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Although social media-enabled networking has become an increasingly important part of professional development, the humble business card remains an effective and convenient way to quickly exchange contact information and build a networking database.
Yet if you collect several business cards in a short period of time, it can be difficult to remember all of your new contacts and promptly follow up with them — and that’s where business card apps come in.
An increasing number of apps help you not only scan and save contact information, but also make it easy to add to existing contact lists, reach out via online networks like LinkedIn and more. If you’re not sure which one to use, we’ve compiled 5 top business card apps for iOS and/or Android to help narrow your search. Give them a try and see what you think!
Evernote Hello
We’re already big fans of Evernote — and if you are, too, the Evernote Hello app is yet another addition to the Evernote experience. The iOS and Android app creates a rich, easily navigable history of individuals, encounters and shared experiences. Optical Character Recognition enables you to scan and save contact details from a business card and automatically brings in related information about the people you meet from your calendar, Evernote account and online networks. If you meet someone at a conference, for example, you can supplement their contact information with details about the encounter, which will likely prove helpful during follow-up conversations.
CardMunch
Owned by LinkedIn, CardMunch lets you scan business cards and, once the contact data is imported, will enable you to connect with that individual on LinkedIn (provided they have a profile, of course). You can also save meeting notes to the app, which is only available for iOS users. The company says support for other devices is coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled.
Bump
Swap contacts and related content with other mobile devices over a WiFi or data network using Bump, a free app available for Android and iOS. All you have to do is select what you want to share and “bump” the two devices together — after that, the information is automatically shared from one device to another. Pretty cool, right?
About.Me
You might already have an About.me site, which allows you to quickly and easily set up a public online profile that serves as a central point of contact for all of your social networking profiles. About.me has also created an iOS app that lets you easily access other About.me sites on your iPhone and swap contact details with other users, functionality that can prove especially helpful at large-scale networking events like conferences and trade shows.
ScanBizCard
If you’re in sales or collect business cards in a variety of languages, we’d definitely recommend checking out ScanBizCards for Android devices. You can automatically import business card data (or opt to manually transcribe the information into the app, if you prefer). Once the information is loaded, use ScanBizCards to add the data to your CRM software like Salesforce, for those of you in sales. Or, if you want to import a business card in another language, ScanBizCard can translate from 22 languages, including Czech, Danish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovakian, Spanish, Swedish and Vietnamese, among others.
You don’t have to head to a networking event to test out one of these apps. We bet you probably have a stack of business cards on your desk, so download an app and see how you like it. Plus, you now have an excuse to do something with those cards, rather than file them and forget them.
If you use a business card app that we missed, we’d love to hear about it!