Every few years someone announces that the business card is dead. It keeps surviving, because a card does something a link cannot: it gives the other person something to hold. But a paper card also has a weakness. The day your phone number changes, it is out of date.
Where paper still wins
In an in-person meeting, a good card is a small mark of respect. It is quick, it needs no phone or app and it works even in a room with poor signal. A well-made card on thick paper also says that you take details seriously.
Where a digital card wins
A digital visiting card can be updated in seconds, so it is never out of date. It can link to your website, your LinkedIn page, your e-book and a booking page, which a paper card cannot hold. It can be sent in a message to someone you have not met in person.
Use both, and let them point to each other
The best answer is a simple one. Print a clean paper card, and put a QR code on it that opens your digital card. Now the paper card is permanent and the digital card is always correct. Whenever your details change, you change them once.
What belongs on the paper card
- Your name and your role
- One phone number and one email address
- Your website or a QR code
That is all. A card with twelve icons and three phone numbers is noisy, and noise looks less senior.
Make the QR code easy to scan
Print it at least about two centimetres across, in dark ink on a light background, with some empty space around it. Test it with two or three different phones before you print a thousand cards.
Make them match
Your paper card, your digital card and your website should share the same name, the same colours and the same short description of what you do. When they match, people feel they are dealing with one organised person.
A quick check
Hand your card to a friend and ask what they would do next. If the answer is "visit the website" or "save the contact", it is doing its job.
The card has not died. It has found a partner. Use paper for the moment, and a digital card for everything after.
