pope addressed this message to “the bishops, priests and deacons, men and women religious, the lay faithful and all people of good will.”

Business communicators, don’t ever try to write this broadly.  If you want to reach everyone from Bible scholars to faithful illiterates, do so with different versions for each audience.

State your objective and stick to it

Straightaway, the pope diffuses any notions or potential criticisms of interfering in politics while staking a claim in perpetuating the “mission of truth.”  I’d grade this objective a solid C+:

The Church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.”  She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation.

More clearly stated, I might suggest: The Church maintains its distance from the politics of States (”Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s).  At the same time, She speaks directly to individuals in all walks of life,  including statecraft, to apply Christ’s teachings to their daily lives and decisions in all matters, including business, economics and the proper use of modern technologies.

Follow a logical outline

In Chapter One we learn that CARITAS IN VERITATE is an update of a forty-year-old encyclical by Pope Paul VI and we get a recap of that earlier work .

Chapter Two’s first paragraph tells us why the world needs an update:

The economic development that Paul VI hoped to see was meant to produce real growth, of benefit to everyone and genuinely sustainable. It is true that growth has taken place, and it continues to be a positive factor that has lifted billions of people out of misery — recently it has given many countries the possibility of becoming effective players in international politics. Yet it must be acknowledged that this same economic growth has been and continues to be weighed down by malfunctions and dramatic problems, highlighted even further by the current crisis.

Chapter Three diffuses mis-perceptions about “moral interference” with the economy:

(T)he conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from “influences” of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise.

Chapter Four brings it home to individuals with:

Many people today would claim that they owe nothing to anyone, except to themselves. They are concerned only with their rights, and they often have great difficulty in taking responsibility for their own and other people’s integral development. Hence it is important to call for a renewed reflection on how rights presuppose duties, if they are not to become mere licence.

Chapter Five works its way up from the individual to the family and finally, to the entire race:

The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side.

Chapter Six discusses the proper use of technology, from financial to communications and bioethics:

By analogy, the development of peoples goes awry if humanity thinks it can re-create itself through the “wonders” of technology, just as economic development is exposed as a destructive sham if it relies on the “wonders” of finance in order to sustain unnatural and consumerist growth.

The Conclusion states:

Development needs Christians with their arms raised towards God in prayer, Christians moved by the knowledge that truth-filled love, caritas in veritate, from which authentic development proceeds, is not produced by us, but given to us.

Grade for following a logical outline: A+.

Research & interviews

White papers are not editorials or essays.  You must back your claims with research and quotes.

In the church’s case, the pope handled that through scripture and footnotes of earlier papal works.

Business writers need to be careful that the sources they cite are credible to the intended audience of the piece.  For example, when I write for financial clients, I won’t include a news story from USAToday when I can find it in the WSJ.

Hone and polish

Again, centuries of custom allow (perhaps even dictate)  using passive voice, but centuries of custom don’t make the papal white paper easy to understand. Business communicators, place your subjects and verbs as close to each other as possible.  Visual cues like bulleted lists and call-out boxes are a godsend (couldn’t resist that).

As I said in another post, good writing requires that you “kill your darlings“  and I have to grade the Vatican harshly on this point.  By including too broad an audience, the encyclical went waaaaay over the heads of most everyone but the scholars faaaaaar too often.

Focus, writers, focus!

Beware the Fart Joke

Catching up on reading this week at the beach, including past issues of my favorite magazine, The Atlantic.

The November 2008 edition carried a fascinating article that touched on neuroeconomics, or the neurophysiology of economic decisions. I love this stuff.

According to Yale professor of psychology, Paul Bloom, “…remembering something is easiest while you are in the same state in which you originally experienced it. Students do better when they are tested in the room in which they learned the material; someone who learned something while he was angry is better at remembering that information when he is angry again; the experience of one’s drunken self is more accessible to the drunk self than to the sober self. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

Bloom’s research underscores why effective business communications need to take people to an emotional place in order to cement the message. Warren Buffett did this well in his 2009 annual letter to shareholders when he drew a parallel between derivatives and venereal disease:  “Participants seeking to dodge troubles face the same problem as someone seeking to avoid venereal disease: It’s not just whom you sleep with, but also whom they are sleeping with.”

If that gives you a creepy feeling, the Oracle from Omaha met his objective; he hates derivatives.

More Buffett bon mots:

• Tony and I feel like two hungry mosquitoes in a nudist camp. Juicy targets are everywhere.

• By year end 2007, the half dozen or so companies that had been the major players in this business had all fallen into big trouble. The cause of their problems was captured long ago by Mae West: “I was Snow White,but I drifted.”

• If merely looking up past financial data would tell you what the future holds,the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians.

• The tennis crowd would call my mistakes “unforced errors.”

• Upon leaving, our feelings about the business mirrored a line in a country song: “I liked you better before I got to know you so well.”

• Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the symbols. Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

Advice for speakers

Back to Paul Bloom in The Atlantic story,  “Good smells, such as fresh bread, make people kinder and more likely to help a stranger; bad smells, like farts (the experimenters used fart spray from a novelty store), make people more judgmental. If you ask people to unscramble sentences, they tend to be more polite, minutes later, if the sentences contain positive words like honor rather than negative words like bluntly. .. All of these studies support the view that each of us contains many selves-some violent, some submissive, some thoughtful-and that different selves can be brought to the fore by different situations.“

Next time you’re delivering a presentation, keep this in mind.  The oft-repeated advice to open with a joke should be tempered by what you just learned about neurophysiology — don’t make it a fart joke.

Next Q: Online/Offline

I’m having a good time responding to questions from my 6/18/09 presentation to CPSE.  Thanks, ladies.

Q: With so much moving online, what do you bother to print?

If a tree falls and no one hears it...

A:  I’m not qualified to answer questions about e-commerce and web-based customer self-service.  I’ll answer this from the perspective of the solo-preneur who asked the question.

What goes online and in print varies from a person to person and must align with industry norms. For example, when I ran an environmental contracting business my market was general contractors with public-bid jobs.  Contractors are low-tech, and expect bids to be FAXED, not emailed.  Most of them have Yahoo or Hotmail accounts and a LIGHT web presence if any.  I could have senselessly spent a fortune on multimedia that would have been like the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it. Instead, I hired a telemarketer who made personal contact with the estimators and then followed up with a customized packet that spoke to our expertise on the kinds of jobs the contractor bid.

On the other hand, when I ran a software and services consulting firm we had to demonstrate our tech chops — everything was online.

Answer these questions:

1. Where do the people you  most want for customers turn when they’re looking for your products and services? Referrals from people they know or from independent raters like Angie’s List?  Straight to the Google search page?
2. When you’re at a business mixer, how often do people ask you to send them a packet of information?
3. When you present your qualifications/proposal to a new prospect, what materials do they spend time REALLY looking at?  What do they repeatedly ask for that you don’t often bring?
4. Why do your competitors do what they do?  They may have best practices or they may be laggards, but it’s always prudent to check them out.
5. Do you represent a product or offer a service that requires buyers to hunker down and study to make a decision?  Offer that online for sure — also in print if you’ve got lots of money to spend.  When I meet a new client I find it helpful to simply sit with them at a computer screen and go through pages on my site and elsewhere.  This assures that they’ve seen my site and gives them a constant place to go if a printed piece goes astray.

Business cards & postcards

Business cards are, in my view, still a must. There’s an ongoing and lively discussion on whether you should include your social media “handles” on the card (for example, you can follow me on Twitter @TamelaRich).  I can see all points of view.

I also carry 4.25″  x  5.5″ double sided postcards that act as a mini home page.  Most people, when given the choice, will take a p-card instead of a b-card.  Given the nature of my work, that’s all the print collateral I need, b-cards and p-cards. Your mileage may vary.

How ’bout it, experts?  What else should entrepreneurs/small business owners consider?

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