So you are setting up a new business and you need a business card created that really stands out from the industry you are entering, how are you going to do that? Hire a designer to create a very abstract creative design? Well Vistaprint recently contacted me with some fantastic novel ideas you may not have considered..

Aboveis an infographic with 31 creative uses for business cards .

To see this in more clarity please visit my pintrest board here .

8 of the best ideas from the Vistaprint infographic I particularly like.

creative uses for business cards no 1

Meeting a potential client in person? Why not make them feel extra special with a special discount on the business card you give them? That may just close the deal if they were wavering about it..everyone likes to feel a little bit special.

creative uses for business cards no 2

Every single business in the modern age now uses social media to connect to its audience and if they don’t they should do. Make sure to put your social media id’s on your business card for a more personal and direct connection to your fans, customers & business partners.

creative uses for business cards no 3

Got a major event coming up in the future or one that you attend regularly? Make your Customers aware on your business card.

creative uses for business cards no 4

Giving your business card a 2nd purpose other than to give your details to the person receiving it may get the recipient using it more places. A bookmark is one idea, particularly good if you are a 2nd hand book shop. Just think about your product or service you are selling and convey it on your business card if possible.

creative uses for business cards no 5

Are you an event organiser? A holdiay rep or maybe a tour guide? Why not ask your customers to upload their pictures to a location online to share their experiences? Your customers view points are the most valuable thing to help promote more sales to others.

creative uses for business cards no 6

Making others feel good about themselves or seeing another smile can be very rewarding, why not send a little positive vibe out into the world. Just be careful not to use quotes as not every quote will agree with every personality. An example, “you are beautiful” could be great for a beautician or life coach.

creative uses for business cards no 7

Getring good feedback from your clients?Great! That will surely help give your potential customers a little more confidence in you. Before you do this make sure you get permission from your customers first, you don’t want to upset anyone.

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8

Loyalty is a rare thing to find these days with so many different companies desperate to win your business rewarding that loyalty with something special will make your customer feel special & give a positive impression of your company.

Want more ideas for business cards? Check out my pinterest board or alternatively use the contact button above and i can help design you a very unique and creative business card for your company.

Related articles across the web

• 20 Creative and Unique Business Card Templates
• Types of Business Cards
• 6 ways to get people talking about your business

Conclusion

Before starting this experiment last week I didn’t think much would change if I used Facebook every day or not but after really studying the effects of Facebook for the last week in more detail I have noticed several factors of why Facebook is possibly a necessity for modern living but also a curse in another sense.

Reactivation

Benefits

I reactivated my Facebook account and within 2 minutes I received a greeting from my family..they were definitely glad I was back on Facebook, their preferred way to communicate with me and to see what I am doing.

The odd thing is that I have spoke to the majority of my family this week on the phone (which I probably enjoyed more) and that didn’t happen as often before the experiment..

Gaming

I think the only beneficial feature of Facebook I missed was the gaming and even that isn’t all that, I can use my Xbox360 or smart phone for gaming anyway…

Did I miss using Facebook?

No, not at all…standing back form the social media platform for a week I realize the majority of it is quite boring and now I have had a week away from it I would gladly give up Facebook altogether (although my family back in my home town may make this slightly difficult). I feel as though Facebook is simply a gossip, bragging & voyeuristic program that has little benefit to the self other than an ego trip and another way to be in touch.

I believe a reason people don’t want to give up Facebook is because they are a fearful of missing out on something that a lot of others in the world are using. The other reason why people may feel that Facebook is necessary for their life is everyone wants their views or message heard (and by god, can this be annoying sometimes) and to feel respected. Everyone wants to feel they have a strong purpose in society or at least among their friends…Once you use it to communicate with your friends it becomes difficult to imagine your life without it…imagine life without a telephone, it is the same simple principle.

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Keeping communication

The reason I reactivated my Facebook is simple…for my family. It makes my female relations happy to be able to see what I am doing with my life no matter where I am in the world and if I don’t have Facebook I guess it makes them feel they are not connected to me as closely..so this is the reason I may keep it but I won’t be using it as much as I used to.

Setting up Facebook properly

I realize i got distracted by Facebook mainly because of notifications and when you are trying to focus on other things that isn’t good. The news feed that contained my friends views..pages I follow..and such like do not add much value to my life either, I would rather speak to my friends and family in person than see a one sentence notification to “like” and show my social approval.

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Time management

Being aware of how you spend your time on social media, I believe, can be hard to keep track of and you can easily spend wasted time on Facebook when it could be spent doing things that are more beneficial to you.

Life isn’t all about spreading what you do to the world or simply being fed what others are doing or saying either,it should be an enjoyable and fulfilling experience without having to think about what everyone else is saying, thinking or doing…I will be discussing ways you can manage your time better on social media and improve your productivity during the week.

Staying in touch..properly

A notification on my Facebook wall updating all who know me what I am thinking or doing when all is said and done is not a great way to communicate with close ones really is it? Not only this but storing your photos on a platform such as Facebook makes them available to the world whether you decide to change your settings to private or not

Danger of Facebook Page

if you have a Facebook page to advertise your business it can be quite dangerous( especially as a designer) as it is quite easy to download and store pictures that don’t belong to you ( similar to Instagram rules as Alex Rabbets MD of MigSolv Data Centre Specialist discusses here ) so think very carefully if you want to create a Facebook page or not, particularly in the creative fields…

What happened to the telephone

Whether we are concerned what social media is doing to us as a society we can’t disregard that technology does advance.

200 years ago we would have communicated via the written hand and it would have taken weeks to arrive to. 100 years later and the telephone advanced communication and now the invention and mass use of the internet has sped up communication between communities yet again.

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Has Facebook benefited society?

Facebook has given rise to quickly create mass riots in Egypt, Lybia & such like to stop dictatorship governments which seemed like a fantastic thing at first. Liberating people that felt totally out of control of their lives but now they are in a similair difficult position only they are struggling to gain some structure, ruling power & laws and it isn’t just middle eastern and north African Countries…not so long ago mass riots also took place in South London due to people’s terrible use of Facebook destroying lively hoods of hard working people.

Seeing things you don’t want to

Some people “like” pictures that are truly disturbing such as people being hung in the street, other violent crime & no matter whether you want to or not if your friend has engaged with it you are likely to see it in your own news feed.

The danger of Facebook is that EVERYONE regardless of background or intentions can get their message heard & not everyone has a compassionate, loving nature & more, there seems to be a lot of anger, revenge & hatred in people right now which is terrifying to think any one of those people with such pains can connect to those with the same views & increase the effect of their view of the world, spreading their feelings to a large portion of the world’s population. A very dangerous prospect…

Final Thought

I believe Facebook (& all social media) is changing communities, connecting like minds together ( positive with positive & negative with negative) & making everything, good and bad in the world more transparent, not having to rely on Mainstream media ( which is a good thing, journalists have had too much power in manipulating viewpoints).

Whether Facebook is going to be beneficial for society or the demise of law & order is yet to be seen, only time will tell..

I am going to sound like a bit of a broken record but I still feel that without Facebook my life is more productive. Only 2 more days to go and then I will decide whether to permanently shut down my Facebook or continue using it.

Refocusing my attention on other social platforms

I started using other social media tools a lot more such as Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Delicious, Reddit & others as well as t o continuing to blog. For me, using social media platforms is about being productive, for others it may just be to waste a bit of time, not everyone wants to develop themselves, we all want different things and that is what makes the world interesting.

Facebook is boring

Facebook has become quite boring to me now, after exploring so many different ways of communicating online I personally find Facebook limiting. As previously mentioned there are only two reasons why I really like Facebook…easy log-ins on other websites & gaming. Other than that I am not particularly interested in seeing pictures of what my friends are getting up to ( unless in person ) and I am not really interested in being advertised at. I am though, interested in what the art and design community is doing…but there are better social media platforms for this purpose.

Prefer to be in touch with Family in other ways

I prefer to contact my family the old fashioned way..on the phone or I would like to use skype or such like a bit more than I do. There are so many technological options now that Facebook isn’t the be all and end all…personally I think its time to take back a bit of control  back in our lives, make our personal areas such as holidays, nights out & such like what they should be ..private & make work & interesting things such as art/quotes/articles/music public.

Facebook…is a chapter is closing on my social media use.

I am coming to the end of the “a week without Facebook” experiment with only 2 more days to run on it. It seems as though a life without Facebook is a very positive move in my personal life as each day I seem to putting my time into things that add value to my life.

Spoke to my family more

Since I gave up Facebook last Friday I have spoken to 3 members of my family in just the week I have ran this experiment. Before starting this experiment I would probably have spoken to a family member once a month for a very short time, 5 to 10 minutes each time. Now without Facebook updating my family about what I am doing every 5 minutes there is more to talk about and it allows a good communication to ensue as BT rightly put it, it IS good to talk. Facebook isn’t talking, in my opinion it is simply snooping on others, a bit like a digital peeping tom.

It was nice talking to my younger sister this day, we spoke for half an hour on the phone which wasn’t very common at all before this experiment so is Facebook actually hindering proper communication between people? Possibly…

Added extra security & learnt more

Sorry to make this sound like groundhog day but once again I have been more productive with my time than if I had it active. I have added 2 step verification processes to access my online accounts, making it that little bit more difficult to those with malicious intent on the internet, I created a backup system incase a succesful breach of security is reached and I am feeling better about what I do with my time than spending it all on Facebook.

When Im really bored, I want to Facebook

The only time I start missing Facebook truly is when I want to start gaming to pass some time. I do miss my top eleven game & I do miss tracking how my friends are doing on candy crush. Man its been tempting to reactivate my accounts just for this sole purpose.

My family add me on my works Facebook

I have a separate Facebook account just for work…it doesn’t have any pics , updated status or anything on it, its just simply so i can give my work a facebook page and some presence on the king of social media. My family have ALL added me on this account , desperate to stay connected on Facebook. I may be getting rid of the Facebook glue but my family certianly aren’t. That is the thing about social media, there are so many different options that certain social media platforms work well for others. I love my family to bits but my mother & sisters ( although very caring ) are also very nosey and want to know everything that is going on so I guess that is why they love Facebook so much…for me Facebook is a bit of time wasting and nothing else…I think I may just be shutting the door in the face of facebook…

Another day without Facebook, another day with more done. Is this a coincidence or not ? Is Facebook too time consuming or is it simply the fact there is plenty to do?

Update your status, show approval to your friends comments and likes,play games,update business pages, sharing news feeds, connecting various social media platforms together…Facebook really is the social hub of the world.

Another productive day

On this day I went on another little trip to the V & A Museum in London and learnt a lot about the history and cultural differences in the design industries. It was a beautiful building with really impressive architecture and artifacts, I wouldn’t have seen things like this on Facebook, the virtual world can only offer you so much in terms of knowledge. A lot of the information on Facebook is just noise and I would much prefer to gain some knowledge with my time than waste it being fed information on Facebook like a digital sheep.

Is Facebook unproductive

Each day I have been away from Facebook I seem to be more productive with my time and feed my mind with more beneficial information for an advancement in knowledge or life experience. Of course Facebook allows you to share your experiences with friends and family fairly quickly, it just depends if what your friends and family are doing as well as sharing what you are doing with those you know in your life is an important part of your life.

Choices

Life is all about choice, Facebook may be very beneficial to some, for those who enjoy the social aspects of life and like to be up on the latest gossip in your social circle really quickly but for others Facebook may be less beneficial. My preferred social media tool at the moment is Twitter as I feel it connects me to people who are interested in the same things I am, it can connect me to knowledge that I may not have previously known in my industry & also takes a lot less time than the other tools you can use to do something similair. The experiment continues…

Half way through this experiment I have woke up with quite an urge to reactivate my Facebook account but my partner helped me refrain from taking this step and ending the experiment early. I guess the onset of cold turkey is setting in…

Really starting to miss Facebook

As a regular user of many social media platforms from Twitter to Deviantart, Facebook is what I feel to be the hub of all social media platforms. Many programs and applications such as Flickr even now offer the option of signing in via Facebook which makes it a one click easy sign in. This little feature can make having Facebook improve your web experience that little bit more.

My other thing that I am missing is checking on my family, making sure everything is okay with them back in my home town. I know I can pick up the phone and see if they are doing well if I really want to but I guess what Facebook does is speed up the process of communicating and free up time to do other things.

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Negative impact of social media

As social media tools such as Facebook make information and data arriving at you within a couple of seconds I believe that the use of technology is making a lot of us less patient and dare i say it..lazy? One of the reasons I am missing Facebook is because signing in to websites can take 10 seconds less, so I can check on my family quickly and easily..is that a reason to have a social media tool or should I try to regain my ability to gain patience and take the effort of contacting people “the old fashioned way” by telephone?

Too many thoughts will breed the sheep

I also believe that putting attention into too many different areas can also have a negative impact upon us. We will forget things we are meant to do, reduce our attention span, reduce our patience, clutter our mind, decrease the quality of our work & for the media, become an easy person to manipulate.

Which way am I swinging?

Right now I can say that I am swinging slightly further away from Facebook than towards it, the low attention span & lack of quality time spent on doing things worthwhile out way the use of Facebook to keep in touch with close ones. Whether this will remain so by the end of the week is yet to be seen.

Day 2 is drawing to a close without any activity on my Facebook account and I have probably felt no difference to if I had been actively using it. My partner and I did go for a nice morning stroll in the nearby greenery when the sun was shining which was very nice, but am I missing the app or not?

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Starting to miss it

On day 2, although I don’t like to admit it, I think I am starting to miss Facebook..a little. It is something to do whilst the adverts are on TV. I do use twitter & many other social media tools but I don’t spend half as much time on them as I do on Facebook. Like I mentioned yesterday, I am particularly missing Top Eleven Football Game.

More productive today?

Well my favorite football team had a match televised so I was quite busy watching the game until 3pm …If Facebook would have been active I may have updated my status that I was quite bored as the game was a bit of a stale mate unfortunately..but instead I just said oh well to myself and then continued to help my partner with flat & job hunting.

My Facebook Page

I am not missing my Facebook Page at all, it is lacking in real fans and to be honest for those kind of things it is better to use many other social media platforms for designers such as Behance an online portfolio tool.

Advancing skills

Now I am planning to practice some Photoshop and try and read a bit more about psychology, whether this is because I am not on Facebook as often or simply because I am more aware of the time I am spending doing things and what kind of things I am doing is debatable.

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I guess after day 2 what is quite clear is that people like Facebook because they feel it gives them a voice to the world and keeps them connected to close ones and brands they love. Every human being on the planet wants to feel important or they can offer something of value to the world…no one wants to be the grey noise, everyone wants a purpose in life and connecting with others ,even if it is only friends and family you know, is one way of giving your life, or more specifically, your thoughts more meaning and purpose than if they were just in your own head. A dangerous thing to think about really when the world is so diverse with good and “bad” thinking, for those with both positive feelings to improve the life of all and the others with negative emotions to try and ruin others…my experiment continues…

missed day 1? Read it here

Today is my first day of the week without Facebook not using the social media king. Want to know how my day gone? Have I felt withdrawal symptoms or has it it been a blessing and have I been more productive without it? Has Facebook become so important for modern living? Find out what life is like for a young designer without Facebook usage for just one day.

The Good Points of Day 1

Starting my day differently

Usually, when Facebook is active I turn off my alarm, i slowly open my eyes, pick up my phone and scroll down to the Facebook app to see what people have said the night before and see the latest things the pages I follow are talking about or promoting. Today…it was different. I gave my partner a good morning kiss and made her breakfast in bed and then decided to read that book I had got half way through but never managed to finish, I looked for jobs my partner and a new place to live..a very productive morning!

If Facebook was still active

I probably would have got distracted by notifications of people updating their status…I may have got bored of reading my book about seducing the subconscious in advertising and had a quick gander at my Facebook news feed or played a game…I do believe without Facebook active I was more productive.

Spoke to family more

I am not great at keeping in touch via the old fashioned telephonic waves, it’s not something I find that much enjoyment in. Don’t get me wrong, I care about my family a great deal but telephones are so boring thus why Facebook is much better for me to keep in touch with people I know rather than using the phone, but it was nice to have a little catch up on the phone.

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The Bad Points of Day 1

Concern about family

As a person that moved away from his home town a year ago to pursue a career in his chosen field Facebook has become a way of my family seeing what I am up to without having to phone me up and speak to me…I am not the greatest person at ringing family and friends, telephones just don’t do it for me..I’d much rather talk face to face.

It also works the other way…with my family being over 200 miles away from me I can see what they are doing and if everything is going well without having to phone them..that is an obvious benefit of Facebook I am missing.

Spoke to family more

This might sound quite harsh but I just don’t really like using the telephone, it takes too much time and I spent an hour and half using the phone because my family wanted to hear from me and they couldn’t see my latest status update ( and they don’t use twitter either so they can’t find me there. )…So technically i may have actually been using more of my time keeping in touch without Facebook than with it.

Facebook Games

I am a regular player of top eleven and I cant access my team unless I have access to Facebook…this is a major bummer 🙁 and that is probably the main thing I am missing from the Facebook experience right now.

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Life better or worse without Facebook?

It is too early to make this decision but I would say that I feel more at ease in the mind without Facebook on my first day. I do feel some concern for how my family are doing…and yes my football team on top eleven :(.

I know if Facebook was still active I would be accessing it whilst watching TV checking my Facebook friends status & updates, playing games or sharing an interesting feed on Facebook pages…is it really a good use of time to use Facebook whilst having the Television on or is our mind getting unnecessarily clogged by more and more information that may not even be benefiting my experience of life? The experiment continues…

Pretty much ever since Facebook was invented I feel as though it has been the third arm I never had, a tool that now probably seems it is an integrated part of our life, checking on status of friends, looking at inspiring photographs & playing games. Now I am exploring more social media platforms I am wondering just how important Facebook is to me as a creative professional, sometimes i feel as though I waste too much of my time on Facebook when I should be spending time blogging, spreading posts on Reddit or Stumbleupon or maybe just creating some entirely new art away from the digital arena?

Being disconnected from the Matrix

Video : Interesting the Blue Pill keeps you in a state of not knowing..

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The experiment has begun! My Facebook is now deactivated and I am going to see how my life is going to be effected. I will be reporting daily about the experience, what I am missing or what I am gaining from the fact I will no longer be using the king of social platforms. Will it be an eye opener or will it feel like I am missing an important part of my life? Only time will tell…

Living a semi-normal life

Trying to live a non facebook life will be interesting, it may be sad to admit but when I wake up the first thing I would do is check my facebook news feed for the latest bit of interesting facts. Surely this can’t be healthy and thus one of the reasons I am conducting the experiment.

Sign up to the rss feed

If you are interested to see how I cope for a week without Facebook and what I discover please subscribe to my blog at the bottom of the page to the right. I hope you enjoy following my anti-facebook journey.

You have just wrote your first blog post, proof read it, added a few pictures, added the usual seo features & officially clicked the post button. Right now, the door to the world is starting to open just that little bit more, your voice is being heard among the mass of confusing noise. You realize you enjoy this blogging thing and write another post…and another…and another..before you know it you have over 100 blog posts on your site, 100 pieces of individual information for google to feed its little robots on.

Now where did I put that book?

Imagine a library, full of millions of books, this is the metaphorical picture of a website. Now imagine you walk into that library and you are after a very specific book, one book amongst a million. How would you expect to be able to find it? A category perhaps? That would certainly narrow your search down wouldn’t it!?

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This is the basic purpose of using categories in WordPress. It may seem pretty obvious but when you first start using your blog categorization of your posts doesn’t really seem to matter that much, its more important to get your information out to the world but after a while you will realize you really should have spent some time creating categories.

Why is it so important?

I have already mentioned that if you are specifically looking for an old article you remember writing categories make it automatically easier for you to find. For example if you are looking for a blog post about the greatest football team in the world then a category called “Liverpool Football Club” would be an excellent place to store that post under.

User Experience

But really, wordpress categories aren’t for the creator, it is more beneficial to the reader. The best use of the internet isn’t for self its for the betterment of all. Yes of course it is really useful to store your knowledge that you gain somewhere and then be able to retrieve it at a later date when need be, but those who use the internet and blog for the right reasons want to share what they know in order to be able to help others.

A good user experience will have excellent categorization so it is easy to quickly find what they are looking for.

Related posts

Another great way to ensure navigating around your blog is easy is to add a related posts plugin of which I can suggest quite a few. What this will do is give a few options at the end of each post that will then give a very similair post to what has just been read. A very useful tool don’t you think.

My top tip

Before starting your blog sit down and think what is it you want to write about? Maybe you won’t have all the categories right away..that is fine, just make sure to create them as a new topic is generated. If it is partly related to a topic then make sure your new category is assigned what is called a parent category . All in all, you are wanting your visitors to benefit from the experience you can provide them so make it as an easy a ride as possible.

Any questions please don’t hesitate to complete the comment box below and best of luck in your category creating!