Creating a business card with virtual tracking for free in 6 steps!

If you're a little bit like me, you have probably wondered a couple of times if there's anything more efficient than printing business cards. And with all the tech advancements, I've discovered that you can, somewhat easily, transfer your contact information via NFC with your phone.

However, a business card is a memento we can collect to remember whom we talked to after a long networking event, and a lot of people will still ask you for one.

It also works as a mini creative thing you can produce and be obsessed about -and something for your coworkers to envy.

So, to combine both worlds, I designed my business card with a QR that leads to a landing page and gives the option to download the contact cards straight to the phone.

The best part is that I did it for free and will teach you how to do it yourself. These are the features you'll get:

• A physical business card with
• A QR code leading to your personalized landing page
• A button to download your contact information straight to the recipient's phone as a new contact
• Tracked links to know who scanned your QR and who downloaded your contact information to their phones
• Points for being cool!

Step 1 - Design your card

First, design your business card, the one you'll print. Once you have it ready at your favorite printing place with the design you want (make sure you leave room for the QR). You can use services like https://www.moo.com/us/business-cards to design and prepare your order, but I recommend using any local business to do so.

Step 2 - Creating a landing page

I've used Cardd.co to design my landing page, but there are other services like About.me or linktr.ee to do similar things.

• Register for free and start a new site
• Select from the template gallery a site that is not Pro, and that fulfills your desires.
• Do you have a portfolio, or do you just want to add more information to your cards? Anything goes for your landing page.

• The website has sufficient customizable options. Be creative and make sure you create something that is not too convoluted and provides the necessary information to be remembered or explored.

Tip: Focus on the final user. What do you want them to do when they get here? They're going to be using their phone so make sure you check the phone visualization option after you finish your design.

• Upload your photo, create the buttons for the important information you want the final user to see
• Make a button for the downloadable contact information to your phone. You'll need a URL for that. You'll get it in step 4.

• Once you're ready. Go to the top right of the site and click the floppy disk to save and then publish your page. It will allow you to name your site and personalize the URL.

• Voilà, now save that URL because you're going to use it in the next step

Step 3 - Creating your downloadable vCard file

A vcard is a file that, when executed (clicked, tapped), will pop up a contact card and give the option to be saved. All phones can read these files, and our goal is that when anyone taps the button on your landing page, it will automatically prompt them to save your contact information.

I will explain how to do it on an iPhone because that's what I have.

1. On your phone, go to Contacts, create a new contact with your name, and add the information the final user will add to their phone.

Make sure you don't use your main contact card because it might have sensitive information like addresses that you don't want everyone downloading the vCard to have. In my case, I created the contact with my name, phone number, and my work email

1. Login to icloud.com on the computer and go to the Contacts app and find the contact you just created

• You can find the contact you created and the one that will be saved to your recipient's phone click the small gear on the lower left corner and choose Export vCard...

• Save that file to a folder on your computer. Just so you know, you're going to use it in the next step.

Step 4 - Making the vCard available for download

For this step, you'll only use Google Drive or any other file-sharing service that lets you create public links.

• login to drive.google.com and create a new folder called "Business Cards"
• Upload the vCard file that you created in Step 3 to the "Business Cards" folder
• Use the Share option to make it available to Anyone with the link to open. Copy the link.

This doesn't make the file automatically downloadable, that link will only be useful for opening the file. But we want for the recipient to download the file.

• Paste the link into a Notepad app or any text editor. You'll get something like this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q7MB6smDEFd-PzpqK-3cC2_fAZc4yaXF/view?usp=sharing        

• Locate your ID in the URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q7MB6smDEFd-PzpqK-3cC2_fAZc4yaXF/view?usp=sharing
• You need to copy the ID, which is the chunk of text between '/d/' and the last '/'. Make sure you don't copy any forward slash.

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=FILEID        

• Replace in the URL above the FILEID with your ID from your link and save this somewhere. It would look like this:
• https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1Q7MB6smDEFd-PzpqK-3cC2_fAZc4yaXF

Step 5 - Creating the tracked URLs and QR code

This is the simplest step. Go to bit.ly and register for free. In case you don't know, bit.ly allows you to create traceable links that redirect to the final destination.

You're going to create two links:

1. A simple link
2. QR Code

• For the simple link, you will use the vCard URL you created from Google Drive in Step 4. Bit.ly will give you a shortened link. Save it.

• For the QR code, you will use the URL created in your landing page in Step 2 (in my case, it ends with carrd.co) and generate a bit.ly QR code. You can save the images for your QR because you will incorporate that image into the printed business card. This QR code will always redirect to your landing page.

You can edit the landing page as much as you want as long as you don't change the URL.

Step 6 - Put the vCard in the landing page button

Now go to Cardd and select the button that will be used to download the contact information to the phone, and paste the bit.ly link for your vCard.

Voilá!

Now, start giving cards away and track what's your engagement in bit.ly!

The QR code should direct you to your landing page if you did everything correctly. Try it with your phone!

Tapping the contact download button should prompt you to save a contact card, as seen in the video.

If that works, you're ready to incorporate the QR images into your design for the printing order.

Note: if you can't access your landing page, it might be because you didn't verify your e-mail with the card.

I hope it works. Contact me if you need help!