Category: Uncategorized

What is SSAE 18?

Service organizations frequently ask what is SSAE 18 and how it affects their operations. This standard, developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), establishes essential guidelines for internal control management and reporting. SSAE 18 supersedes the earlier SSAE 16 framework, introducing more stringent requirements for service organizations. The standard fundamentally transforms how organizations approach their control environments, requiring meticulous attention to operational oversight and financial reporting processes.

Changes from previous audit standards

The implementation of SSAE 18 marked a significant evolution in attestation requirements. The standard introduced comprehensive modifications to risk evaluation protocols, particularly concerning subservice organization oversight. Service organizations must now implement sophisticated vendor monitoring systems that track performance, compliance, and potential risks. The framework emphasizes thorough documentation and evaluation of control mechanisms, ensuring greater accountability throughout the organizational structure.

How organizations are affected

SSAE 18 has profoundly reshaped operational practices within service organizations. The standard requires organizations to maintain detailed records of control activities, influencing numerous aspects of daily operations. From employee training programs to technological security measures, organizations must demonstrate consistent adherence to established protocols. This heightened scrutiny necessitates regular internal audits and continuous monitoring of operational processes. Additionally, organizations must enhance their communication strategies to effectively convey control measures to stakeholders and clients.

Meeting compliance standards

Achieving SSAE 18 compliance involves implementing robust control mechanisms throughout the organization. Management teams must establish comprehensive risk assessment procedures and maintain thorough documentation of monitoring activities. Regular evaluation of control effectiveness becomes essential, requiring dedicated resources and expertise. Organizations need to develop clear protocols for identifying, documenting, and addressing potential risks while maintaining detailed records of all control-related activities.

Value of proper implementation

Organizations implementing SSAE 18 effectively gain significant competitive advantages. Companies report enhanced operational efficiency and improved risk management capabilities following proper implementation. The structured approach to control management often leads to streamlined processes and reduced operational errors. Furthermore, organizations experience strengthened relationships with clients who value transparent control frameworks. The standard’s implementation frequently results in improved internal communication and more effective resource allocation.

Successful implementation strategies

Successful SSAE 18 adoption requires a strategic approach to control implementation and maintenance. Organizations should focus on developing comprehensive training programs that ensure all staff members understand their roles in maintaining compliance. Regular assessments help identify potential weaknesses in control frameworks before they become significant issues. Management teams should prioritize creating clear communication channels between departments and establishing regular review cycles for control mechanisms. Additionally, organizations benefit from developing detailed documentation processes that track compliance efforts and demonstrate ongoing commitment to control excellence.

The importance of maintaining strong vendor relationships cannot be understated, as third-party service providers significantly impact overall control effectiveness. Organizations should establish clear performance metrics for evaluating vendor compliance and regularly assess their adherence to established standards. This proactive approach to vendor management helps prevent potential control breaches and ensures consistent service quality.

Finally, successful organizations recognize that SSAE 18 compliance requires ongoing commitment and adaptation. Regular updates to control frameworks ensure continued effectiveness as operational environments evolve. Organizations should remain vigilant in monitoring industry best practices and incorporating new control measures as needed. This dynamic approach to compliance helps organizations maintain their competitive edge while ensuring continued adherence to SSAE 18 requirements.

With the dawn in the digital age, online blogging has evolved to some greater extent. There is really a constant interest in digital content as much brands are changing their marketing strategies according to current trends all over the net. A lot of techniques gets into writing your blog post so that it contains the required visibility by attracting online traffic. One innovative technique which can be currently being utilized by PR teams is blog commenting. By posting comments on multiple other blogs, you will get traffic and backlinks to your web page, because comment writer’s name is clearly visible.

Around 2 million web sites are published online in a lifetime of 24 hours. Hence, to seize the attention on the online audience is not really a simple task. Many times content promotion and guest blogging can’t help the online marketing strategy in experienceing this set target. In such cases, consider blog commenting as an alternative online marketing strategy to generate more visitors and backlinks. But blog commenting really should not be a random process, let’s understand this strategy in depth.

Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is really a process of writing comments on other webpages having a backlink to your web page. It has become an important part on the SEO world. while it’s not a required strategy, it will help a lot in generating online traffic.

Benefits of Blog Commenting

If executed properly, blog commenting can be be extremely beneficial for your logo and business. The value that blog commenting brings inside a marketing campaign are:

1. Referral traffic:

Blog commenting is an efficient SEO strategy that works well to create a positive vibe in regards to a brand. After the change on the Google search algorithm, the SEO benefits were minimal, but blog commenting lets you capitalize on a broader audience similar to one click they will reach your website and read it.

2. Build Relationships:

The more you inquire into other blogs, the harder connections you’re making with bloggers. This helps in building long-term networks and relationships which could work to your benefit on multiple social media marketing platforms. Mutual relations prosper and you obtain to design your own community of bloggers.

3. Increased engagement:

Once you comment and participate in conversation that has a fellow blogger, you as well get similar interactions on your web sites which boosts the readership plus the traffic aimed at your web or blog.

4. Fresh Ideas:

Discussions with bloggers provides for a brainstorming activity of course, if the conversations are genuine and interesting, you’ll be able to get some more ideas about the websites that you would like to write on the website down the road. Many bloggers have admitted to presenting got a concept for your blog from the comment section.

5. Learning:

Generally, the dimensions of blogs has limits caused by readability issues so because of this the blogger falls flat to express their complete way of thinking behind the reasoning. Blog commenting can tutor you more in regards to a certain topic you have engaged with blog commenting.

Blind commenting on every webpage may be dangerous instead of recommended. Moreover, this article that you write as comments should attract a reader. A good structured comment ought to have the below features:

The comment must always start using a formal greeting. You can use formal strategies to greeting to start out the conversation.
Make sure you compliment the blogger for the article she or he has written. A little praise goes a considerable ways in making relations.
Add thoughtful suggestions to the blog with the aid of comments to begin with a healthy discussion. Adding snippets consequently always helps.
Once you’ve got completed your comment, share your site post and tag the article author so that the crowd notices.
Create a thoughtful comment dependant on the above pointers in order that there is really a value addition to your site post, else not a soul will notice your opinion.

Some more suggestions that help the quality of your respective content and attract a persons vision of a wider choice of audience are below:

1. Short comment:

Don’t use complex sentences and vocabulary to showcase your command around the English language. The comment section isn’t right location to do it the way it doesn’t serve any purpose. Write short, simple, and crisp comments that add valuable information to your website post. Look for value, not with the length of the comment.

2. Relevant comment:

Don’t write junk information inside the comment section even if you feel like revealing your ability as a copywriter. A blog is written to talk about some insightful information having an audience along with your comment also needs to add on to your blog post post’s essence. If you wish to disagree, then be polite and post a well-phrased disagreement.

3. Engage within a communication:

Be a pro-active communicator while strategizing blog comments. You can also post your replies to comments of other fellow bloggers which you find worth engaging with. Lead this communication into a nutritious discussion so your audience will commence engaging along with your content and notice your website post too.

4. Use your profile with real image and name:

To establish your credibility you should utilize your real identity while posting comments on other blogs. Posting anonymously could potentially cause your comment to look unnoticed and land in junk through the moderators. All the High PR blogs run dependant on their credibility and digital identity, else tall their work should go in spam folders.

5. Do basic checks before commenting:

Clear communication can be a key to improve readability. Therefore, before posting any comment on your blog post, make sure that you just do a spell and grammar check from the content. A well-written comment increases the chances of you engaging using a high PR blog. This would, therefore, allow you to get more hits on the profile and website.

6. Don’t spam:

While engaging along with other blog writers act as humble, respectful, and polite. Spamming the crowd with unwanted comments and blogs will disengage them from trusting your brand name and hence the traffic on your blog post will eventually decrease. Spamming is not really a good practice inside online digital world. Hence, make sure that you simply don’t spam a thread with your blog post commenting.

For reasons that are difficult to fathom, business-to-business website developers are frequently guilty of overlooking ? or ignoring – two of the easiest ? and most important ? ways of ensuring a website performs at peak levels. These are testing and measuring.

Many marketers and designers, especially those schooled in the art of creativity, find testing and measuring boring. But these are several very good reasons to get excited about it:

Testing and measuring provides fast, solid feedback on what your customers and prospects like and don?t like.
You can use the numbers to keep achieving better results.
You can avoid a heck of a lot of costly mistakes.
You have tangible proof of what marketing is doing ? or not doing ? for your sales efforts.

Let?s look at measuring first.

What should you measure?

With the arrival of easy-to-use and easy-to-understand web analytics applications,one of the biggest problems – once you realize you need to measure – is avoiding data overload.

There are a few fundamental all website owners should track. Beyond that it?s up to you to determine what data is really useful. Here?s a good rule of thumb: don?t track anything you?re not going to act on.

Basic critical data includes:

Unique visitors ? the number of unique visitors who visit your website monthly.
How many are new visitors and how many are returning visitors.
Bounce rate ? the percentage of visitors who quickly leave your site from the entry page without going anywhere else. Be sure to consider where the traffic is coming from when looking at bounce rate. For example, pay-per-click traffic will have a higher acceptable bounce rate than direct traffic.
Actions taken ? how many people did something (downloaded a whitepaper, watched a video, requested a sales call, etc.) and what did they do. This is especially important for lead generation sites.
Number of purchases ? an obvious important metric for ecommerce sites.

What should you test?

The simple answer is: test everything you can.

No matter how carefully you follow best practices, persuasion fundamentals and gut instinct from knowledge of your market, one thing is certain: you will not always get it right. One of the most interesting challenges of marketing is the fact that people do not always react the way you think they will. And one of the coolest parts of website marketing is that you can constantly test and improve to get the best results.

Here are just a few elements that are worthy of testing:

Headlines
Images
Colors
Buttons
Calls to action
Forms
Page layout

As mentioned earlier in this article, you could test literally anything; but keep in mind why you are testing. You want to improve the performance of your website, so test to learn which versions or combinations cause more people to stick to your site and take the actions you want them to take.

? 2008 Tatum Marketing Inc.

Well we all know that video’s are the next best thing on the internet! It is the fastest growing type of online content. Everyone loves videos, people love to be entertained. An online video is a powerful marketing tool. Most Americans prefer to watch videos than read articles. So why not take your articles and transform them into a video. Another reason internet videos are popular is because of the ranking system on the internet. Meaning when people click on the internet video, it increases its popularity which causes the website to work its way up to become one of first five links on the search engine. Here are some basic video marketing tips for you to get started. First, you want to make sure that you have great content in your articles and that you have done your keyword research on them. Video marketing depends a lot on keyword research, just like your article marketing.

Most video sites will let you put tags,( your keywords assigned to this video) so don’t forget to add those when you submit your video, also you can include some keywords in your description when you add it. Video capture software allows you to record anything that you can see on your computer screen. There are many varieties online, some are even free.

You just need to capture the information that will allow your visitors to follow along with what you are doing online. Include a screen presentation (power point, ect) and narrate the points to your audience. People will put up with a bad information, but they wont put up with bad audio. It is the most important part of your video marketing. All you need is a good quality microphone and read the article to them. Know what you are going to say, practice reading your article a few times out loud, if you mess up try again and again until you get it right.

If you want them to keep watching your video, you better make sure that it’s worth watching. Youtube is a great place to upload your videos, but you are not limited to this site alone. You can do a Google search and find many more sites, so you can get more exposure to your web site. Finally, What is the reason behind writing your articles in the first place? To get the click to your website. RIGHT! So do not forget to put in your call to action. Of course you will have the resource box at the end of the video, but I would also suggest to put the link in the entire video. Place it on the bottom of the slide, keeping it there throughout the video will perhaps get you the click before the end. Video marketing is an effective yet affordable way to market your business. You don’t need to be an expert, you just need to have the know how to begin. I hoped you got some valuable information from this, if so, go out and make your first video today! ???

Internet has revolutionized everything in the world. Now instead of our physical address, we also have E-address. If you are new to the world of Internet, the first thing you should do is have an e-mail address. Email address is like your home address where people can send you messages. Everyone who creates an e-mail address is unique like our home address. Through e-mail you can send and receive data like, photographs, letters, official applications, resumes, videos, documents, etc. You know that your e-mail say lot of things about you. Basically it says who you are and where you’re from, but it also conveys a lot more than many people realize. Some time people want to get email address of their own choice but they don’t get the same because of lot of users. Some people use electronic mail for personal branding ,self promotions and self marketing. To make new email is one of the easiest things you can do nowadays. In minutes, you create an e-mail and you can start receiving and sending emails from anywhere in the world. One great thing about an emails is that you can have it say and mean almost anything you want. If you are running your own business then you always try to choose e-mail address of your brand name. Your email could be turning away new business. I advise you that all companies should adopt ‘professional sounding’ email. Your email says a lot about your business. It is very easy to arrange a free or cheap emails these days. Yahoo, AOL and Hot Mail… to name just a few of the service providers who will set up your free or cheap email in minutes. However many such emails do not give a professional impression of your business nor are they always easy for your customers and potential customers to remember. Your professional email builds your reputation. When an email comes in the from of generic free email
provider it is unclear if your business is genuine . If you have professional email it always advertise you and your business website. So I can say that the professional email is the right way to give the new direction to your business. Advertise your product via email an get growth in business with very short time span. There are various top email services which provide an email address with your own choice you can create an professional email with your name and with your domain name for example your having a company name and you want to create anemaillikeabc@ then you can easily get email address. Professional emails are always advertise you and your business profile. To conclude I must say that your professional email address provide a valuable growth to your business make your unique identification.}

Mobile Web Accessibility is often used to describe accessing the Internet through cel phones and other mobile devices such as cell phones and PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistants). In fact, web enabled cellular devices are increasingly becoming more and more common. More and more cell phones now come with some form of Internet and/or data access feature on them.

And the demand for these is increasing because of the sheer fact that they are becoming increasingly popular these days. Mobile web accessibility has several advantages that it can boast of these days. The most popular one certainly is the fact that you get to carry your Internet access with you wherever and whenever you go. Hence, you are better connected and more in control of your situation in all the activities that you do because you know wherever you go you always have the Net connection with you. This will help you in many of your daily activities like downloading driving directions, locating nearby restaurants, using online yellow pages, and many other similar activities.

Mobile web accessibility helps you in other tasks, as well, for example, in remote search and rescue missions, the concerned rescue teams can use the Internet to download vital information like medical details, position of the enemy and so on. Authorities can also communicate with each other if they have Net connection 24/7. Improved mobile web access could improve communication abilities for anyone who is on the move, for example, salesmen, law enforcement officers, truckers, pizza delivery drivers, and so on.

Mobile web accessibility has a very promising and a bright future ahead. However, it needs some work and development if it is going to reach it’s full potential. A lot of research should be done in order to improve its situation and make it completely useful for users. However, mobile web accessibility is currently facing several usability issues, and that is mainly because of the lack of interoperability between computers and cellular devices.

One example in this respect is the small screen size of cellular devices. The size of the screen remains small, which means it is not possible to view many web pages from that screen. For this reason, there are some websites which are being developed, which are ideal for mobile web accessibility. These sites are specifically designed to serve this purpose. Ideally, though, a standard could be developed to allow mobile device users to view any website.

There are tons of information in Internet. Why visitors would like to go to other website and not stay on your website? There are many reasons in behind. This article will show you five common mistakes that make visitor leave your website and go to others.

1. Not state clear what product/service provided in your website.

If your website is an online shop, state clear what types of product you sell. If your shop sell different types of product, make a clear and easy-navigation menu for your visitor.

Visitors are busy and always have other choices to go. If they don?t know what is it about, they will leave immediately and will not come back. So, state clear the products you sell in the home page or landing page.

2. Products overload
Put too much products on the web page. Visitors are busy and they don?t filter your information one by one, step by step. Visitors always look for instant information that match their query.

Don?t put everything on one single page. You should separate out the most important product from others. Only put the most important products on your homepage and provides some links to other related products.

3. Complicated ordering process
If you add one more step into the ordering process, visitors have one more chance to quit the ordering process. Visitors won?t spend time to fill in information and make many click to buy something.

You should keep the ordering process as simple as possible.
This is a good reference.
– Check out page,
– Select Payment Method,
– Fillin Shipping info,
– Confirm page

4. Not update
Only latest and update information is valuable. If visitors find your information is out-dated and they will leave. Ensure the information is update and no broken links. You should also check the date of your copyright statement. Is it still 2008 or 2009? Have you post the latest news of your company?

5. No contact information
In some case, visitors likes to have direct communication with a human being. If they cannot find a way to talk with you, they may feel worry. Provides email address and phone number can build customer?s confidence. If they have any question, they can find you via email or phone.

History often repeats itself. Do something well and keep doing it, chances are you will be successful. Wrong! In today’s web environment, it is not enough to have a web presence, offer a great product or service and expect everyone to embrace it. Your competition is global and you need to keep ahead of the curve by employing the most current and effective web strategies and techniques available. Yes, it can get overwhelming trying to decide how to market your website and which strategies will produce the desired results. Here is a brief checklist of marketing tips designed to cut through the clutter and fast track your web marketing efforts.

1. Is Your Website Viewable? All websites are not created equal. Some of the most common flaws in website development are as follows: they are confusing to the viewer; the offer(s) and guarantee(s) get lost; they don’t differentiate themselves from the competition; they are overloaded with graphics, including flash.

2. Work with a Direct Response Web Marketer. Most websites could be improved and made more effective. Implementing direct response techniques to guide the viewer to take action by purposefully directing them through your website with the use of audio, email capture, and with engaging copy and crisp concise headlines.

3. Maintain a Branded Blog. Blogs are one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. They should be branded for continuity of image and should be updated at least twice a week with useful and related content and links.

4. Use the Social Web Network. The more eyeballs, the more traffic to your site. There are may directories that are part of the growing social online network you should be in including: Google, Yahoo, Technorati, , Digg.

5. List Your Site in an Online Directory! Contrary to popular opinion, directories are an excellent way to promote your online business and your offerings.

6. Submit Press Releases to Online PR Engines. There are many online news sites that are niched for your particular market. Submit your press releases to pr engines such as PRWeb, BusinessWire, SmartBriefs – to name a few.

7. Write Articles and Post on Website. Content is king on a website, if placed in strategic areas that do not overwhelm the viewer. Make a point of writing or using articles with relevant keywords. Articles can be as few as 4 paragraphs or 1000 words or less. But use original content, as search engines frown on duplicate copy taken from other sites.

8. Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Products and Services. Offering a free teleseminar is an excellent way to expose viewers to your products and services. They position you as an expert in your field, entice the viewer to attend a complimentary, no-obligation teleseminar for 1-hour and can begin an ongoing relationship with the attendees. It is also a chance to upsell through special promotions just for attending.

9. Ongoing Online Communications with Viewers. Give your viewers a chance to sign-up for a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter full of useful content, tips of the week, and an opportunity to participate in a monthly conference call about a topic of interest.

10. Tell-A-Friend Viral Marketing. Perhaps the best way to get qualified viewers and increase your online universe and reach is to have a tell-a-friend component to your website and web marketing niche pages. Viewers love to share information with their friends and colleagues. These are 100% deliverable and viewers will surely open them because they come from a pre-approved recognizable email.

It is true that you can make money very fast, at the batting of an eyelid perhaps at even the speed of lightning when you are dealing with MLM. MLM is nothing but network marketing business where you have a multi-level structure system that gives you an upturned multi-level benefit. Initially you will have to put in some work, like selling goods to prospective buyers and also looking for people whom you can employ as distributors. When such a process continues for some time you can actually sit back and relax because their sale procedures are also going to bring you much income.

However, if you want to have a really good business then you will have to advertise effectively. An essential part of all successful businesses run online is advertisement. Advertisements provide the necessary exposure to your product and the site you are selling it from. As such, when you have implemented advertisements in a very effective manner you will find that there will be huge leads to your site leading to a large traffic which will help you to broaden your business and make greater profits. You have to use all the forms of advertisement mentioned below.

The best is the pay per click form which can get you traffic within minutes of creation of your advertisement. There is also the article marketing one which is very effective but not so fast in getting you lead. You write articles for the various article directories, articles that have informative content and are easily understandable, so that over the years you have a good reputation and hence get quality traffic directed towards your site. There are also the forum posting type and the social networking sites where you can position your advertisements so that you get a steady flow of traffic at al times.

As soon as traffic starts coming in, you will find many people interested in buying your products. There will be others who would want to work with you and earn for themselves. As such, you get people who will work for you and buy from you and you as a result get to earn money. Since this is a multi-level structure system and even today legislations force the system to work like that, so the more you recruit the more you earn because you get a commission every time recruitment is done by you or anyone who you had employed.

Since you have to do nothing more than let your chain grow and get some earnings without doing anything therefore this business is one of the few ways in which you can earn very fast bucks. Also, you get paid instantly and therefore scope for earning more and more increases.

This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in it?s entirely in any e-zine, newsletter, blog, or website as long as the resource box remains intact.

Coming up with five headlines is the first thing you need to do before you think about anything else. Headlines are really the most important part of any squeeze page, which is key to list building.

If you want to be lazy about it, you could have a headline and an opt-in box and if your headline was good enough, you would get subscribers for your list, without any bullet points or anything else. You could have a headline and your first name and email, and you could get people to join your list. But, you would need a GREAT headline that is benefit-driven.

But that’s not the right way to go about building a squeeze page, if you want a responsive list.

To get the right list-building page, you should always be testing, so start with your headlines. Split test them, using two headlines at the same time. The headline that pulls the most opt-ins for your list wins. Then, try another, and see if it builds your list faster than the winner, and so on. The trick is to keep testing until you have the best possible headline.

I would start with an AB split test. Do two different pages and have the only difference on those pages be the headlines. Maybe start with 500 visitors and see which headline pulls better.

But remember, some people have these gigantic monitors and unless you give your page parameters, your headline will go across almost their entire screens.

Size your headline to about 650 to 750 pixels in width. You can do that by creating a one column-by-one row table and putting all of your page information into it. That will assure that your headline stays where you want it to be, regardless of your visitor’s monitor size.

And once people opt-in to your list, your thank-you page should also be a sales page, just like everything else. That means you need a good headline there, too, and you have to be delivering benefits the whole way through. ?Thank you and welcome aboard? isn?t going to cut it.

But, here?s the problem, and this is a major issue on the Internet with entrepreneurial businesses, especially the people who are just trying to make things crank?-there are so many opportunities that you get lost in trying a whole bunch of different opportunities at once. But the first thing you need to do is build your list!

Jumping from program to program is not going to lead you to success. What?s going to lead you to success is first building a great list, and then, deciding on an opportunity and saying, ?I?m going to make this work no matter what,? and you just go. You get advice from list-building experts, tweak your squeeze pages, and improve over time, but you make it work and you learn everything about list building that you possibly can, first!

Test to find the right headline and choose one page format for your list-building page until you can say, ?Yes! It’s converting at 35%! I spend $10 and I make $20 every single time I send them a message!?

Once you have a great list and you want to start messing around with other things, go for it, but you need to get the first thing nailed and then start tweaking something else. The key is not to get caught in the headlights. No paralysis. Just do it!