Within the first 10 seconds, your potential client is building up a lasting opinion about you. It sounds harsh but it’s a fact that people often do judge a book by its cover, and you only get one shot to make a great first impression. Fortunately there are a few tricks you can pull off, such as diverting their attention from the fact that you forgot to iron your shirt by pushing a unique and beautifully designed business card under their nose.

It’s always a great idea to carry some self-promotional material in your pocket, whether you’re attending a conference where networking is key, or for instances when you bump into an old friend who is now a possible business partner. Having said that, your business card should also be designed well enough to leave a good impression. Below is a list of essential tips to keep in mind when designing the perfect business card.

Recommended Reading: Case Study: Designing Business Card that Rocks!

1. The issue of Size and Colour

Decide on a business card printer before you begin the design process. You can find out the size of their cards (and whether it is what you are looking for) and their supported file types. The most common card size is 84 mm x 55 mm, so the best document size to work on is 1039 x 697 pixels; remember that you need to take Bleed (more on this after the break) into account. Ensure any images you use are at least 300dpi for a high quality result.

It’s a good idea to work in CMYK colour mode as opposed to RGB. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (Black is known as Key), and is used in colour printing. CMYK is a subtractive colour model, which works by masking colours on a light or white background, reducing the amount and colour of the light that is reflected by the paper.

The display you are using to read this article adopts an RGB or additive colour model, mixing Red, Green and Blue to create the majority of the visible spectrum, and combining all three to create white. While some designers prefer to design in RGB, be sure to preview it in CMYK as some of your chosen colours may appear fine on screen, but ‘muddy’ when printed.

2. Prepare the Bleed Area

Unless your design background colour is white you need to prepare the Bleed area for your card design. Preparing the Bleed (yes, it sounds like a heavy metal band) involves highlighting an area surrounding the document, usually 3 mm thick (this may vary depending on the printing company) with the same colour as the background colour of your card design. This prevents any ugly border strips from turning up on the edge of the cards.

3. Avoid using borders

In fact, it’s best to try to avoid using borders on your business card designs at all. They may look good, but when the cards are cut, you will most likely have some ‘lop-sided’ edges. All printers have a margin of error for cutting your cards, which can be as much as a few millimetres, so expect some variance in the area where the blade falls.

What you see on screen:

What you may receive:

Notice how the the borders disappear when the blades do not cut at the right places? A few millimetres can make all the difference to your card design.

4. Use Complimentary Colours

Choose colours that are aesthetically pleasing. A mish-mash of bright and bold colours may make your card stand out in a stack of 50, but it could be for the wrong reasons. It’s also worthwhile to think beyond your business cards: try to keep your colour scheme consistent throughout your media (website, twitter, email signature) to develop a professional image of yourself.

(Image Source: colourlovers.com)

There are plenty of tools available on the Web to help you create the perfect scheme. COLOURlovers is a community-driven website where people can create colour palettes and allow others to vote and comment on them. It’s a great source of inspiration, with some impressive tools to boot.

5. Ensure your text is readable

This is a pretty vital (nd sometimes overlooked) element in business card design. You wouldn’t want your clients to have to strain their eyes to read your website address or email. Make sure your text is at least 8 pt, in a clear readable font and in bold colour. Anything smaller than 8 pt may look fine on your monitor, but may be printed as a fuzzy, smudged-out line. You could also try to accentuate your name or important contact information by making it slightly bigger or bolder than the rest of your information.

6. Include Important Information

Make sure you include all the information on the back of your card that you think the client would find useful. We’ve provided a quick checklist, but you may have other things you want to throw in as well.

• Your name – Put the name your contacts know you by.
• What you do – Remember to include what you do or what defines your job scope. Include the organization you are currently attached to if you wish.
• Contact information – Phone number, e-mail, work address, social media profiles etc.
• QR Code – QR codes are a great way to visually present web addresses, phone numbers or vCards. There are plenty of free QR code generators on the Web to help you with this.

7. Saving your design

This is also an important part of the process, as you want to make sure all your hard work shows in the final product.

• Make sure all text is embedded or outlined
• Don’t forget to remove any guidelines or colour scheme blocks
• For best results, save your design as a vector based PDF, to ensure crisp lines and high print quality
• Saving them in JPEG or PNG may result in fuzziness around edges and text

And there you have it, tips to help you design your first business card. What other tips do you have for designing the perfect business card?

Editor’s note
This post was written by Simon Goble on behalf of moo.com. MOO love to print, offering custom double sided business cards, unique MiniCards, Postcards, StickerBooks, greeting cards and more. You can visit their site at moo.com or follow them on Twitter @overheardatmoo.

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The guest post is one of the best marketing techniques, which bloggers and site owners have begun using more vehemently nowadays. It serves at least two purposes – exposure for the guest writer, and also a new post for the site or blog owner. However, guest posts can be a tad tricky – it can cause harm, if the post is not suitably written for the site.

(Image source: Clickfire)

A blog owner should understand the nuisances of bad guest posts. Here are guides and tips a site owner should follow before choosing which guest post to feature and which to reject.

Recommended Reading: Marketing Your Blog: 10 Essential Tips You Should Know

1. They Come For Your Backlinks

A site that has a good number of back links gets a higher page rank on Google’s search engine. The manipulation of this criterion to ensure a higher page rank has led to an increasing number of spam. A site owner may hire guest writers to write articles for his site, or the site owner himself/herself may choose to write for different websites in return for a back link to his/her own site.

If the post lacks quality content, or gives an impression that it has been created just for a back link, avoid the post. Look instead for well-written guest posts that has quality and are better suited to the content of the blog or site. The post should never give an impression that it is just a filler – make sure the post adds value to the blog.

2. Don’t Go Out of Topic

A post should be relevant to the blog’s category. A health blog, for instance, should never run a finance story, unless it is absolutely necessary, or in some ways adds value to the site. Relevant guest posts give the visitor the information that he is seeking for. Your visitors should not be misled into believing that the site features articles that have no relevance to the topic or article titles. This will not sit well with your readers.

If a site has multiple categories, ensure that the post fits into at least one of the categories. Adding pages to a blog, without stressing on the need for suitable posts will degrade the value of the blog, and turn visitors away.

3. Beware of duplicated content

Content should be original, it should not be copied from somewhere else. Copying content is not only a violation of search engine policy, which could lead to being penalized, but it could also decrease search engine ranking of sites and blogs.

Duplicate content also damages a site’s reputation. It may lead to a decrease in viewership. Blog owners are advised to carefully choose their guest posts. They should use content checkers to trace the origin of the content. Never publish a post without checking for its source or its authenticity. There is no apparent harm from copying ideas from other blogs, but copying sentences or paragraphs or full-length articles from other blogs are not allowed.

4. Welcome Similar Writing Styles

The higher the number of authors who are writing guest posts for a particular site, the likelier that there will be many different writing styles embedded in the posts. Different writing styles are never considered a good option for a site. It will lead to confusion, particularly in the minds of the readers. Readers would never know what to expect from a blog.

A site should carry clear cut policies or suggestions of a certain pattern of writing style that must be followed. Do not choose or publish guest post that does not adhere to the stated writing style. Having a similar writing trend is highly recommended, and important for a blog’s health. It keeps the readers coming back.

5. Say No to offensive content

A blog owner should be willing to do extensive moderation, to pick out any offensive content embedded between the lines and remove them. Some guest writers consider writing for other blogs a good opportunity to let their hair down and thus may be a bit more opinionated than their usual safe. These guest posters are never at a risk, but the blog owner will come under tremendous criticism from readers and fellow bloggers if he or she allows abusive or offensive content to be featured in the blog.

Always check the post before publishing. Remember, the responsibility of posting offensive content is the onus of the owner, even though he may not have written it.

6. one or Two Links in author’s bio

Every blogger is perhaps, aware of sites being paid for posting links. Any act of posting paid links on a site or a blog is considered as spam by Google. Therefore, if Google catches someone doing it repeatedly, he could be punished for it. Many guest posters write for other blogs, and use the author’s bio section to post more than one site link. That could be dangerous, and will lead to a hefty penalty, if they get caught. The penalty ranges from a drop in page rank status to a lockade in search engine results.

Although, if there are links to twitter or facebook profile pages, this won’t harm the sites.

7. Keep an Eye on Self-promoting posts

A blog is a place, where information is provided based on the author’s experience. ‘Promotional’ content on a blog means that the post has been published in return for money. A promotional post promotes products or services and therefore, it is likely to annoy a reader. Readers usually do not expect or like blogs to publish promotional content. They have arrived at a post to gain information and take something back with them. But with promotional guest posts it will leave an impression that the site has been paid for publishing the post, and many readers will not be impressed. Some may deem it a breach of trust.

8. grammar and sentence construction errors

These days, having a laptop, a blog, and a fleeting grasp of English automatically makes anyone a ‘writer’. However, most of these writers care or know not of the errors they are putting into their articles. At times, they have good content which is marred by these minor but repetitive mistakes. Content filled with grammatical errors will annoy informed readers. Rather than just an honest typo, grammaritcal mistakes will show the blogger in a poor light, and will result in readers shunning future posts from these bloggers which isn’t good for the site owner as well. Some site owners would take the matter into their own hand, getting editors to look through each sentence, each point, to clear each mistake. It is a time-consuming effort which is necessary to keep the readers coming back for more.

9. Advice and Tips Posts Are Good

A guest post that offer "how to – tips" is more likely to be accepted by readers. Instructional guest post often help blogs become popular. Blog visitors get the impression that the blog is an instructional blog, and they will probably come back often to scout for similar content.

10. Conduct a background check

There are many writers who submit similar post on more than one site. It’s thus important to know some details about your guest poster. Perform a background check on Google to see their writing history: where they have written for previously, their online reputation and the feedback (if any) received of their writing.

There are many articles that are similar, but don’t get caught in Copyscape, because of alterations in the article’s content. Don’t accept such posts, and avoid guest posters who indulge in spamming activities.

Conclusion

Guest posts have certain distinct advantages for blog owners. It is one of the better ways to establish blogs in the blogosphere. However, guest posts also outline a lot of disadvantages, which can be detrimental for a blog. Blog owners, are therefore, advised to prepare strict codes or policies for guest posting, and paste these rules in at least two locations in the site. Guest posters should be aware of what is expected of them, before they come knocking and offering to write a post for your blog.

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Tired of working on your Mac and wish you can complete your work from an iPad or Android tablet? You are definitely not alone. The tablet is made for many reasons, and one of it is to enhance your mobile working experience. Put aside your heavy and bulky laptop, leave your desktop at home, go out only with your iPad or Android tablet and you can still get your work done.

With tablet in your hand, you can practically work anywhere you want. In this article, will guide you on how to remotely access your Mac from your iPad or even your Android tablet, with Mocha Lite, the free remote server app for your tablet. This way, you can do anything on your Mac via your iPad or Android tablet.

Allow Remote Access From Mac

To start remote access of your Mac from iPad, go to System Preferences on your Mac and select Sharing.

Now make sure to ‘check’ on Remote Login, File Sharing and Screen Sharing. When checked, click on the Screen Sharing and go to Computer Settings.

An option panel will appear, check ‘VNC viewers may control…’ and set the password, then click ‘OK’.

Get Remote Access From your Tablet

Connect your iPad to the same Wi-Fi connection as your Mac. When you have completed the steps on your Mac, go to the App Store from your iPad and download Mocha Lite. Mocha Lite is also available for your Android tablet.

Once installed, open the Mocha Lite app, go to Configuration and click on New to add a new configuration.

Now fill up the configuration settings with your server address as well as Mac OS X user ID and password. To easily locate the VNC server address, click on the small blue arrow.

Then select your computer. This is detectable since you are connected under the same WiFi connection.

When selected, go to the ‘Connect’ tab on the left and tap on your Mac on the list.

The connection will begin, and when connected, you will see your Mac desktop on your iPad, and you can remotely control it with your finger tap. Notice at the bottom right of your iPad screen, there is a small arrow, click on it to reach main control options.

When you click on the arrow, a control menu will appear with options to view keypad, main menu, enter button, screen adjustment and screen lock.

Conclusion

One more great thing about working with the iPad is a longer battery life compared to a laptop. Remotely access your Mac from your iPad and Android tablet and you can start leaving your home or office for that park bench or cafe down the street to get a change of scenery.

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