We want you, our authors, to be among the first to know. TruthMedia.com has moved it’s family of internet sites into a new Supersite at www.thelife.com. Please visit us and browse around. This new supersite will enable us to do regular and multiple updates which will be featured on many sites at once.

Your familiar sites of www.christianwomentoday.com; www.retirementwithapurpose.com; www.womentodaymagazine.com and www.mentodayonline.com will all still be accessible however you will notice that many of the new articles will now be linked to from this new partner site www.thelife.com.

The exposure will be greater, the audience interaction will be greater and our new blog format will enable us to provide “content that listens” at a whole new level! This will increase our capacity and leverage our ministry impact.

God continues to do amazing things through this ministry every day and we appreciate your involvement!
Watch for weekly updates and content needs and be a part of what God is doing on the internet!!

They say not to judge a book by it�s cover but for many people walking through a bookstore, that�s exactly what they do. A similiar thing happens with titles and taglines online. You only have a few seconds to convince the reader to choose your article. How do you get their attention?

I had the chance to do some research today on how titles and taglines are used in popular magazines. The main thing we noticed is the difference between LABELING an article and INVITING someone to read it. Labeling tells you what the article is, the other tells you why you need it. The same elements that work in taglines can help make your article title that one that stands out.

Great Titles:

• Use active language
• Suggest effortless solutions � we noticed words like easy, lazy, cheat, trick, miracle, stressfree
• Offer to let you join the club � Best secrets for flawless skin
• Use questions that include the answer � Cheat on your diet and still lose weight?
• Suggest an element of discovery � Our best beauty finds, Surprising ways to ______
• Use inspirational or transformational language � You can do it! Organize your home for the holidays
• Use words that exude a feeling � Cozy, comfortable
• Use superlative language � best, better, great, ultimate, greatest ever
• Often use exclamation points (but rarely more than one per cover)
• Suggest abundance � 20+ ideas for, 700+ Ways to get fit now
• Include a sense of immediacy � Get organized today, Delicious meals to cook tonight

Frequently used words:

• Easy
• Best
• Great
• New
• Most
• Need
• Ultimate
• Perfect
• How to
• Fast

Some of these words are more appropriate to specific topics than others but they�re all good things to keep in mind. Your reader wants to know what the article will do for them right now. Your title is a great place to tell them.

Claire Colvin

Sr. Ed., TruthMedia

The importance of copyright cannot be overstated. Simply put, if you ignore copyright you will hear from a lawyer sooner or later and it probably won’t be later. Find out what the rules are in your country and be aware of the rules in other countries where you share content.

You cannot hide anything online. If you use something without permission someone will find out. Authors regularly check for people stealing their content. (Personally I check once a month and I usually find someone.) Syndication creates a unique copyright situation and we will know more about this as the process is finalized.

Know your rights:

* Have a working knowledge of copyright laws in your country.
* If you are ever unclear on whether or not you have permission to use an article, err on the side of caution.
* Use a reprint release form so that you can document the copyright agreements you have with your writers.

Written by Senior Editor Claire Colvin

Listen to yourself with the non-Christian in mind. Think about talking to your neighbor who is allergic to the things of God. Concentrate on how to rephrase the following common Christian language in everyday, modern terms. Remember, if you have been a Christian for a long time, this language sounds normal to you! It can sound foreign to others. Don’t turn people off… draw them close to Christ.

* Rely on the Lord
* Looking back, I praise God for ….
* Spiritual warfare
* Power of his name
* God had a deeper lesson for me
* Total surrender
* Submission (refers to Christian growth concepts but in the language of our culture it is often negative- especially for women)
* Victory/victorious
* Bed of roses
* He became more precious to me
* Thirst for his Word
* Trials- Instead, refer to difficult circumstance.
* Prayer chain/prayer letter
* Over use the phrase “ The Lord” without identifying him
* I grew up in a Christian family-rather use “family who believed in God/family who went to Church”
* I was blessed with Christian parents ( being a Christian has not been defined)
* Lord of my life
* Fellowship
* He touched me
* The Holy Spirit prepared me- In this age of increase spirituality, we must be careful not to talk about the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost unless we can adequately identify him
* I praise God for…
* The Lord of directed/told me
* God has no grandchildren
* Mountain top/valley experiences- Perhaps use fears, depression, good days and bad days
* Overuse of the word SHARE
* Loving fellowship
* Sisters/brothers in Christ
* Feed his Word-use “study the Bible”
* Saved/ to save a soul
* I had peace- Define the “peace” , such as “ I felt fulfilled” or “there was sense of purpose in my life”
* Share in my walk
* In the Word
* Spiritual eyes
* Servanthood
* Christian community
* Appointment with God
* Look into your heart- Perhaps use “what are you feeling right now?”
* Burden
* Blessing
* Justification
* Righteousness
* Assurance
* Salvation
* Testimony
* Concern about my soul
* Plan of salvation
* Nudge of the Holy Spirit

Language
Never forget who you are writing for. Your audience probably has very little knowledge of Christianity, Christian terms or ideas, or the Bible. The language you use to present the information on the site will go a long way to determining whether or not your site gets read and who reads it. Be careful not to end up with an evangelistic site that all the Christians you know love. This site is not geared for them, it’s geared for non-Christians. Make sure your choice of language doesn’t get in the way of what you are trying to say.

It is difficult for Christians to learn to communicate in non-Christian terms. The language of the church is part of who we are, often we don’t even notice the church-y words that we use on a day to day basis. Writing evangelistically requires that we start to notice and be willing to make changes in the way we communicate.

Take a look at the page on Christian cliches– (Post: Step 2B) it is full of words that should not be on your site. All together in a list they can look pretty silly, but these are all words that a Crusade staffer found people using in their testimonies. These are words and phrases that have no point of reference for a non-Christian audience and so we cannot afford to use them.

Remember that you have to earn the right to be heard. Give your audience quality information on a quality site, convince them that you know what you are talking about and really do care about them and they are much more likely to listen to you when you want to talk to them about God.

Choose your words wisely:

* Edit carefully to remove Christian jargon.
* Find out which terms are acceptable in your cultural environment and use them.
* Educate all writers on words and phrases to avoid.
* Have brainstorming sessions on inclusive ways to talk about spiritual ideas.

Written by Senior Editor Claire Colvin

Know Your Audience

Find out who is reaching your audience and study them. Take a look at popular media – television, magazines, other websites. Find out what people in your target audience are reading and then be able to answer two questions:

1. How are they reaching my audience? What felt needs are they addressing? What are they providing? (Sense of community? Current issues? Relevant information? Empowerment?)

2. How can I address the same topics in a way that will lead people to a deeper experience with God? Ex. Oprah Winfrey, ivillage.com, Chatelaine

Finding Content

Content is the staple of your site and will take a large portion of your time to accumulate. Great content can be used more than once, but you have to find it first. Always be on the look out for sources. You can never have too much content.

Places to look for content:

* Adapt existing content
* Locate free content sources online
* Share content with like-minded sites
* Write it yourself
* Convince colleagues, experts, friends to write for you
* Use or adapt information brochures and press releases
* Don’t overlook hook articles that grab your audiences’ attention

Web writing Tip

Keep the reader?s eyes flowing through your document by putting bolded subject lines wherever a new thought or point is raised.

It’s no secret that web-readers skim and move on if their interest is not immediately captured.

Break up lengthy passages with eye catching headlines.

Our Write Click Author’s Blog is about to start beating with a new rhythm. We welcome all of you who have sent us your author profile and all who are interested in sharing your gift of “wordsmithing”.

Together we will sharpen our edge as writers. We will grow in becoming more effective online communicators. Stay tuned for web writing tips, inspiring quotes and connecting with other writers.

Post comments from your own blog and introduce yourselves to one another.

Come and be a part of our author community.

Warmly,
Gail
Write Click Author Coordinator

By Florence Lum

Writing for the Internet is quite different from writing for a published document. One of the differences is the use of keywords. Search engines use keywords to help searchers find what they are looking for. If your article is not rich in keywords, it makes it very difficult to be found.
Search engines are a complicated breed and there is no absolute certainty on how they determine which page gets ranked the highest. Of course, there are some proven techniques that help but nothing is guaranteed since search engines often change their algorithms to continuously improve search results. However, the use of keywords is one element that has been important since the very beginning.
Keywords allow the search engines to determine whether the page is in fact what it claims. Therefore, in order to improve a web page’s search engine ranking for a particular search phrase, one technique is to add more targeted keywords to the page.
It is essential that the content on a webpage is relevant to the keywords that the site is targeting. Each page should contain a minimum of 250 words with a 2% keyword density (that is, a keyword will be mentioned approximately 5 times in a 250 word article). If the keyword density is greater than 5% some search engines may consider it spamming (which could result in banning our website from being searched by their search engine) and the readers may notice an unnatural flow of content. Writing at least 250 words allows for enough content to naturally include the recommended keyword density.
To achieve optimal keyword density there must be the right amount of keywords on a page without over-saturation. Search engines vary in their opinions about the proper density within a page, ranging from 2% to 10% density per keyword. Having the strictest standard, Google recommends an ideal keyword density of 2%. This means that each page should contain between two and five targeted keywords with a 2% density rate per keyword.
For example, if you look at this article, you will find that the word ?keyword? has been mentioned 9 times (2.7%), ?keywords? 9 times (2.7%), ?density? 9 times (2.7%), ?search? 12 times (3.6%) and ?engines? 7 times (2.1%).This falls into the optimal keyword density range. It is also recommended that the keywords be incorporated into the title of the article as well as in the first paragraph.
Ensuring an optimal keyword density in your articles will significantly help the editors select the appropriate keywords so that it will increase the chances of your articles being found when those keywords are searched.

People read a screen differently than they read a page, so simply typing out an article and posting it online won?t work. No one will read it. Fortunately, it is really easy to adapt an article to work online.

First of all be brief and very focused. Generally you have half the room online to tell your story than you would have on a printed page. People read 25% slower from a screen and many don?t read at all, they scan.

Make it Visually Inviting.

Anything you can do to make your article easier to read from a screen will increase its effectiveness. Break it up into small paragraphs and use subheadings and bulleted lists. Pick the most important information and focus on that. Cut out all unnecessary exposition.

Try to make the article easy for the reader to scan. Remember that columns on a screen are narrower than the width of page so a medium length sentence on paper will look enormous on a screen. Try to simplify your language as much as possible and edit ruthlessly.

Many people view the web as a less formal environment than a print magazine or a business letter. Don?t make the mistake of thinking that grammar and spelling aren?t important. Write with the precision of a cover letter, just leave your thesaurus at home.

Attract Your Reader

Be aware of the fold. ?Above the fold? is a newspaper term that refers to front page content above where the paper is folded in half. In an online environment, it refers to content your viewer can see on one screen without having to scroll. Make sure your best content and links are above the fold. In articles, it is always best to have your first subheading appear above the fold to draw readers into the rest of the article.

Jakob Nielson, widely respected as the leader in web usability studies has this to say about web writing:

People rarely read web pages word by word; instead,
they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In a recent study John Morkes and I found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.

As a result, web pages have to employ scannable text, using

• Highlighted keywords
• Meaningful sub-headings (not ?clever? ones)
• Bulleted lists
• One idea per paragraph
• The inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
• Half the word count (or less) than conventional writing

If you are new to web writing, try writing your article out first and then adapting it to use online, rather than trying to write for the web straight off. It may take a little practice, but how your article is written has a huge impact on how often it gets read.

Claire Colvin