The New Digital Business Card

Michael Timar

Having started my career working in Japanese companies, I learned early that the business card was a very important part of meeting new people. Personally, I like having a tangible reminder of the people I meet. The texture, color and shape of business cards all help me to remember people I meet. I even have a small pile of business cards for people I’m actively working with, just to remind me to reach out regularly.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m in a more sales oriented role now and meeting people in less structured environments, or there is a change in behavior, but I run into more people than ever that don’t have business cards.

Fortunately, technology has come to the rescue with a solution that’s easy for almost anyone to use. LinkedIn has a great feature which allows you quickly add someone you meet right from the LinkedIn App.

When you meet someone you want to connect with:

Both of you pull out your phone and open LinkedIn
Click the “scan” icon in the search bar

3. One of you choose “My Code”, the other choose “scan” and align your camera window over the code to scan
4. Click “Connect” when the profile is showing

5. I’d suggest sending a quick message like “It was nice to meet you at Tech Connect this year. I enjoyed our conversation about helping businesses with cybersecurity. My mobile number is 856-433-1799.” That way you will always be able to see where you met and give you a memory trigger for why you connected, and they have your number if you don’t include it in your LinkedIn profile.

If you are remote, you can also click “share my code” to send your code to someone you met by phone.

Hopefully, this is helpful. Feel free to reach out, and share any tips!