Once upon a time, not so long ago, if you’d walked the floors of office buildings worldwide you would have seen rolodexes sitting on desks. These devices held hundreds of paper cards on a rotating cylinder. Fast forward to the present and you’re unlikely to see a desk-phone let alone a relic like a rolodex in modern workplaces.
Networking and business have changed. There's more ways than ever to make money online and digital tools to grow our networks more efficiently.
In this guide, we'll provide an essential briefing on what you need to know about digital business cards.
1. What is a Digital Business Card?
2. How to make a free Digital Business Card?
3. What do I put on my digital business card?
4. What not to put on your digital business card?
5. How to share a digital business card?
6. What are the Benefits of Digital Business Cards?
A digital business card (also referred to as a QR code business card, virtual business card, electronic business card or mobile business card) is a profile that connects all your digital contact information. They give people the ability to share who they are, with anyone, wherever they go.
You can create these cards online or via a Digital Business Card App. Allowing you to carry virtual business cards on your favorite devices. Smartphones, smartwatches, tablets and laptops can all be used to share your contact details on the go.
Like with traditional paper business cards, you have unlimited options for customizing your digital business card’s design. The kicker is that now, with a digital business card you can share clickable links and multimedia on your card. You can also direct the people that you meet to: follow you on social media, give you a call, bookmark your website and all the details on your card will save directly to your contact’s phone, neat!
A digital business card is a simple way to grow your network and be more memorable in 2022.
Making a digital business card is easy, you can create your first card in under two minutes. There are many digital providers on the market. It pays to choose a brand that you can trust, that is well reviewed and built for the users it serves.
We recommend creating a free digital business card with Blinq. You can choose to download our top rated iOS or Android apps or sign up online. The app onboarding flow will guide you through a few key steps like:
1. how to create your card
2. how to add images
3. how to add your brand colors and finally;
4. how to add key information fields.
1. Name and Profile Picture
Our digital business cards allow you to customize the way you want to be addressed. Outside of your first name and last name. We help you list the information that matters to you - so you can share the way you would like to show up in the world. Such as your preferred pronouns, preferred names and much more.
Similarly you can update your card's profile picture whenever you like. Especially if you’ve gotten a great new hairstyle since your last company headshot was taken. An up to date profile picture is crucial for being memorable and building trust. Why? According to Psychological Science, within 0.04 seconds of seeing your picture, people have already made judgment about you.
📸 For some photo inspiration, check out these professional headshot examples, with an explanation of why they work.
2. Contact details - Email, Phone
Work emails and phone numbers have always been a mainstay of business cards. The same is true of virtual business cards but now, your contact can tap your number or address and instantly get in contact with you (rather than having to type the number into their phone).
You can now select your preferred communication app for calls and emails. Like connecting your Whatsapp and Telegram, helping you separate work and personal contact details.
3. Company Details - Job Title, Logo and Company Name
Did you recently get a promotion? Did the company name or logo change? Did you move jobs? Are you now freelancing on the side? Your electronic business card evolves as your role changes and your business grows.
What’s more, you can update these details in seconds either inside the Blinq app or Blinq dashboard. If you’ve shared your card with another Blinq user, they will receive all your updates immediately as your card is updated. That means your connections can always find you when they need you.
4. Website & Marketing Materials
Do you have a key link you want to share with your contacts? A showreel or new brochure of products? Maybe an awesome new listing that has just come on the market?
With Blinq’s free digital business card app, you can add websites and other marketing materials to your cards using the link field. The app allows you to add as many fields as you like to your digital business card. We don't limit the number fields on your card, or the number of shares you can make, even as a free digital business card user.
5. Social Media Handles
A Blinq digital business card provides easy connection to your:
- Instagram page
- LinkedIn page
- Facebook profile
- YouTube channel
- Twitter handle
- TikTok account
- Yelp page
- Snapchat account
- GitHub page
- Discord
- Twitch channel and more.
Show off your top performing social media channels. Or your latest posts with a Blinq digital business card.
The social media landscape is ever changing and we are constantly updating which apps/software we integrate with. Please let us know if there are any apps that you would like to see. Email: [email protected] and we’ll be happy to get these setup for you.
6. Business Software Tools
Payment tools like CashApp & Venmo, video messaging tools like Skype and meeting schedulers like Calendly all have a place on your digital business card. Be sure to check out our blog on how some of these payment tools can help you get paid faster.
Your virtual card can now be the home for all the ways a person can connect with your professional brand and business. Helping your customers find the right information to help you get paid faster!
7. Branding
Standing out from the crowd is becoming more important than ever before. Research has shown that using a signature colour can cause an 80% increase in a consumer’s recognition of your brand. With Blinq Premium, you can customize your card's color to the fullest. Showcase your brand ID using a unique hexadecimal brand color code and add your logo to your card’s QR code to maximise your brand's memorability.
You can enjoy a 7 day free trial of Blinq Premium when you sign up.
With our free subscription you are able to choose from preset colors that are closest to your brand's color palette.
8. Call to Actions
A really neat Blinq feature is the ability to add call to actions for every field on your digital business card. Our research shows that cards with calls to action have improved click through rates by 32%. Using “Call us today” or “Connect with me on LinkedIn”, compared to plain URLs, can rapidly increase the number of link clicks your card receives.
With a Blinq digital business card, you can choose the call to action connected to each field and truly personalize them for your business. Helping you drive the most possible actions per view of your card.
Do you want some inspiration? Do you want to see what other people have put on their cards? Check out our digital business card examples.
The best digital business cards are concise, well designed and drive action. Here are a few tips on things to avoid when making your cards:
- If you add a bio to your digital business card, make it short, it shouldn’t be an essay or it risks taking up a lot of real estate on your card.
- Don’t label your card fields as URLs, make them calls to action. Blinq gives you suggestions for calls to actions you can add or you can write your own.
- Make sure your color scheme boosts your cards' memorability, not the other way around…if you want to add your exact brand colors, consider a Blinq Premium subscription when making cards for yourself.
- Don’t add a profile picture from a decade ago, you’re only fooling yourself.
Whether you are meeting face to face or virtually we have a number of sharing options available so you can share your digital business card in the way that works best for you.
1. QR Codes:
QR codes have become more accessible and are seen everywhere today. People can scan your QR code directly from the Blinq app. You can choose to add your QR code as a widget on your phone, to your Apple Watch or download your QR code to add wherever you like.
We’ve seen our users add their QR code to their websites, social media, name badges as conferences, billboards, brochures, flyers, tshirts, to their trucks and more!
Share QR code business card with your Apple Watch
Share Digital Business card with QR Code Smartphone Widget
Other Marketing Materials
On top of this, when you create a Blinq digital business card. You will automatically generate a QR code linked to your card. The Blinq app is in effect a QR code generator that you can use. When you update your card, you won’t need to change your QR code.
A lot of businesses are creative with QR codes in their marketing strategy. You can download your Blinq card's QR code and add it wherever you like. Billboards, brochures, t-shirts, trade show banners - you name it.
Blinq users also love adding their card's QR code or unique URL on their website. This has helped them make sure customers have up to date contact information at all times.
To help you leverage Blinq QR code business cards as part of your marketing strategy. We have included a few resources below.
2. Share with a Message: Text, Email and Email Signatures.
Text and Email are the two most popular ways to communicate. With email marketing and text marketing becoming a growing trend. Emarsys data shows: 81% of SMBs use email as their primary marketing channel for customer acquisition.
You can share your digital business card via text and email and you can also personalize the message that accompanies your card from within the Blinq app. Blinq Premium users can also choose to share text and email messages via Blinq to hide their personal mobile number or email address.
Email signatures are also an under-utilized piece of marketing real estate. According to Oberlo: in 2022, 333.2 billion emails are expected to be sent and received each day. That’s a lot of opportunity to share links to your business (and electronic business card).
Connecting your Digital Business card to your email signature is now extremely easy. Blinq users can create bespoke email signatures and add these to their chosen email client via the Blinq dashboard.
For businesses and teams this is a great tool to add into your corporate branding kit. Helping you turn every interaction your team has into a link to your business.
3. Weblink: Social Media and Website
With the internet becoming more fragmented than ever. The necessity for your brand to be on all platforms at once is greater than ever before. Your Blinq business card can be the glue that binds your online brand. Including your digital business card’s weblink to your Instagram and TikTok bios can help you grow your brand and guide followers to other important links you want to show them.
4. Virtual Meetings and Live Streams.
Video conferencing is definitely here to stay. So it makes sense to create a memorable and engaging virtual background for when you are presenting remotely. Blinq virtual conferencing backgrounds can be used for all types of platforms: including Zoom, Google Meets, MS teams and even Twitch.
5. Accessories - NFC Business Cards:
Not ready to stop using your physical business card? We’re very aware of what we’re asking users to give up in favor of a digital business card solution. For many people, carrying a physical business card is a habit they have formed during extensive careers in their industry.
The great thing about Blinq is that you can also create physical NFC business cards for you and your team. You can have your card and carry it if you will.
Simply design and order your NFC business card via the Blinq app or via the Blinq website. We will print, encode and ship your order worldwide. Easy as that.
1. Sustainability
The expectations of businesses and customers have changed. Customers now expect businesses to behave in a responsible and sustainable way. That’s why we’re seeing more and more companies join The Climate Pledge - to become net zero by 2040. Blinq is helping businesses reduce their carbon footprint and meet their ESG goals. Digital business cards are helping to reduce the amount of paper used globally per year, keeping more trees in the ground and more paper business cards out of landfill.
2. Save Time and Gain Control over Information Shared
Digital business cards remove the need for businesses to reorder expensive paper cards that become redundant every year. Updating your team cards digitally through the Blinq Business dashboard significantly reduces the administrative burden on your teams.
Administrators can make changes and know these changes are being applied to team cards immediately. This also creates consistency across the business. Whilst making sure details are always up to date.
Businesses can also control exactly what information is shared on each digital business card by locking fields on each card created. Learn more about Blinq Business and book a demo with us today.
3. Convenient
Having a digital business card for your team members empowers them to share their details in the way they want. There is no need for team members to carry paper cards in their wallets. Each contact they create will immediately save in the Blinq App and web dashboard. Blinq Business users can also sync these contacts with their existing CRM system to turn new contacts into new leads.
4. Easy to Create
What process did your company go through to create a paper business card? How many meetings did you have about cardstock or bleaching? Did your designer enjoy the experience of 10 rounds of changes? Or your CFO in signing off the exorbitant cost for paper cards destined to be binned within 24 hrs of being given away?
We feel your frustration. That’s why we’ve designed our card creation process to be as easy as possible. You can design your cards in minutes either within your Blinq app or using the Blinq web dashboard.
Blinq Business users can also take advantage of card templates that make designing multiple cards for team members fast and efficient.
5. Customizable
With Blinq, you can share everything about your brand, from your logo, color palette, and address, to less obvious things like your tone of voice in how you create calls to action or add your tagline and key offers.
What’s more, if anything changes or you go through a brand redesign, you can quickly update your cards without needing to start again.
6. Cost-effective
Paper business cards are low ROI. Why? Because you can’t track their effectiveness in generating leads. 88% of business cards are thrown out in the first week. But on average companies still spend nearly $200 USD on paper business cards per year.
Blinq’s digital business card pricing is built for the needs of individuals and teams. You can create a free digital business card for yourself or invest in our Premium or Business subscriptions. Every option will save you a significant amount vs. ordering paper business cards.
Moreover, with a digital business card, you can track who receives your card and who shares their details back with you too. That makes turning your contacts into real leads much easier.
7. Be more memorable
The Blinq Digital Business card app has features to help you be remembered long after your meeting or networking event. Such as having a profile picture, the “where we met” feature that gives you a location tied to where you made your contact and the ability to add notes to each contact you make.
All these features were created to help leave a lasting impression on the people you meet and to help you follow up more effectively with your contacts.
8. Contactless
Offering a contactless way to share your contact details is crucial both for your safety and the safety of others. When your teams are at networking events, roadshows or mixers, you need to equip them with a safe way to share who they are and advocate for your business. A Blinq digital business card can help with this.
9. Integrations with CRM and Active Directories
Each new contact created can also be exported to existing CRM systems to nurture warm leads and assist with follow ups. You can connect your Blinq Business dashboard with HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, Monday.com, Microsoft Dynamics, Zapier and many more.
Blinq also offers Active Directory integration with Microsoft Azure Active directory. This can make creating and updating cards for your team members incredibly fast and also make sure updates like promotions are instantly applied to cards when the Active Directory updates.
If you would like to know more about our integrations, please contact us today.
10. Attribution and Interaction Tracking
For businesses, return on investment is of paramount importance. Our CRM Integrations also allow you to automatically track the meetings your team has had and the new contacts that they create. Track star performers within your teams and reward them for their efforts.
You can also receive live updates when prospects change their contact details if they have the Blinq app. Digital business cards now give businesses measurable data on how and where their network is growing, letting you see where your networking efforts (and spend) are best utilized.
If you want top rated digital business card software and a physical NFC business card too, Blinq is the best choice for you and your business.
Networking has changed. Make sure you and your team have a digital business card ready to share as part of your networking toolkit.
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