A few days ago, I received a text from a client and friend asking about saving the information from a stack of business cards. I decided to post this here just in case anyone else might be wondering the same thing.
Going to a lot of networking events, you are bound to come across a lot of business cards. They will quickly stack up and you might be looking for a way to save them. Here's two ways that you can save all those business cards that are collecting dust:
- Evernote Premium – This is a great app that I used to save (just about everything) things to read and take notes for clients. I use the basic version but the Premium version allows you to take pictures of business cards, connect via LinkedIn and save the person to your contacts. There's other additional services worthwhile that other business professionals might use but that's the most attractive thing to me. Because the app is on your phone, you can easily get your phone take a picture of the business card and that person is now in your contacts. I also have installed a extension on my Google Chrome which I use all the time. This means that if I go to a website and I want to save it to view later I can save it to my Evernote which has all my notes and information. You can sign up for free but to scan business cards, you have to sign up for Evernote Premium.
- Neat – This is a scanner like device you can purchase to scan in business cards to your computer. I haven't used this but I'm familiar with it and have heard positive things about the Neat products. If you have a large amount of business cards and want to save them quickly without taking pictrues, it might be the best way to save them. The added benefit of this is that you can also use them for receipts. I believe they have a phone app as well.
Here's one product from Amazon that you could use: NeatReceipts Neat Business Cards Mobile Full Color Card Reader/Scanner and there are some others here from the Neat Company that do a little more.
Those are just two that I know of off-hand. I'm sure there are more but these are just the two that I'm familiar with.
A lot depends on if you are looking for an actual scanner or if you want to just take pictures from your phone or tablet. My preference would be upgrading to Evernote but I understand either way.
Please let me know if there's some better ways to save business cards below. I'm always testing out new apps and cool software.
Photo Credit: Flickr/Angelica Tan