Business cards are dated. We’ve all experienced moments when we meet someone and don’t have any of the 100s of cards sitting in our desk drawers. Just as significant, cards get out of date, don’t share all we want to share, and are not great for referrals.
There’s a better way. Get a “personal app” and then simply airdrop or text it to instantly share your contact, social, product, and business information. It’s expressive, green, and efficient.
What's a Personal App?
People that sell, network, or influence need a universal way to curate and present their information. It must be professional, share easily, be up-to-date, and save easily.
A new technology called a progressive web app (PWA) is the perfect solution. It leverages the same technology recently integrated into Microsoft Office, mobile Twitter, and hundreds of other leading applications.
A PWA is a hybrid of a website and a native app that offers the best of both platforms. It’s linkable, searchable, and shareable like a mobile website, while it installs on a user’s phone, works offline, and has a great user experience like an app.
For those who want to share information effectively, a personal app based on PWA technology ties directly into the universal share function built into a user’s browser.
Let’s look at its benefits...
It’s one app to share all your things
A personal app can be as simple as a digital business card that has one-touch access to your contact, social, and website links
It can showcase a portfolio of your work or published articles. It can promote your services and references, be a full-on sales brochure, provide windows of your social feeds, and can include affiliate or e-commerce links to products.
The beauty of a personal app is that you decide what to include, how it’s ordered, and update it as frequently as you want.
Personal Apps enhances your personal brand
You curate the content of a personal app. It is a professional way to introduce yourself and to build relationships. It’s mobile-first and supports everything from embedded videos to social feeds and in-app messages.
Let people know where you are speaking, link to your latest blog, and highlight references. Your users will appreciate the convenient access to the actions or content that you curate.
Evolve your app with your brand and keep it fresh and on-message.
Personal Apps are savable
A personal app is easy for recipients to keep and access.
They install it as an app and access it from a convenient home screen icon, where it’s even available offline.
Alternatively, they can save it as a vCard to their contacts. When saved to a vCard, it has the advantage of always being up to date versus the traditionally static information on a vCard.
Finally, one can always bookmark a personal app or add it as a QR code to a business card or other print media.
Personal Apps are the perfect networking tool
You’re never without your personal app, and shareability is its real superpower.
Just open the app, tap its “share button” and choose whether to airdrop it, text it, email it, share it socially, or share it through other applications such as Slack or Teams.
If you choose, it can also appear in search results. PWAs are fast and SEO friendly.
Furthermore, a personal app brings physical channels online. It can launch from an NFC tag or appear in print media as a QR code, where it will open directly from a scan.
Just as crucial to networking, you can control an image-rich message that automatically presents when your app is shared. For example, below are examples of how a personal app looks when tweeted, texted, googled:
Personal Apps are a powerful tool for referrals
Personal apps share as easily from user-to-user as they do directly,
When a loyal user wants to reference you to another, they need only to share your link using the share button in their browser or the one conveniently provided in your app. When shared in social channels, a personal app can spread virally.
Rather than hoping a referrer can locate your business card and photo it, they only need to share your link, which they can google if it’s not saved to their phone.
Personal Apps have a built-in feedback loop
A personal app tracks page-views and taps to generate a real-time feedback loop for the effectiveness of campaigns and of the app’s content.
Each time you share your app in a channel (social, print, email list, etc.), you will be able to see the following engagement.
At the same time, you will know what content users are tapping. You will see the click-through rate of every action on every page of your app and can determine the effectiveness of each.
The feedback loop allows you to refine your app to make it continually more engaging.
Personal Apps are forever
Different than a business card, a personal app supports long term engagement. It’s independent of any social network and is uniquely yours, including a personal URL. You define its theme and update contact numbers, maps, web resources, and content as you create or change it.
Different than a social feed, you control what information is prominent, it’s formatting, its organization, and its schedule. And you can share it on any social channel.
A personal app cultivates relationships. It evolves with your jobs and services and is the go-to resource that clients reference to know what’s current.
It can also re-engage your audience. A personal app supports in-app messages and push messages (Android only at present) to prompt engagement.
Personal Apps are green!
Let’s not forget that personal apps are green. Quit wasting paper every time you change jobs, logos, or email addresses.
Personal apps are an environmentally friendly way to inform and engage your audience.
Business cards, social profiles, vCards, brochures, and personal websites are all partial solutions for anyone wanting to share information.
A personal app can fill the role of each of the above. It offers consistency, continual refinement, simple updates, and excellent opportunities for engagement.
Once you have a personal app, it’s there whenever you need it.
Who Needs a Personal App?
If you sell, network, or promote, you can benefit from a personal app. Personal Apps work in a wide range of industries, from photographers to insurance agents, DJs to landscapers, speakers to realtors. They truly are for anyone. It’s a digital business card that expands into a personal engagement platform you control.
Personal Apps allow you to present your best. Create a modern, professional online presence for your company. Personal Apps can compliment your website or act as a standalone source of information.