What to Leave Off Your Public Card
A public profile is read by strangers as well as clients. A short guide to what belongs on it, and what is better shared in person.
A business card used to have a natural limit. It reached the people you handed it to, and no one else.
A public profile has no such limit. The person you met at a conference sees it, and so does anyone they forward it to, anyone who finds it in a search, and anyone who scans the code on a banner you left behind.
That is exactly why it works. It is also why a few things do not belong on it.
The Test: Would You Put It on a Billboard?
Before adding anything to a public profile, imagine it printed in large letters beside a motorway. If that makes you uncomfortable, it belongs in a private message, not on your card.
Most of what follows is simply that test applied.
Leave Off: Your Home Address
There is almost no professional reason for a stranger to know where you live. If you work from home, list your city or area, or offer to meet somewhere. If clients come to you, give a business address or a meeting point, never a front door.
Leave Off: Your Personal Mobile, If You Have a Work One
Once a number is saved in someone's phone, it stays there for years. If you want to keep evenings and weekends your own, the number on your public card should be the one you are happy to have ring at any hour, or a business line.
You can always give your personal number to the people who earn it.
Leave Off: Anything From an ID Document
Civil ID numbers, passport details, dates of birth. None of these help anyone do business with you, and all of them help someone impersonate you. The same goes for photos of documents, however useful they seem for "verification".
Leave Off: Links That Reveal More Than You Mean
Look at every link on your card and ask what is behind it.
A personal social account with family photos, school uniforms or your children's names.
A shared calendar that shows your whole week rather than a booking page.
An old portfolio with a former employer's confidential work in it.
Each of these can be fine in the right place. On a page anyone can open, they are worth a second look.
Think Twice: A Plain Email Address
An email address published on a public page is found and harvested by automated scrapers, and it starts to attract spam within days.
If you want to be reachable by email, consider a contact form on your own site, or an address you use only for first contact and can replace later. Your main inbox is better given in person.
What Does Belong There
The things that help someone decide to work with you, and nothing that helps someone find you when you do not want to be found:
Your name, spelled consistently.
What you do, in one line.
Your company and your city or country.
A business number or messaging link.
The three to five links that show your work.
A clear, recent photo.
Review It Twice a Year
A card that was right when you made it drifts. You change jobs, move, start a side project, stop answering an old number.
Put a reminder in your calendar twice a year to open your own profile as a stranger would. Remove what no longer belongs. It takes five minutes.
On POPINID, you can hide a link without deleting it, which makes it easy to keep something ready for later without showing it to everyone now.