A virtual office service can provide the digital nomad with everything they need to succeed living the laptop lifestyle. All your bases are covered, including a base of operations where you can meet with clients and take care of office duties such as printing and online conferencing, to a live receptionist who can handle your incoming calls when you can’t come to the phone.
Also, one of the biggest and well-known secrets to taking an online business to the next level is the ability to manage your time effectively by automating (in this case, outsourcing) as many day-to-day tasks as you can. Obviously, a virtual office can take care of your phone call forwarding and messages, and receive and forward incoming letter mail.
But what if you need an assistant to handle other web and offline related tasks? Most established virtual services also offer access to highly trained virtual assistants whenever you need them. Following are 7 reasons/benefits digital nomads will get when making use of a reputable virtual office service.
1. You need a base of operations
A virtual office service will provide you with a legitimate and searchable business address you can use to receive phone calls and lettermail at, and offer a set amount of access to physical office facilities around the globe as your needs require. You can entertain clients in an office in Cameroon one day and jet-set off to Dubai the next!
Your Virtual Address will always remain the same unless you request a change, but virtual office services generally have facilities you can use on every corner of the globe. Best, you can use the address you choose to legitimize your websites, email signature, social profiles, and any printed material your business offers.
An address is just the start of what modern service companies in this space are offering, but the savings they offer over brick-and-mortar leasing, and the long term contracts that come with them, is definitely on-par with the needs of most digital vagabonds!
2. You need to do adequate content creation & posting
Content creation is one of the most time-consuming branding tasks faced by any digital nomad attempting to establish themselves an authority in their industry. However, when you’re trying to run a successful online business, content creation can become a real chore, especially if that business revolves around creating content for clients (it’s well-known that auto mechanics don’t like to work on their own vehicles!)
Most VAs you’ll encounter have at least some experience creating and/or editing content such as written, video, or audio. For more advanced content creation and distribution skills, you can look for virtual assistants who specialize in the areas most important to branding your business.
3. You need help with social media management
Social media management is yet another key element to being a successful digital nomad in the digital era. It doesn’t matter what you do, or how much you charge for your services; the majority of clients will be much more receptive to hiring you when you have a social presence and interact with your clients through those channels.
There is absolutely nothing a VA can’t do for a digital nomad on their social accounts. You’ll want to be careful, of course, until you feel you can trust someone by giving them the ability to post to your channels, as doing so can always have disastrous circumstances. However, using reputable firms and careful vetting of individuals will ensure a VA only does what you tell them to — helping build your brand rather than hurting it.
4. You need to multiply your customer outreach efforts
Outreach is no easy task for any digital nomad seeking to expand their customer base — finding bigger and better clients, with bigger budgets and endless projects that require your unique expertise. Outreach is also essential for most who work as a digital nomad, particularly when you charge premium fees for your services.
A virtual assistant can help integrate into your outreach strategies in a couple of ways. A less intrusive method could be to use them to collect prospective clients info and place it in an easy-to-read spreadsheet. You can also have them perform outreach on your behalf, to qualify customers before you speak with them.
5. You need help with research and preliminary project assistance
Research is needed in many freelance operations from web designers, to vloggers, to freelance writers, to consultants, and much more. Big research-intensive projects can often make it impossible to get started at times. Even with several smaller projects, research can slow progress to a crawl and obviously hurt your brand when delays occur.
VAs are trained in almost every conceivable skill imaginable. A virtual assistant can do site backups before you start on redesigns for customers. Compile a list of data and verify it for writing projects, blog posts, vlogs, product videos, research competition, and much more. This will allow you to expand your brand indefinitely by focusing on the big picture — increasing turnaround and quality for your customers.
6. You desperately need help to complete ‘non-core’ projects
It’s often the ‘minutia projects’ that weigh digital nomads down most, such as simple design tweaks to a website; posting/scheduling content in yours or your customer’s sites; and the same for scheduling multiple social posts across several accounts. When a digital nomad is constantly up against the wall, delays are inevitable, and delays hurt your brand.
These tasks can easily be handed off to a virtual assistant or two and dispatched while you get to work on more important, less soul-crushing tasks. Not only is efficiency increased, but the likelihood of burnout is lessened as you find VAs experienced at taking care of the more tedious and draining elements of your business, so you can focus on customer satisfaction and expanding operations.
7. You need to provide your customers constant service, even while you sleep
It doesn’t matter what you have a virtual assistant working on — often times, due to available VAs and receptionists in different time zones, you can actually structure their customer service and project completion duties to be completed while you’re having dinner with your travel buddies. Consider the possibilities of taking your business from a local freelance company or ecommerce retailer to a national or global brand using VAs to service customers around the world.
A great example would be a ecommerce store owner who works with customers in different time zones: Imagine how much more productive you would be if your VA had all your overnight email sorted and prioritized before you start working for the day? Same with social media — a VA can respond to pressing comments and DMs while you sleep, so your business never has to.
Are you ready to take things to the next level?
Few digital nomads can do business in this day and age without a virtual office and virtual employees to ease their workload. Unless you’re a freelancer who takes on a project or two a month to fund your world travels, your business simply cannot grow without the reputation a legitimate virtual office gives you, or the peace of mind and “get things done” attitude that virtual employees can offer.