Digital business cards are a modern concept that is gradually becoming commonplace thanks to the rise of smartphones. Their popularity is becoming increasingly clear. If you’re unfamiliar with digital business cards and have questions about what they are, how they function, and how you can obtain one, this guide will help clarify those points.
What is a digital business card?
A digital business card is an online card associated with an account that you can log into at any time. It contains all your contact information, including your title, company name, logo, and other details typically found on a physical business card. While LinkedIn serves as a popular digital business card for professionals looking to maintain connections, its social aspects, including constant news feeds and publicity, but the fact that you can’t easily export your contacts, leads to LinkedIn being a somewhat less optimal way to exchange contact info digitally.
Why use digital business cards?
Not only a digital business card is more environmentally friendly than a physical card, but a digital business card never needs to be replenished, and it can be exchanged both in person as well as online.
A digital business card also has the added benefit of interacting with physical business cards so that any person you might run into who doesn’t share your fondness of digital business cards can still not only hand you their card but the card can be scanned into your database of choice. This feature exists in some CRMs, but with a digital business card involved, the experience can be reciprocal to your contacts.
Further, digital cards are dynamic and can be edited any time should you change work, title, or contact info, removing the headache of ordering new cards.
How do digital business cards work?
Digital business cards can come in a few different varieties, but essentially it’s a piece of content that is not public but is shareable. It emulates the information a business card would have about you, albeit with a few extras and functionality you wouldn’t normally get on a physical card.
You might find a digital business card existing on your phone, on a social media platform, on a community platform, or potentially just its own app on your phone or desktop. The cards can then be shared with others at your whim, either through a link, QR code, or a handshake popup or notification on a centralized platform for this sort of communication (think LinkedIn notifications for requests to connect, but not publicly).
Some extra functionality can be the ability to scan physical cards, so they’re saved in your digital Rolodex, making it a lot easier to tidy up your physical cards that seem to grow year on year.
This means you can share your business card digitally with contacts on webinars, through group chats, or even in person should they hand you a physical card, completing the bridge between your digital and physical networking strategy.
Where can I get a digital business card?
Digital Membership Cards were the brainchild of digital business cards in the MICE industry.
This tech is actually still in its infancy; as we alluded to prior, social platforms like LinkedIn are already doing the job of connecting professionals but in a public manner that doesn’t include direct contact information that makes it easier to communicate. LinkedIn Connects you, but it doesn’t glue you together.
Some platforms are attempting to release their own versions of the digital business card, and for the time being, it seems like there will be many platforms competing for the market until a leader emerges. Or, on the other side of things, it will simply be a feature that begins to standardize itself in current platforms; time will only tell. As for where you can get a digital business card right now?
Try checking out a few like Dibiz, Haystack, Ingio, or Switchit App; however, you’ll find them somewhat lacking in the functionality that we’ve mentioned before. Some apps even require the other person you want to exchange with to have the same app in order to exchange. It’s not a perfect solution, but there could be some good internal uses here should you need them.
At Glue Up, we’ve built our communities to leverage their own internal business card exchange during events, webinars, or simply in the real & digital world so that attendees and organization members can better network without getting in the way of community discussions and activities.