What to Put on a Digital Business Card (and What to Leave Off)

A digital business card has no printing cost, which is exactly what goes wrong with most of them. When adding another field is free, people add all of them, and the card stops being a way to reach someone and becomes a directory of everywhere they exist.

The test for every field is the same: does this help a stranger decide to contact me, or does it just prove I own the account?

Your name, as people will search for it

Use the name you introduce yourself with. Not your legal name if nobody calls you that, and not a nickname that will not match the email you send afterwards. The person saving your card should be able to find you later by typing what they remember hearing.

What you do, in words a stranger understands

This is the field that carries the most weight and gets the least thought. Internal job titles are the usual failure: they are precise inside your company and meaningless outside it. A title like Regional Category Lead II tells a stranger nothing about whether you are the person they need.

Write what you would say out loud. "I help hotels get their restaurants booked" is a better card line than the title on your contract, and you can keep the formal version on LinkedIn where the context makes it legible.

The exception is when the title is the point. In law, medicine, and academia the title is the qualification, and dropping it costs credibility rather than jargon.

One phone number and one email

Two of each is not twice as useful. It makes the reader choose, and a reader made to choose frequently chooses neither. Put the number you will answer and the address you read.

Think about which number that is before you publish it. A digital card is a public web page, so anyone with the link can see what is on it. That is fine for a work number and a work address. It is worth a moment's thought before it is your personal mobile.

Links, if they answer a question

Include a link when someone would plausibly want to open it during the conversation or shortly after. A booking page for someone who schedules calls. A portfolio for anyone whose work is visual. A menu for a restaurant. A specific case study if you sell something considered.

Leave off links that only prove existence. A company homepage that the person already reached you through, a social account you last posted to in 2019, and a personal account that has nothing to do with work are all taking up space that a stranger has to read past.

Two or three links that each do a job beat eight that collectively do one.

A photo, usually

A photo helps someone place you when they open the saved card a week later, having met forty people. That is a real benefit and it is why most cards should have one.

Two practical constraints. It is displayed small and round, so anything with detail at the edges loses it, and a full-body shot becomes an unrecognizable smudge. And it should look like you looked that day. A photo from eight years ago works against the recognition it exists to provide.

For a company card, a logo is the right choice instead. For a personal one, a face beats a logo almost always.

What to leave off

• A physical address, unless people visit you. It is the field most often included out of habit and least often used, and it is a real privacy consideration for anyone working from home.
• A fax number. Yes, still. Yes, people still add them.
• Every messaging app you have. Pick the one you actually reply on.
• A quote or personal motto. It reads as filler to everyone who did not write it.
• Anything you would not want a competitor to read. Public page, public contents.

Different cards for different rooms

The reason to keep more than one card is not vanity, it is that the right answer changes by audience. A card for client meetings and a card for a side project genuinely need different titles, different links, and often a different number.

The alternative, one card carrying everything for everyone, is how cards end up with eleven links. If you find yourself wanting to add a field for one specific type of meeting, that is usually the signal to make a second card rather than a longer one. Creating your first card covers how the card types differ.

A four-second test

Open your card on somebody else's phone, hand it to them, and take it back after four seconds. Ask what you do and how they would contact you.

If they can answer both, the card works. If they hesitate, the problem is almost never that you left something off.