What are you doing with all those business cards from NAR Annual?

You had a great time in NOLA. You attended your committee meetings, listened to amazing presenters, saw the latest and greatest technologies, networked with other Realtors from around the country and collected a massive stack of business cards. Now what?

Perhaps you have an assistant to add them to your CRM. Maybe you have an app that scans business cards into a database. Or you can do what many Evernote Premium users do. (Another great reason to upgrade to Premium!) Open the camera in Evernote, select the Business Card format and center the card in the grid displayed on the screen. Evernote does the rest; it automatically focuses and takes the photo, scans the data and adds it to a new note, and adds the image of the business card to the note as well.

 

Supercharge the experience

Connect your Evernote account to LinkedIn, and relevant LinkedIn information will also populate the note. If you are not connected on LinkedIn with the contact, the LinkedIn photo and basic profile info is still pulled over to the note. And if you’re not connected on LinkedIn, you can also have Evernote send a request to connect. This can be done automatically via the settings, or you can be prompted for each business card.

But wait — there’s more!

After reviewing the information to make sure it imported correctly into the note, Evernote will add the information to the contacts on your phone and, if prompted, send your contact information back to the contact via email.

In my opinion, this is a quantum leap over the Evernote Hello app. The new business-card feature is effortless, integrated with LinkedIn and your phone’s contacts, and a note is now created for you to add information about the new contact. If the card is from a vendor, scan it at their booth and then add a few photos of their product/demo to the newly created note. Need to get it to a partner quickly? Share the note with them immediately, or save it in a shared notebook.

The default location for these notes is a notebook called Business Cards. This can be changed via the settings on the mobile app.

Currently, this feature is only available for iOS. The Android version is under development.

For more information, visit the Evernote Knowledge Base.

Bill Risser is VP of New Media and Education for Chicago Title Agency in Phoenix, Arizona. After managing a successful branch for 10 years, Bill accepted this position in March 2011. Bill assists real estate professionals by teaching them how to use social and technology tools effectively and efficiently.