While business cards aren’t all that expensive, they can be quite a lot of trouble. You have to go to all the trouble of deciding what to put on them, either designing them or getting someone to design them for you, and then taking the finished design to the printer. And then you have to do it again every time you change your phone number, job title or whatever! So why go through all that? What’s the point?

Well, there are lots of good reasons why you should carry business cards with you wherever you go. For one, it’s a way of giving out all your contact details quickly and easily – you don’t have to worry about scraps of paper and pens, and you don’t have to worry about giving your email address out to someone over the phone later on, because it’s all there on the card.

Having business cards to hand also shows that you’re not just some cowboy – you’re serious about what you do, you’ve invested in it, and you’re a professional. When someone is on the fence about you, a good business card can convince them that you’re worth trusting.

If you’re going to a tradeshow, conference or fair, business cards are very important, as you’re likely to meet hundreds or even thousands of people and have masses of half-remembered conversations. If you use business cards well by making notes on the back of them saying what you spoke to the person about, it can help you to get much more out of these kinds of events than you otherwise would.

Giving business cards to people makes them much more likely to give you theirs in return, which can be very useful – if you really want someone’s details, giving them your own first creates an obligation, unless they’re planning to cause a scene by handing your card back.