The campaign is dead; long live the movement

Face it. Campaigns are dead.

Placing our hopes in a continuous cycle of ever-changing sales and slogans is foolish.

• Campaigns motivate customers; movements inspire followers.
• Campaigns are fleeting; movements are evergreen.
• Campaigns wither as the ad budget runs out; movements outlive their budgets.

Jim Beam is a movement. Harley-Davidson is a movement. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are movements. So are Coke, and John Deere, and Zippo, and Marvel, and the Coen Brothers, and MINI Cooper.

• Microsoft is a series of campaigns; Apple is a movement.
• Six Flags is a series of campaigns; Disney is a movement.

Ads create campaigns; content builds movements.

Go build a movement. Create content that matters.

How to write a Nut Graf

Very early in any brand article you write for a client’s prospects or customers, usually about the third or fourth paragraph, you will need to drop in what journalists call the Nut Graf.

The Nut Graf has three primary purposes:

1. It provides a transition from the lead paragraph to the body of the story.
2. It tells readers why the story is timely and pertinent.
3. It encourages the target audience to continue reading.

This is not time to be coy, creative or cute. What you want to write is a direct, tight summary of what your story is about. This summary will serve as your guide for composing the rest of the story. It will also help your readers quickly assess whether your story interests them and determine if they should continue reading it.

Keep your Nut Graf to one paragraph of less than 50 words. You can break it up into two or even three sentences.

Collection and assembly

Probably the easiest way to write the Nut Graf is to collect the individual parts, then assemble them:

• WHO are the specific customers you want to reach? Make it clear in the Nut Graf:  This story is for you.
• WHAT is problem your story is solving? Again, be both clear and specific. Imply that you are making a promise: If you read this story, it will show you how to solve this problem. The “what” usually includes one or more of the keywords from your SEO research.
• WHEN and WHERE is the problem most likely to occur? This is your news peg. It explains why the customer must read your story right now.

For example, in my story about diagnostic testing for West Nile virus in horses:

• The WHO are veterinarians who work with horses.
• The WHAT is the need to prevent, detect and diagnose the disease that is caused by the West Nile virus.
• The WHEN is the summer, when mosquitos are most common and the disease is most likely to spread to horses.
• The WHERE is the United States.

When I assembled the parts, I got this Nut Graf:, which I also used as the lead:

“Summer is when the West Nile virus poses the greatest threat to the health of horses in the United States. It’s important for veterinarians to work with horse owners this time of year to prevent, detect and accurately diagnose a potential infection.”

It’s simple, direct and just 42 words. There’s nothing “creative” about it. (Like David Ogilvy, I generally avoid “creative” approaches. They tend to confuse readers. When confused, readers rarely try harder. They just quit reading.)

Here’s an example from a web story from Cosmopolitan magazine headlined: “Want to get rid of your cellulite? These 9 smooth operators can help!”

• The WHO are women who want to make their bodies more attractive.
• The WHAT is their desire to hide the cellulite that may accumulate on their butts, thighs and stomachs.
• The WHEN is the approach of bikini season. As an additional news peg, the story references a recent hit song by the pop group Black Eyed Peas, “My Humps.”
• The WHERE is the beach.

When assembled, the Nut Graf looks like this:

“We're 100 percent sure women everywhere loved Fergie's song, "My humps, my lovely lady lumps," but 90 percent of them probably sing a different tune when it comes to actual lumps aka cellulite. But while there's still no cure (what is taking so long?!), you can at least camouflage the "orange-peel" look of skin temporarily. We suggest slathering up now, and your butt, thighs, and stomach, should be in top shape (with the help of eating right and exercising!) by the time bikini season rolls around.”

This is certainly longer and more creative than the first example. (After all, it is Cosmo.) But it remains tight, easy to read, and only 86 words.

Here’s another example, this one from a Guns & Ammo web story headlined, “How to pick the best zombie pistol.”

• The WHO are all gun owners.
• The WHAT is choosing the right weapon.
• The WHEN AND WHERE is a future, post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested Earth. This news peg comes from popular culture, especially among millennials who fully expect a zombie invasion in their lifetimes. (They aren’t kidding.)

Here’s the Nut Graf:

“While there can be no denying that rifles and shotguns have distinct advantages in both power and reach, it is the handiness and convenience that makes the handgun indispensable when the excrement hits the wind generator and the dead start walking the earth.”

Again, this one is tight and direct, a little fun and creative, and still only 43 words.

There’s a reason Mark Ragan calls these stories “refrigerator journalism.” You’ve likely clipped out or printed out stories just like these and keep them for later use. You’ve probably shared them with friends and peers. They work.

Learning to identify Nut Grafs in the wild

 Go to your local newsstand and buy a handful of magazines that specialize in “refrigerator journalism.” There are scores of them. You may even subscribe to a few.  If in doubt, check the magazine covers for headlines with phrases like “How to ..,” “Top 10 ways to …” or “Our guide to …”.

Read the stories inside those publications and try to identify the Nut Graf. Break the Nut Grafs down into the Who, the What, the When and the Where.

Some Nut Grafs are obvious. Others aren’t. But every refrigerator story is going to tell you within the first five paragraphs who the story is designed for, what problem it solves, and when and where the information is relevant.

The more of these stories you study, the easier it will get when it comes to writing your own Nut Grafs.

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Here are the presentation slides that go with this text.

How to make your copy more efficient to write, edit, read and optimize from Rusty Cawley

8 business models for journalism in the digital age

From the Andreessen Horowitz blog:

Here are eight obvious business models for news now, and in the future. This isn’t a pick one model and stick with it prospect, news businesses should mix and match as relevant.

1. Advertising: Advertising is still central for many news businesses. But they need to get out of the “race to bottom” dynamic of bad content, bad advertisers, and bad ads. Quality journalism businesses need to either take responsibility for their own high-quality advertisers and ads, or work with partners who do. There is no excuse for crappy network-served teeth whitening come-ons and one weird trick ads served against high quality content. Disastrous.
2. Subscriptions: Many consumers pay money for things they value much of the time. If they’re unwilling to pay for a news product, it begs the question, are they really valuing it?
3. Premium content: A paid tier on top of free, ad-supported content. This goes after the high-end news junkies reading the likes of Bloomberg & Reuters. It will work for more and more new outlets. Again, value equals people paying money for something.
4. Conferences and events: Bits are increasingly abundant, and human presence is becoming scarce. So charge for that scarcity, and use bits to drive demand for human presence.
5. Cross-media: Tina Brown was right but too early with Talk. News is a key source of material for books, TV, and film—which happen also to be growth businesses.
6. Crowdfunding: This is a GIGANTIC opportunity especially for investigative journalism. Match people with interest in a topic to the reporters on the ground telling the stories. Click = vote = $. (Helpful hint: Start today with Crowdtilt. Easy-as-pie.)
7. Bitcoin for micropayments: Easy to get started now (checkout Coinbase). As the consumer use of Bitcoin scales up for transactions, it becomes easy to ask for small amounts of money on a per-story or per-view basis with low or no fees. (A lot more of my thinking on the subject of Bitcoin here.)
8. Philanthropy: Today the examples are Pro Publica and First Look Media, tomorrow the could be many more examples. There is around $300 billion per year in philanthropic activity in the U.S. alone. It’s WAY underutilized in the news business.

Repacking the 'suitcase' sentence … or:How to convey a lot of information in a single sentence, without frustrating your readers, or causing their eyes to pop out of their heads and wave madly on their stalks

Roy Peter Clark, the highly regarded writing coach at the Poynter Institute, criticized the New York Times for the lead paragraph of a controversial news story published Feb. 3 on the Times’ blog. And rightfully so. It’s a dreadful sentence, even for the Times.

Here it is, and this was the Times’ second version of the lead:

The former Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings on the George Washington Bridge in the scandal now swirling around Gov. Christie of New Jersey said on Friday that “evidence exists” the governor knew about the lane closings when they were happening.

This is an example of what’s known in the news biz as a “suitcase lead.” Clark describes it better than I can:

If all the news doesn’t quite fit, you just sit on it until it closes.

To demonstrate that it is possible to include a lot of information in a lead while also crafting a clear sentence, Clark proposed reframing the Times lead as a question/answer lead:

When did N.J. Gov. Chris Christie learn about the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge that created traffic chaos and a swirling political scandal? In a new development, the official who oversaw those closures says that the governor knew about them as they were happening. He says that “evidence exists” that this is true.

Not bad, and certainly a major improvement. But let me propose another solution: a cumulative sentence. That is, a sentence that makes a clear initial statement, then adds additional information in easy-to-read clauses governed by commas.

Like this:

Evidence exists that Gov. Christie knew about lane closings on the George Washington Bridge as they happened, says the former Port Authority official who oversaw the closings, which sparked a scandal that could derail the New Jersey governor’s anticipated candidacy for the White House.

Or maybe:

The Port Authority official responsible for closing two toll lanes on the George Washington Bridge said Friday “evidence exists” New Jersey Gov. Christie knew about the closures as they triggered a morning rush-hour traffic jam near Fort Lee, leading to a political scandal that could derail the GOP front-runner’s potential bid for the White House.

Perfect? Probably not. But at least each sentence flows in one direction, guiding readers from one point to the next in a logical sequence, rather than forcing readers to retrace their steps to figure out what the hell they just read.

Each of my examples recasts the original Times lead as a cumulative sentence, the type advocated by Iowa State scholar Brooks Landon in his book, “Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kind of Sentences You Love to Read,” which you really should read if you haven’t already, and, if you have read it, you should read it again.

Great sentences are usually long sentences, Landon says, in that they provide more information than do short sentences, and do so elegantly and efficiently, if properly crafted and controlled. There’s no better way to accomplish this than with a cumulative sentence.

I think of these sentences as “cascading sentences,” because they give the reader a sense of kayaking along the rapids of a river, easily stepping down from one level, to the next, to the next, for as long as the writer wants to sustain the sentence.

Short leads aren’t necessarily better leads. The ideal lead summarizes the story in a way that informs the reader, and coddles the reader, and encourages the reader to continue.

A cumulative sentence can handle each task well. And it is fairly easy to build.

You start with a simple declarative sentence. Then you add information with commas and clauses. You really do build the sentence from the ground up.

Hemingway is often praised or criticized for writing short, terse, tough-guy sentences. But the truth is that he used cumulative sentences about as often as short ones. Here’s one from a Nick Adams short story, “Cross Country Snow”:

George was coming down in the telemark position, kneeling, one leg forward and bent, the other trailing, his sticks hanging like some insect’s thin legs, kicking up puffs of snow, and finally the whole kneeling, trailing figure coming around in a beautiful right curve, crouching, the legs shot forward and back, the body leaning out against the swing, the sticks accenting the curve like points of light all in a cloud of snow.

Faulkner frequently used the cumulative sentence as well, as in this example from “As I Lay Dying”:

I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.

And James Joyce, from “Finnegan’s Wake”:

 Here, and it goes on to appear now, she comes, a peacefugle, a parody's bird, a peri potmother, a pringlpik in the ilandiskippy, with peewee and powwows in beggybaggy on her bickybacky and a flick flask fleckflinging its pixylighting pacts' huemeramybows, picking here, pecking there, pussypussy plunderpussy.

And Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”:

One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, and whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.

And Kurt Vonnegut, in his essay “I Love You, Madame Librarian”:

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

And Ernie Pyle, in a 1943 news story from the frontlines of World War II in Northern Tunesia:

In their eyes as they pass is not hatred, not excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their victory - there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had been here doing this forever, and nothing else.

Here's one from a true master of the cumulative sentence, gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, in his factual novel, “Hell’s Angels”:

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!

OK, you get the idea. Start with a simple, declarative sentence, and then build upon it with modifying clauses, refining the original image until you nail it.

Hey, it works, especially when you are forced to convey a lot of information quickly and efficiently, and you want to make life easier for your readers, or at least keep them from giving up and turning the page.

How to make your copy more efficient to write, edit, read and optimize

How to make your copy to write, edit, read and optimize from Rusty Cawley

Why your company needs a Chief Content Officer

Brad Shorr at the Content Marketing Institute explains::

Content marketing is a fairly new discipline and, as such, it is not yet fully understood within most organizations. For any program to get off the ground and stay aloft, it must have an internal champion. In many firms, the champion (or champions) are the CEO and/or a top marketing executive; some firms have even taken the step of creating the position of CCO, or Chief Content Officer. 

Among the responsibilities that fall under program leadership are:

• Determining objectives
• Guiding and articulating strategy
• Evaluating messaging themes
• Determining priorities, goals, milestones, and measurements of performance

Leaders must be effective communicators within the organization and must also have a solid, hands-on understanding of the sales process and customer needs. They need to keep their fingers on the pulse of content marketing best practices, because they are changing and growing more sophisticated at a very rapid rate.

Is transparency the new strategy for content marketing?

Avi Dan at Sparksheet reports:

Transparency is the essence of the new business model. A great example of this is Patagonia, the outdoor apparel brand. Instead of producing slick fashion ads to communicate with its customers, Patagonia has laid bare the environmental and social footprint of its product line and marketing supply chain. 

Its website, The Footprint Chronicles, features an interactive world map that pinpoints every textile mill and factory in Patagonia’s supply chain. 

The map includes detailed profiles of key suppliers, along with video and photo tours of how Patagonia’s different products are made.

Starting to sound more and more like "real" journalism, eh? But can the Fortune 500 CEO accept this concept? Can the corporate lawyer? I have my doubts. Of course, much of the Fortune 500 turns over every decade or so. Perhaps this is the meteor that kills off some of the larger dinosaur companies and allows the smaller lung-fish ones to thrive.

Four ways to get more out of the content you create

Ardath Albee at the Marketing Interactions says:

If marketers from across the company would just step back and think about it, they would see huge opportunities for content re-use, creating connected pathways for their customers and consistency in experience delivery that could drive performance improvements across programs:

• Create one storyboard for all groups to work from - Yes this will need to be summarized with roll downs for different programs, but it will help each marketing group determine how they can best contribute to building the same story based on their area of expertise.

• Weekly stand-up meetings to present program developments, engagement results, learning from execution and suggestions for refinements.

• Institute metrics that measure across groups and programs, not just individual team efforts. One program must feed another, each channel supports, enhances and leads to others, etc. Look for ways that successful programs can inform other initiatives.

• Consider how marketing efforts can be integrated to create better overall outcomes that serve the customer and the company, not just the department or group. For example, if your social media team is posting wins but your white paper downloads have fallen off, something is out of whack.

How to scare your boss into supporting your content program

Joe Pulizzi at the Content Marketing Institute says: 

When all else fails, fear can work as well or better than a rational argument. For the “fear” plan to work, you have to do some research up front on your competition. Pick the leading content marketer in your field and determine:

• How many subscribers (email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) do they have to their content versus yours?

• How do they rank in key search terms versus your rankings?

• A comparison of social sharing

• Positive, online word-of-mouth (check Twitter for this one)

• Recruitment activities (are they landing the best talent?)

These are just a few. The key here is to determine what’s of critical importance to the lead decision maker toward buy-in. Clearly show how the competitor is using certain content strategies that are leaving you (and your content) in the dust.

How to (brilliantly) employ an infographic to tell a how-to story that makes a hero of your client's product

Here's a example of "news you can use" that presents the story as an infographic.

The subject is "how to slim your wallet." It offers practical advice to men for getting rid of that ridiculous bulge in our back pockets.  And it packages this information in a four-beat story line.

But the star of the show is the company's product: a slimmer wallet with a better design for access.

Take a look.

Is your company ready for the challenge of producing content?

Gilad de Vries at Content Marketing says:

Many companies plan to expand their content marketing efforts in 2013. This signifies a tremendous opportunity for marketers to supplement their existing expertise with content creation, curation, and amplification. But this opportunity also poses a great challenge: It requires skills that most simply don’t have. ...

So why is content marketing so challenging for traditional marketers? In most cases, creative shops develop an advertising strategy that has a “big idea,” or underlining message that the brand focuses on for the year, and a few campaigns that are planned and pre-scheduled. Alternatively, a successful content marketing strategy requires a shift in focus from several creative campaign “sprints” per year to an editorial-style content “marathon.” 

In other words, organizations need to adapt from building one big idea to weaving together a collection of small ideas for a robust, always-on creation and curation content strategy that is distributed across social and native advertising channels. 

If you target everyone with your content, you target no one

From Tom Fishburne at the Content Marketing Institute:

Your target market is not the same as anyone who could conceivably buy your product. A target market is deliberately exclusive. That niche focus is what gives your message teeth. It is what compels consumers to identify with your brand. It is what gives you insight to speak to them so clearly.

Is the lengthy post more likely to be shared?

Kumail Hemani at Search Engine Journal makes his case for the lengthy, comprehensive post:

Provide readers with meaningful content that pushes them to something actionable. Rather than being a blog post that someone reads and forgets about before sharing it on a social network. Look at your content and check to make sure someone will get value from it. 

If they don’t get anything out of it, they’ll never share it or tell their friends about it.  Your post will be dead. ... Before publishing your content, think like the expert.

He backs up his opinion with some research:

Two University professors of Pennsylvania looked at the New York Times and found what kind of content generate most shares and links. They found that long, in-depth posts appear to go viral much more often then shorter posts.

3 ways to make your CEO more ... human

Matthew Schwartz at PR News offers these avenues:

• Blogs: At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a layup for CEOs. Writing a blog a few times a week provides a way for senior executives to share their passions, hobbies and, dare we say, quirks, in order to show their audiences that they are not obsessed with the top and bottom lines and can talk about their life beyond dollars and cents.  

• Podcasts: Does your boss love to chat? Even better, does your boss have a mellifluous and inviting voice? Set him or her up with a weekly podcast; not to shill for the company or the industry but to have a jargon-free conversation about the values of the brand and how it relates to some of the larger issues confronting society. Tossing in a periodic opinion about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the company can’t hurt, either. It shows that your boss is able to relate to subject matters beyond a spreadsheet. With apologies to Steve Allen, radio is the theater of the mind—and can help to cultivate your audience(s).  

• Video vignettes: Does your boss have a friendly tennis game that he or she plays weekly? Is your CEO a cinema buff? Or does he or she not miss any of their kids’ softball games? Arrange for a video crew to (unobtrusively) follow the boss on a personal outin This can show how gelling out with some friends or cheering on the kids helps the CEO to recharge the batteries and think more holistically about how to improve the brand’s products, services and relationships.

4 ways you can make your content evergreen

Miranda Miller at TopRank blog says:

1. Remove any timely elements from your post. There is a time to refer to a recent study, share news, or tie your post to a trending topic, but this isn’t it; this can quickly make it appear outdated.
2. Invest time in making it awesome. If you really want a piece of content to be a source you’ll refer your readers back to for the foreseeable future, don’t do it halfway.
3. Incorporate multimedia elements like photos from Flickr, SlideShare presentations or videos embedded from YouTube. Images and video can be helpful in explaining concepts and add visual interest. Plus, each is searchable in its own right and when linked, can lead visitors from those properties to the helpful resources on your blog.
4. Optimize each piece for search engine discovery and social sharing. This is best practice for any type of content, but especially important to keep it living after the initial buzz of a newly published piece dies down.

Two ways to create content that is remarkable and shareable

Brittany Klontz at Blue Glass says:

The endless entertainment options presented by the Internet create a need for content marketing initiatives to be out-of-the-ordinary, thoughtful, and most importantly, useful. Excuse me for being blunt, but it’s time to chuck the brand guidelines out the window and start focusing on other ways to build your brand through content marketing.

In this post, she offers and expounds upon two tips:

1. Present something out of the ordinary.
2. Be a resource.

Who won the newsjacking competition during the Super Bowl blackout? And how did they do it?

David Meerman Scott says the winner is ... Oreo cookies, which posted this photo on Twitter during the 30-minute blackout:

Scott blogs:

This newsjack from Oreo succeeds because it was fast, its witty and fun, its non-controversial, and it ties back to the brand and its messages. 

Newsjacking gets attention. Oreo spent many millions of dollars running television ads during the Super Bowl. But on a cost per view basis, newsjacking generated a much, much bigger ROI.

So how did Oreo respond to the opportunity so fast and so well? They were prepared for it.

Angela Watercutter at Wired explains:

Turns out they had a 15-person social media team at the ready to respond to whatever happened online in response to the Super Bowl — whether it was a mind-blowing play or half the lights shutting off. So not only did they have a regular commercial run during the first quarter, they also had copywriters, a strategist, and artists ready to react to any situation in 10 minutes or less. 

The best way to start a sentence

Great advice from Ben Yagoda, author of How to Not Write Bad:

Don’t start a sentence with an idea, a quality, an inanimate object. “Anticipation” is not a good subject. It paints you into a corner. 

Start with the person or the people doing the action.

Infographic: How to choose between text, photos or video for your content

In the days before social media and the smartphone rewrote the rules, the dominant life forms in mass media were writers, photographers and videographers.  They were specialists serving an editor who would mix and match the media as needed to best serve the story.

But in the online world … all media merge. 

Content journalists can’t afford to specialize in just text, photos or video. We must have a working knowledge of all three media

So the question becomes: What to use and when to use it?

Text – Words remain the fundamental building blocks of the online world. Search engines look for them. People use them to fuel Twitter, Facebook and any number of blogging platforms. “Text” is now a verb.  Words remain the fastest and cheapest forms of communication to produce.  Sentences can do two things. They can describe things. They can describe actions.  When you need to persuade, to explain in detail, or to tell a story, text remains your best option. 

Photo – Sometimes words are insufficient. You need to illustrate your message. You need to show instead of tell. Photos work well when you need a quick way to communicate things like shape, texture, color or environment. Good news: Becoming a competent photographer is easier, faster and cheaper than ever. If you own a smartphone, you have a professional camera. Download something like the KitCam app, and start shooting. If you get serious about photos, go to the Digital Photography School and learn more.

Video – Sometimes you need motion. You want to demonstrate a series of steps. You want to put a product into action. Video can do both. It also gives you the option of adding audio, either as a narration to provide extra personality to your content, or as ambient sound to enhance the sense of “being there.” Good news: It is also faster, easier and cheaper than ever to become a competent videographer. To learn more, check out the New York Video School's online lessons. (Amazingly cheap!)

To sum things up:

• When you want to explain, use text.
• When you want to illustrate, use photos.
• When you want to demonstrate, use video.

How to write for readers

Anyone who can converse in English can learn to write clearly.  I’m convinced of it. Not everyone can write like Hemingway. But just about anyone can learn to write to the level of an above average newspaper reporter.

It’s a matter of discipline. If you follow a handful of principles, many of them set down by the readability expert Robert Gunning, you can master the craft of writing clearly:

1. Write to express, not to impress. If you follow this principle, the others fall into line. Get past the idea that there is an “educated” style of writing.  Communicate ideas as quickly and easily as possible.
2. Keep your sentences short. This is a general rule. On average, you should compose sentences that can be read aloud in a single breath. But it's also a good practice to vary the length of your sentences to improve their flow and to avoid choppiness.
3. Choose the simple; avoid the complex.  If you expect readers to wade through a tangle of needless adjectives, adverbs and clauses to discover your point, then prepare for disappointment.  Keep your sentences lean.
4. Stick with familiar words. There are only a few thousand words we use in everyday conversation. Work with them.  Words with more than two syllables slow down the reader. Grease the wheels. Stay with one or two syllables whenever you can. Use polysyllable words as your change of pace.
5. Use precise nouns. If you find the need to use an adjective, think again. There’s probably a noun that will allow you to avoid the modifier.
6. Use active verbs. Any sentence can perform two tasks. It can describe a thing or it can describe an action. The best sentences do both. Do your best to work around sentences that use verbs like “is,” “are,” and other variations of “to be.” Such sentences lack verve.
7. Use the active voice. All sentences that are written in the passive voice should be recast.  The active voice brings power to a sentence. The passive voice drains a sentence of its momentum.
8. Prefer the concrete to the abstract.  If you wouldn’t use a word or a phrase in everyday conversation, then find another one.  Scientists, engineers and economics speak in abstractions. We’re not writing for them. Everyday people talk in concrete terms. You will get further writing for them.
9. Understand your readers. Study their wants and needs. Learn to speak their language. Relate your ideas to their experiences.
10. Write with a human voice. Avoid the legalese. Distain the corporate drone. Craft sentences that sound as if they come from a friend.