Take control of your writing and speaking events by using all those business cards you’ve been collecting over the years, the ones you’ve thrown into a drawer and forgotten. Please wait before throwing them away. Those business cards are a valuable professional resource for your writing and speaking business.

Like most people, for many years I collected business cards from people who later did not remember and had forgotten the circumstance or occasion when I met the person. Needless to say, the cards became so useless that I couldn’t even email people reminding them of how they met me. This problem prompted me to start a new habit: making a note on the back of the business card to remind me of where I met the person.

The first thing I did was collect all the cards from the various places where I had thrown them. Then I grouped them by category, like lawyers, doctors, business owners. Once I had the groups established, I put them together, and quickly realized that stacks of business cards tied together with rubber bands would not be helpful.

On a visit to an office supply store, I noticed cheap, three-hole punched plastic business card sleeves to hold my card collection. I also bought enough folders for the sleeves to satisfy my categories. Put your lawyer cards in a folder; doctor cards in another folder; and so on. Be sure to label your folders on the front and on the spine so that when you put them on the shelves, you can distinguish the doctor’s card folder from the attorney’s card folder.

When I finished assembling and labeling my folders, I had an impressive collection of leads, clients, and customers on the shelf. Okay, now that the business cards are organized, now what? I opened a folder, studied the cards, and decided that I didn’t have time to enter each one by hand into my computer and I didn’t want to spend money to hire someone to do it.

The decision was easy. I bought a business card scanner and software that would make it easy to enter my folder information into an electronic filing system, which I could then transfer to email address books and other date systems. Some scan in full color and some scan in black and white only. They all help you easily categorize, organize, and digitally track your contacts. With the notes to myself that I wrote down on the back of the cards, I can make a note in the software about the contact entry. After entering my contact details on a digital form, I saved a working copy to my hard drive, printed a hard copy of my contacts on paper, threw away the cards, and recycled my sleeves and folders for a new batch of cards.

Now that I have my digital data in a usable format, I can use these contacts to create contact lists for traditional mailing lists and email lists for newsletters that I distribute and for events that I sponsored to display my work and sell my books. . Public speaking events can be in the form of a book signing or seminar, both of which are great ways to show yourself as a public speaker.

If you have an office in a building, you can secure conference space for free or for a minimal fee. Pick a great topic: your book! Marketing your book is as easy as placing copies on a table in the back of the room for sale along with copies of your latest newsletter, which you can also market your book to.

Collect new business cards in a handy office supply business card holder on the table. Make some gourmet coffee and buy some exotic pastries and for a very nominal investment you can create your actual engagement list and give them a chance to network, using those business cards you tossed in a drawer and forgot.

Now, you can enter the arena of public speaking without waiting for an invitation to speak or contribute to a newsletter. Your collection of contact data in digital form, organized into neat categories, allows you to send your own regular newsletter and encourage some of your contacts to bring a guest to hear you speak at a free event. Make sure to ask for RSVPs, in case it becomes more popular than you thought possible. Remember to use the public speaking event as an opportunity to receive free book publicity.