Digital Business Cards

I don’t want your business card. young_gates

Sorry but I’m not interested in a piece of paper that I have to keep track of until I can enter your contact details into my address book. I live in a digital world and the highest compliment I can give you is jotting your info into my Evernote app or adding you directly into my iPhone contacts… right before I hand your card back.

In this interconnected online world having your contact information in digital form can elevate you from a stack of mundane cards to the person establishing connections. If you want to make it more convenient and be more memorable have your contact information in digital form.

Traditional business cards are important but don’t keep your contact info restricted to a rectangle.

Vanity URLs

One of the best ways to share your contact information digitally is a website dedicated to your profile and contact information.

Regardless of HOW you share your info the WHERE should always be the same. For a few dollars per year you can own a web address that acts as your digital business card.

Ideally you want FirstNameLastName.com or .me but if they are unavailable get creative. For Jane Doe you could try

ContactJane .com/.me
HelloJane .com/.me
Janeisthebombdiggity .com/me

The golden rule: Easy to Say, Easy to Remember.

Digital Profile Services

Once you’ve purchased your vanity URL there are several good profile services that can populate the page without a lot of work.

Card.ly – Card.ly offers a nice layout and options to add a lot of contact info and web profiles. It’s been my digital card for the past year and I’ve been really pleased. The premium version is $24.99 per year and offers more skins and analytics.
1. Pros: Clickable email/skype links, provides vCard downloads
2. Cons: Limited free skins, no clickable IM links.
3. Example Card
DooID.com – DooID is very well designed and one of the easiest services to setup. The Pro versions offers some great skins and add-ons for $2.99 a month
1. Pros: The ability to make information private, Clickable Email/Skype/IM links, provides vCard downloads
2. Cons: Only 1 skin for free accounts
3. Example Card
Gravatar.com – This is the most recent entry into the digital card arena but it’s owned by Automattic, the company behind WordPress, and Gravatar has long been the default profile for WordPress blog commenting. I loved this card from day one. I’m hoping they’ll add some more features but the clean design and ease of use makes this a serious contender
1. Pros: Very clean design, verified services, clickable Email/Skype/IM links, customizable background
2. Cons: Doesn’t display a link to your homepage, no vCards
3. Example Card

Digital Profile Do-it-yourself

If you host your own site but you don’t want to manually code your profile card from scratch here are 2 excellent options

5cards.org – This is a simple utility to build an HTML5 digital business card. Just edit the info and click create then you can upload the resulting .html file to your site. Very clean design but all the info is text so you’ll need to add any links manually. Example
Digital Business Card WordPress Theme – This theme from John Saddington is a customized theme built to highlight your contact info and display an image. It isn’t very flexible but it will handle most of your needs very well.

Aggregate Profiles

I don’t recommend using these as a digital profile card because they are too cluttered and offer little actual contact info but if your goal is to highlight content and social services you might consider using an aggregator profile.

Google Profiles
Friendfeed
Flavors.me
Retaggr – Retraggr does offer some good contact options but the design is a nightmare

Mobilize your Contact Info

Web profile cards are excellent but most people we meet aren’t sitting at their computer so here are a few ways to share your contact info on the go

Contxts.com – This is a very simple yet awesome service that sends your contact info via text message. To see it in action just text “keithc” to 50500. You’ll get a text back with my contact info. You can also beam your info via txt and there is a Contxts iPhone app.

Bump – The bump app (iPhone/Android) shares your contact info by bumping smartphones. Of course this requires the other person to have the app as well but it’s a great app and you don’t want to be the person without it.

LinkedIn – Their iPhone app offers an “inPerson” feature where you connect with someone else via bluetooth. Somewhat laughable but it exists.

Twtbizcard – Very nice tool to share your contact info on Twitter. If you attend tweetups this is a hand tool to have. See my demo of twtvite/twtbizcards

BONUS – Go Digital with Paper

There is even a way you can include digital information on your traditional business card. Include a QR code on the card.

A QR code is a smart barcode that allows you to embed digital information like a profile URL. The recipient can snap a picture of the code with their smart phone and then a QR app will extract the information. It’s a great conversation starter.

Convenient+Different=Memorable

Regardless of the method you should take advantage of these free tools to share you contact information in a variety of formats. Make it easy for anyone to remember you.

Tagged as: Business, Digital Business Cards, QR

http://www.businesscards.com Mike

The role of the traditional business card is changing but it remains vital to your personal branding efforts. It’s tactile and conveys stability and longevity–you went to the effort of getting the card produced–that demonstrates intent. The business card is a physical complement to your web presence.
http://www.heyletsrock.com Khara Cavaness

This is an excellent post on the importance and ease of having a digital digital business card. I purchased kharacavaness.com several years a go and a few months ago I finally placed WordPress on it and installed a business card theme. It wasn't much more than a contact form and links to social networks, and I try not to keep so many as to bombard a person – so I felt that flavors.me would be a better choice for me and switched to it a few weeks ago. I find that it makes it look like you have “more” by pulling in the feed from your various site and profiles. That being said, I only link to a few things, I can see it getting cluttered if you have a lot you would want to add.

I do think there is a great value in having a business card and keeping others' business cards though. For example, no one has a hope of spelling my name without looking at it on a card, or having it spelled out loud and in certain situations there isn't time for spelling aloud or even “bumping” iPhones.

When someone hands me a card, I never hand it back to them. I might not need their service or I already have their company's info, but it doesn't hurt me to stick a piece of paper in my pocket and keep moving. They wanted me to have a card. They are probably proud to have a card, or if they are a designer, they designed their own card, making it very offensive to hand it back even if you have their info.

I keep a collection of business cards, good, bad, ones I have entered into my contacts, ones I will probably never need. I like to use them as design examples, what to do, or what not to do on a business card.

I cannot tell you the number of times I have deemed something as not “phone/contacts worthy” but since I kept the card in my collection, I was able to pull the information out for someone that did need it. I think of them like anything else you would get a convention type event – you take it all home and weed through it later. Or liken it to a 3-year-old giving you a fruit loop that was on the floor, sure you aren't going to eat it, but you are going act very happy that they gave it to you and get rid of it later.
http://KnowtheNetwork.com Keith

Thanks for the kind words. I don't discount there is value for some people
in keeping business cards just not for me. I have no design interest and I
just want the contact info. I snap a pic or jot the info into Evernote. I
don't often actually hand the card back but if there is time for me to punch
the info into my phone then I'll ask them if they'd like it back so they can
give it to someone else. If I have no interest I usually just pocket the
card.

I don't ever want to be rude so often I'll take the card but the really
important ones I want to make sure I've got the info b/c the paper may not
make it back to when/where I need it.

Since you are now the 3rd person in my circle to use flavors.me in a landing
page method I'd like to offer a question, Are you concerned that a regular
user my not be able to actually find a link to your blog or linked in
profile? I know the design is top notch and I can determine your Twitter ID,
and links to profiles and such but I know where to click. I just haven't
bought into flavors yet and I'd be interested in your thoughts.
http://www.heyletsrock.com Khara Cavaness

Much like you, it's hard for me to say because I know where to click. The first time I saw a flavors.me page was on my friend Steven Trotter's steventrotter.com domain. I figure that many an average user might not realize they can see more than what is pulled in through feeds onto the flavors.me page. This would mean they wouldn't click on any of the individual posts, so they wouldn't make it to your actual blog or social profile, and analytics won't reflect people reading your blog posts, etc from your flavors.me page. (though flavors.me has built in stats and a place for google analytics code, so that might not be as big of an issue). I haven't done too much with my landing page yet, but if you check out Steven's I think the average user can figure things out from how he has included links in his “about me” paragraph. If a user is confused by the links to the feeds, they can click the links from the “about me” paragraph and go directly to the source. I think this is the solution to making it more accessible to all levels of Internet users. I think making things as accessbile as possible to all levels of users is important, but at the same time you only do so much.
http://KnowtheNetwork.com Keith

Good points and I agree the problem can be helped with a good “About Me”
paragraph but I still content that from a usability issues the links should
be more accessible. If someone goes to Steven's page looking for his Twitter
account they are going to have problems finding the actual account. Sure the
tweet,tweet displays the tweets but how many people know clicking the
timestamp leads to the actual page.

Also if I have to rely on an about me page then I say that is pretty good
proof that the page doesn't work.

This is just my opinion and I'm really enjoying the conversation. Thanks
Khara
http://www.heyletsrock.com Khara Cavaness

I guess everyone has to decide what their limit is/what they think is acceptable when it comes to how accessible they choose to make something. There is always going to be someone out there that can't quite figure it out, no matter what you do.

The page may not work as a business card, but it does work for pulling your various sites into one place (apparently, a little too well). Also, I have to get my $20 out of it. LOL I will probably do something else with the domain when the term is up, but I was pretty impressed the first time I saw flavors.me in action.

The landing page/business card/vanity URL gave me an interesting idea for a possible presentation, on a bit of a different topic, I may bounce it off of you in an email soon.

Thanks Keith.
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