Is handing out a business card with your blog on it obnoxious?

June 1, 2005 9:08 PM

Does anyone have their blog on their business card? Have you handed it out in an attempt at networking? What has the response been? Positive? Negative? (More Inside)

Some background info:
In a few hours I'm going to be attending a Venture Fair with big investors and other generally important people from my city-area. This is not the first time I've attended such an event - it's about the 7th or 8th one I've been to in the past two years as a function of my "real" job.

I run a small blog about issues for my area and I have been debating making some business cards up with the blog listed as my job/other professional information.

I'm relatively young and still new at this whole "networking" thing - I've only come to really recently accept that it's a good thing. I wanted to give it a go at this event with the cards and I was wondering if it anyone else has done this with their blogs. I'm not looking for funding of any sort - but I am looking to raise the profile a little bit.

Any help/stories/guidance would be very much appreciated. Thanks

posted by tozturk to work & money (8 comments total)

After the owner of my favorite deli read my blog, I decided to stop encouraging links and just let friends know about it, as it has a decidedly unprofessional bent. I dont know, that experience was just a little weird.

'Course mine wasn't business related, and your blog looks pretty serious and straightforward, and SFW. I say go ahead and do it, if it doesn't interfere in some way with whatever you have to do for your "real" job. It might look bad if somebody less understanding sees it as moonlighting.
posted by tweak at 9:31 PM on June 1, 2005

I think including your blog address on your business cards is a great idea...assuming that you are will be giving the card to people who have an interest in your subject matter. In tweak's case, well...I'm not sure what a deli owner would care, one way or the other, about a customer's blog. But like-minded people attending a conference -- that's fair game. Good luck!
posted by davidmsc at 12:07 AM on June 2, 2005

I do, even though its not related to my profession...
posted by lorbus at 3:39 AM on June 2, 2005

If the weblog is your job then you definitely should put it on your card. If it is related to your job and the content is professinal 100% of the time, you should consider it strongly. If the weblog is any sort of personal or misc. weblog then under no circumstances should you put it on your business card.
posted by nthdegx at 4:04 AM on June 2, 2005

I put my work-related URL on my cards because it's also the domain name for my contact email address and people would find it anyhow. I don't give out my personal web site address professionally because it's not professional, though I write for it as if there's an off-chance that someone I work with might read it.

I've had mostly good responses and my blog is one of the constants in my professional life since I've moved jobs around a lot. Having it be more public has meant that if I've said negative things about products or web sites in my field, I'm more likely to hear about it from the manufacturer or webmaster, this is a mixed blessing. Also, having high Googlability for your chosen topic can be worthwhile if you want to be a "go to" person w/r/t media folks who often seem to jsut type a few words into Google or Feedster to see who to email/call to get a sound byte on a particular topic.

Of course, you'll probably want to have a ready answer to the "Why do you do this? Who cares what you think?" types of questions, but I find those are getting fewer and farther between lately.
posted by jessamyn at 4:15 AM on June 2, 2005

When I was at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) last month covering the show with co-workers from my company, I handed out cards with the company URL and my contact information on them.

I have a related blog that I maintain on the side from the company (with the company's approval; no conflict of interest), but since I was there on business in association with the company and not my blog, the blog URL wasn't on the card, nor did I hand out seperate cards with blog info on them.

I wouldn't suggest completely hiding your blog. I did talk about and promote mine if someone asked about it. I just thought it unprofessional to try to network by saying "This is the card for my day job, but this is the card for my outside after-hours project."
posted by Servo5678 at 6:09 AM on June 2, 2005

I have personal cards with my blog (and photoblog) on them, and work cards with no blog listed. If I had a separate work blog, I'd include that on the work card, but I typically only hand out the personal cards if the fact that I have a blog has come up in the conversation.

If you know who I am, it is NOT hard to find my personal blog if you even casually glance in the direction of any major search engine.
posted by Caviar at 9:49 AM on June 2, 2005

I should add that for me, "work" is a varied kind of general purpose technical consulting, and the people who hire me tend to also be interested, at least tangentially, in the stuff I write about on my blog. Your mileage may vary in correlation with your local value of the Planck constant.
posted by Caviar at 10:06 AM on June 2, 2005