Have you got a digital business card yet? If your answer is 'I've never thought about it', you're in the same boat as thousands of business owners still struggling to make their presence felt in the digital age.

With so much of business life moving online, it's surprising that more business owners haven't yet caught on to the phenomenon of digital business cards. These tiny files can be handed to new business contacts as easily as bumping phones together, and can do much more than the traditional form. By making your business cards digital, you're making business exchanges a whole lot easier.

Traditional business cards achieve just one thing: they provide information. Turn that information into digital form, however, and you can do a whole lot more.

*Create instant connectivity: When you make a valuable new business contact, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get in touch with you. That's the reason business cards were invented in the first place. Digital business cards take the next logical step.

With a digital business card, you can provide new business contacts with all of the necessary information in a way that allows them instant contact. The hyperlinking of information means you're just a click away. Swap your digital business card from smartphone to smartphone, and your new contact can instantly email, call or text you, without having to retype information.

*Centralise information: How many times have you met someone and spent five minutes sorting out which social network they should contact you on? Some people use their Facebook profiles for business contacts. Others rely exclusively on LinkedIn. Still others prefer more industry-specific groups. One of the dangers of social networking is getting your profiles mixed up.

It's becoming more and more important to participate on a number of social networking sites, and it's not always easy to get the same user name or other profile details. A digital business card gathers all the pertinent details together in one easy to access form. This ensures that you don't lose valuable contacts because they've searched for the wrong 'Joe Smith' on the wrong network.

*Harder to lose: When it comes down to it, business cards, no matter how prettily printed, can be easily lost. They get bent; they get written on; they get folded up and forgotten. At conferences, they get used as place-holders in reports. It's all too easy for traditional business cards to go astray, but digital business cards are a little ‘stickier’. As they are digitally transferred, they can't go wandering off. By swapping your details in a digital card, you can be certain that your new contact will be able to find your information even a few months down the track.

Digital business cards are not replacements for traditional cards, but they are certainly worth investing in for the digital age. With as little design required as for a traditional business card, it's well worthwhile putting your details into digital form for those times when you want to make more impact.

Robyn has worked in the print industry for various printing companies for many years, and writes extensively for Minuteman Press in Australia. Find out more about digital business cards and other printed products at http://www.minutemanpress.com.au.