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Creating a Digital Business Card - That Scales

Not many paper business cards have been exchanged in the past several months. Most meetings are online now, which is likely a trend. This makes digital cards a necessity for individuals and a strategic advantage for enterprises.


Enterprises that deploy digital cards can customize the user experience to meet their business goals, capture engagement metrics, and make immediate global updates. Their employees can deliver these experiences in their email signatures, video conference background images, chat windows, text messages, social media, and all the other channels they engage in online.


A Template Card


This blog guides you through the process of creating a template digital card, which is a model card with content placeholders, a custom layout, and functionality that fits your company’s objectives. To deploy cards to a team, one copies the template and updates the information unique to each employee. Tools automate this process.


The good news is that developing a custom template is a fairly straightforward process. In fact, for organizations with more than 20 team members, we will design an initial draft template at no charge.


All you need to do is spend some time beforehand thinking about the questions raised below, fill out a quick form, and then set up a time to review your template.


Step 1: Identify the Basics


Start with the profile and contact information and decide what to include. This list is not exhaustive, but it’s a good place to start.


Employee Info

  • Profile Info: Name, Profile Photo, Title, Bio, Intro Video

  • Contact Info: Mobile phone, Office phone, SMS, Email, Fax, Employee URL

  • Location: Office map, Mailing address

  • Social Media: Twitter, Linkedin

  • vCard (consider which information in the card will also be saved to the vCard)

Company Info

  • Company bio/value prop./mission statement

  • Contact info: Main phone, Email, Website

  • Location: Location map/directions, Mailing address

  • Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Linkedin


Once these selections have been made, there are several options on how to display it. For example, contact information can be condensed into menus or displayed where the phone number, email, street address, etc. are visible.

Tip: it’s an option to schedule any of the above, so for example, a person’s mobile number is only visible during work hours.


Step 2: Add Core Business Functionality


Next, consider what additional functionality will further your business goals. Some effective options include:

  • Carousel of prominent customers or references

  • Embedded video

  • Product guide

  • In-app message for announcements

  • Attached PDFs (spec. sheets , user manuals, etc)

  • Referral/Share button

  • Upcoming events

  • Support or helpdesk access

  • Appointment calendar

  • Social Feeds

  • Other________

If you need a function that is not suggested above, then let us know.

Step 3: Arrangement and Branding


Once the content has been defined, it’s time to consider the order in which it will be presented. It can all be on the first page of the digital card, or some content can be moved to subpages.


We are now ready for a first pass at branding, which includes:

  1. The header image, profile photo and color scheme.

  2. Image position and format selection for the action content.

We can help here. If you select the functionality you want, we can create a draft template with a suggested layout and formatting.


Once we have a draft template, it’s simple to reorder content and change formatting until one creates the best possible template.


Other considerations


Producing the draft template above should be enough to evaluate a digital card card. For those considering moving forward, there are a few other options to keep in mind.


URL Format

How should the URLs be formatted? It’s a given that a digital card must have a URL to be easily transferable in online channels, but it also needs to be recognizable for the recipient to click it. The domain selection, ID format, and order (ID before or after the domain) are available options.


Search Friendly

Should the digital cards be visible in search results. If yes, then what preview should display in search results. Will this preview metadata be updated regularly?


Preview Marketing Message

What preview marketing message (image + text) should display when cards are shared in social channels or via SMS?


Home Screen Icon

Should a card’s home screen icon be the employee’s profile photo, the company logo, or something else? The home screen is the most convenient place for the employee to keep and access their card, but recipients might also save it there if the content warrants repeat engagement.



Multiple Templates

Will the company have different information for different groups of employees (e.g. divisions or regions)? Does there need to be more than one template, or just a few options on the main template?


Attribution

Do links back to the company or to product purchases need to be attributed to the employee from who’s card the action originated?


Languages

Does any of the content need to be presented in more than one language?



Administration and Deployment


Our platform offers role-based administrative control, so you can tag which content an employee can update versus that which will be centrally administered. When content is common across a population of cards, a change in one place will update all the cards.

Employees can have a login and update their own content, or everything can be handled administratively. Cards can also be created and managed via API.


For larger deployments, we will build a custom dashboard for employees where they can make their own updates and view metrics, but where the dashboard is simplified to display only the allowed update options.


Free Digital Business Card Template


If you’ve taken some time with the above, then you are well on your way to creating a networking and sales tool that will help your employees and agents be more effective in a world where most communications occur online.


As was offered above, if you have a team of more than 20, use this link to fill out a form and then schedule a call to review your draft template.

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