Your Twitter and Facebook business accounts are valuable marketing assets with powerful customer engagement potential. Providing links to your social media pages on your business cards increases the likelihood that your potential customers will find and follow your company online.
Customers immediately recognize brand images. People expect a Facebook link to follow an F on a blue background, and they know that an image of a blue bird silhouette points to a Twitter account. Facebook and Twitter maintain specific guidelines around the use of their brand images. Both companies provide appropriate logos for free use along with guidelines around how and where to use their images.
Facebook requires that their image be unaltered, and that your use of the logo is accompanied by specific terms, such as "Like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/YourCompanyPage." Twitter also requires an unaltered use of their logo, and further specifies fonts, layouts and size restrictions. Refer to Facebook's and Twitter's Brand and Asset Guidelines for complete usage requirements.
When adding a link to your Facebook page or Twitter account without the use of a logo, follow conventions for account name and paths that are recognized by most users. For Facebook, use a shortened URL, such as Facebook.com/YourPageName. For Twitter, include a phrase on your card like "Find us on Twitter at @YourTwitterAccount." Texts that include brand names need to adhere to branding standards. Capitalize company names and ensure correct spelling. Although a browser is not case-sensitive, a company's legal department might be.
Use Quick Response or QR codes to provide links on business cards. A number of websites generate a QR code for your site for free. Most business card manufacturers offer the option of printing your QR image for your card. Adding QR codes to the back of your business card expedites a customer's connection to your Twitter or Facebook page.
However, don't rely solely on QR codes to provide links to your social media pages. Some customers may not have QR readers available, or they might not know how to use the codes.
A business card becomes quite busy when you include all of your available contact methods including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram where foodies share their photos (hint, hint restaurant owners) and Snapchat where many Millennials meet – heads up, if you're marketing to that demographic. Make sure your card contains all possible avenues for contacting your business, but strive to maintain card readability. If the card looks cluttered, or the text is too small due to the number of contact methods, use the back of the card. Provide the most common methods of communication on the front, and use the back for your Facebook, Twitter and other contact information.
