I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential.
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Building trust
One of the reasons I give for writing promotional articles and blog posts is build trust in the community and your (potential) clients. By sharing relevant information, people can trust your expertise and learn about your personality and integrity.
In the current global situation, building trust may be even more important.
The Edelman Trust Barometer for Australia is a survey of consumers and how they feel about various institutions. In February this year, they noted a huge 74% decline in trust for business – only 34% of respondents trust a business to do what is right in a specific situation.
What is critical to learn from this survey is the following:
- 87% of Australians will not buy from a company they don’t trust
- 64% of Australians will pay extra to use a company they do trust
- Australians prefer Australian-owned companies to foreign owned companies as a general rule (obviously that changes in specific situations if the Australian company isn’t trusted)
- corporate advertising is trusted by only 6% of Australians – and corporate websites by only 13%
Some other interesting notes:
- people between 25 and 34 years are twice as likely to share experiences of a company than older respondents
- treating employees well is important – even more important than an environmental commitment – in building trust
As for the survey, it was based on “4,475 upper-income, highly-educated people in 20 countries, including 1,375 in Asia-Pacific countries.”
Bye buying!
I was alerted to this trio of words by my daughter, although it is generally just the first two versions that get used incorrecctly. First, here are the words in question:
Buy: to purchase something
I am going to buy a new laptop this week.
Bye: a farewell, shortened from goodbye. (Originally written as ‘bye to show it is an abbreviation, it is generally written as bye now)
They said bye to everyone outside then left the party.
by: to be beside , close to or in support of; within a time frame; in an opinion or according to
The mother kept her child by her side in the park.
I need to finish this by Friday
It’s not a complete definition by a long way.
The prefix bi also sounds the same, but is used as the start of other words (e.g. bicycle, bicentenary, bifocals, binary).
If none of the above helps you remember the difference, rember the u in buy matches the u in purchase.
P.S. I explained the past tense of buy (bought) as a Monday Meaning last year.
Bought or brought?
In speech it isn’t always clear whether someone says brought or bought, but I really hate seeing them written in the wrong context so here are definitions to help people get them right…
bought: to have purchased something. It is the past tense of the word buy.
They bought their car from a registered dealer
brought: to have carried or taken something/someone with you. It is the past tense of the word bring.
She brought a friend with her to the conference.
‘After you bring something you’ve brought it’ is a handy reminder of which is which as many people get confused over these two words.
If you are not confident you are getting words like bought and brought in the correct places, get a second opinion before you make your writing public. Ask a friend to read your work for you (not just to catch a brought/bought error) or get a professional to edit your work for you, especially if it is something important like your website content or product manual.
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