Make Your Own Digital Business Card
If you’re anything like me, you’ve got hundreds of beautifully designed business cards that are uselessly sitting on your desk when you need them the most. It’s an extra thing to think about, and it can be hard to remember when you’re running out the door during a busy day.
I decided to solve that problem by building myself a personalized digital business card.
It works automatically on about four out of five devices that I come across, and it’s a nifty party trick! To get started, you’ll need a few things.
- An NFC enabled smartphone. NFC is standard on most, if not all, new models of smartphones.
- A smartphone app for writing to NFC tags. I used NFC tools, but there are others out there.
- One of your business cards.
- An NFC sticker. You can buy packs of NFC stickers on Amazon for around $10.
- A webpage for hosting your contact info.
- (Optional) Access to lamination services, such as Office Depot.
Step 1: Design Your Contact Info Page
Your contact info page can look however you want it to. However, I would suggest keeping the page simple and informative. Here’s mine:
It’s a simple image that I embedded with a link to my “Contact Card.” You’re probably familiar with contact cards, but just in case you’re not – a contact card is a file format for storing contact information on a phone. The contact information stored on a contact card include names, email addresses, phone numbers, websites, social media profiles, and more.
Create a contact for your own business on your phone, and add every piece of info you want people to have. I include all contact info, a link to my website, a link to my firm’s social media profiles, and the name of my firm. “Share” your contact card to get the file in the correct format, then upload it to a location that is publicly accessible (such as your website).
Now you’ll put the image and the link together: create a page on your website to place the image, then embed the link to your contact card in the image. Here’s a link to my contact card page.
Step 2: Make Your NFC Tag
Open up your NFC-writing app, and find the “Write” option. Your app will probably give you various options on the data you can write to your tag. Options will likely include files, phone numbers, addresses, and various automated tasks, such as automatically logging someone into your WiFi. All you’ll need to add is a URL pointing to the page you set up in Step 1.
You technically could just add all of that information from Step 1 directly to the tag instead of the webpage, but there are a couple of reasons not to do that. First, NFC tags can’t hold very much information, and you might limit what info you can share with your tag. More importantly though, it makes it inconvenient to update the information you share if it ever changes.
Once you’ve selected the URL, select the “Write to Phone” option and tap the upper back of your phone to the tag. You should get a notification on your screen letting you know if the tag was successfully written. If something goes wrong, you can just tap “Write to Phone” and try again – NFC tags let you write to them as many times as you want.
Test the NFC tag by closing the app on your phone and tapping the back of your phone to the tag again. Your phone should prompt you with a link to open.
Step 3: Wrapping Up
The final step is the most satisfying – attach the sticker to the back of your business card, and take it to get laminated. Make sure not to fold the sticker around the edge of the card or the NFC tag will break. In fact, I would bring a few cards with a few stickers affixed to them just in case something goes wrong.
If you don’t want to or can’t get the cards laminated, consider sticking the NFC tag to something you always have with you, like a water bottle or cell phone, and cover it with a sticker. It will function just as well, and it will be just as convenient.
