Writing for the Internet is not the same as writing for a printed page. The basics are the same, but the Internet is fast paced and fluid. If our articles are not up to scratch, the visitors who need information about South African real estate will click on by, and probably not find what they are looking for.
Spelling And Grammar
Please, please, please make sure you use correct spelling and grammar. Yes, you do it for free, but bad English will give the impression of incompetence and looks unprofessional. Write your article in a word processor and pay attention to your spellchecker, if you have to.
Punctuation
Keep the exclamation marks to a minimum! They make you sound like a nutter on a used-car commercial! It's annoying! Exclamation marks won't help pound information into people's heads.
RealFact does not offer "smilies" or emoticons. Don't make your own with punctuation marks. :( ,8|, ;p, or :D helps no-one.
Simplicity
One of the reasons that real estate in South Africa is such a mystery to many of our fellow South Africans, is that much of the literature on the subject have been written in a way that makes it either hard or boring to read. A novice faced with a wall of words will most probably turn and run! We don't want that.
People have short attention spans in this click-click world, so keep that in mind when writing an article for RealFact.
Keep it simple. Don't use too many words. Use simple, concise, easy to understand words. Your articles will do much better, and inform more common Joe's, than would trying to impress with your vocabulary. Also don't use lawyer-speak. The RealFact website is supposed to help South Africans decode lawyer-speak!
Choose words that are descriptive and helpful. Words like "great", "awesome", "super", or "new and improved" are not really helpful. Be more specific.
Keep your articles scannable. Your article title must be short and to the point. It's hard to read online, so help keep eyestrain to a minimum. White space is our friend. Use descriptive headlines and don't use run-on sentences.
Write short paragraphs and use bold and italic to highlight some key words, but use it sparingly. If you make everything bold, it defeats the purpose.
"Short and sweet", should be your motto.
Organize
Organize your information. Start simple, and then get to the details. There's no need to tell everything you know about real estate in your first article.
Friendliness
Make sure your articles are friendly, inviting and organized. A lot of information is good, but break it up into bites that are easy for visitors to get their heads around.
We can create the greatest, friendliest community on the Internet here, but if our articles are messy, hard to read, or boring, Realfact will not be able to inform the South African public about real estate matters.
