Last week I went to Digital Pharma East. I was looking forward to connecting with a bunch of people I knew in a short amount of time. I knew I’d want to give them my updated contact information, and I started thinking about how I would do that. I know what you’ll say – just hand them a business card, what’s so complicated about that? Well, this was a digital conference, so you think there’d be a more up-to-date method. Business cards seem like such an anachronism. Every executive I know uses their smartphone as a remote control for their life. Isn’t there a better way to transmit contact information than a card, so it doesn’t need to be manually entered into a digital address book later?
The options
Over four years ago a friend introduced me to Bump. With Bump you and your friend both fire up the app and then you ‘bump’ your phones together to exchange contact info. It’s simple and fun, but it does take a little time to do. Bump has evolved nicely in recent years, and it’s slicker than ever. It allows you to ‘bump’ as before, but also allows emailing information along with a vCard (a file format standard for electronic business cards). There’s now a clever feature where you can fire Bump up on a computer, ‘bump’ the phone on the spacebar and send contact info to a computer as well as a phone. Very slick. You can also send photos and other files this way. Some of the other apps I have on my phone, like Cardcloud, seem to have neglected their development.
Now, there are really easy ways to exchange contacts built right into the smartphone. If you create a contact for yourself in your phone, you can go to contacts, select yourself, and then you can easily share your contact info via text or email in seconds. If you send a text, your friend can save the contact to their phone, if you use email you’ll send a vCard file which can easily be added to a computer address book.
Apple now has AirDrop. It works pretty much like Bump. You and your partner both enable it and then you can drop you contact info to your friend. It’s an extra step (if it’s not on), but it’s slick. This is big competition to Bump. But (and this is a big one), it only works on iOS devices, not iPhone to Apple computer (this is on the works) and it also isn’t available on my older iPhone 4S (bad Apple). You can see why these sharing apps fell by the wayside with free competition like this. (NFC and iBeacon may change the landscape here.)
Raising the Bar
I’m a big fan of About.me. About.me lets you create beautiful and highly visual personal branding pages, with live links to your other online platforms, such as Twitter or your blog. Here’s my trick. I own the URL www.IMetMark.com. It redirects to my About.me page. So, when I want someone to connect to me, I simply say: “just type imetmark.com into your browser or smartphone and you can get to me however you’d like. It adds some flair, and some people have been really impressed. Since email addresses are cumbersome to spell out to people, I also use the email mark[at]imetmark.com. I can tell someone: “just email me at mark[at]imetmark.com and I’ll send you back my whole contact info.” Easy peasey.
So, I went to the conference with my digital strategies
How did it go? Well, the most common experience was “give me your card.” It was almost comical after all this digital over-thinking. When I asked someone if they wanted me to send them a text or email or email with my contact info, it interrupted the flow too much. Now, that might not happen with a more in depth meeting, but at a conference things move pretty fast. When I told people to go to IMetMark.com it puzzled some people and impressed others. Telling people to “email me at mark[at]imetmark.com and I’ll email you back my full contact info” worked pretty well. This was almost always accompanied with a business card. Mind you, this experience all took place at a digital marketing conference, not a typewriter convention.
Oh, the humanity
So, paper business cards are not dead. In fact, they are an opportunity to stand out. Cards are one of last vestiges of the print world. Think of it as an advertisement, and spend some money. Relish the opportunity for good graphic design. Moo.com is a great source of inspiration if you are in charge of you own cards. If not, get your company to give it some thought. Think about how unusual shaped cards or unusual papers have stood out in the business cards which you’ve gotten. Business cards do not run out of batteries. You can also drop them on cement and suffer no data loss. Get some good ones, and present them with style.
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