July 2019 –Virtual office space is an effective way to align functionality with affordability. Most companies that rent virtual office space include a prestigious business address and a professional receptionist in the package. Additional facilities such as meeting rooms for hire and access to free business networking events are usually also included.
First Steps To Setting Up A Virtual Office
Although you won’t need a physical office, there are other facilities that you will need to consider, once you have secured your virtual office. You will need to establish how you to interface with your clients and suppliers, as well as what tools you will be using to do this and to run your business.
Since you will not have a visible premises to showcase your products and possibly few, if any, salespeople performing cold-calling for you, it is imperative that your business has an online presence – in the form of a website and relevant social media accounts, as well as regular blog articles, for marketing purposes.
1 – Set Up Your Website
Your first priority needs to be the creation of a website, after you have registered an appropriate domain name (i.e. www.yourcompany.com) with a professional hosting service. Professional website builders and content creators can also be contacted via online companies such as Fiverr.com, which is an online marketplace advertising freelance services.
2 – Create Your Social Media Platforms
Once your website, with its Search Engine Optimised content, is live you will need to open relevant social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, etc., to ensure that your company gets noticed.
3 – Blog Articles
Regular blog articles about your products and services or industry news should be utilised to keep search engines coming back to index your site and keep it visible when clients are searching for your company or products and services.
4 – Communicating With Your Clients
Once you have taken care of your online presence, you will need to examine what types of communication tools you will use. There are conferencing apps like Skype for Business or Webex which allow you to hold voice or video conferences with others anywhere in the world – so long as they have an internet connection. WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger are also very popular tools for instant messaging and image sharing. Instagram is a wonderful platform to use if your product has great visual appeal.
5 – Cloud Storage For Data
On-site servers are expensive and external hard drives are limited in their storage capacity and also susceptible to theft or damage – which creates a risk for your data storage. With DropBox, Office 365’s OneDrive or even GoogleDrive, you can store content in the “cloud” and share it quickly and easily with others.
6 – Getting Your Team Together
As previously mentioned, you may have very few employees – especially when you operate a virtual business. You will reach a stage when you need to outsource some of your work to contractors and freelancers to assist you with some of your projects, IT or accounting issues. Using companies such as People Per Hour or Upwork makes this easy as you will not have to bring a full-time employee onto your books, but simply contract work out to them.
Virtual Office Rentals in Johannesburg or Mauritius
If you are looking to rent virtual offices in Johannesburg or Mauritius, you can buy memberships from The Business Exchange. Read here to find out more about these office spaces and their additional services.
You can also contact The Business Exchange, if you require assistance to set up or maintain your website or social media platforms.
