Of Trust and Trustiness

Two of our Insight bloggers, BNET1's Jon Haeber and Sales Machine's Geoffrey James have recently written about trust, each from a different angle.

In "Three Reasons Why Trust Matters Online," Haeber noted that people are more and more skeptical online than they've ever been, that search engines love a trustworthy domain â€" and let's face it, they know everything â€" and that word-of-mouth is now word-of-virtual-mouth (and real people don't play telegraph with things they don't trust). As a consequence, developing trust and credibility should every online business's top priority. Read on--

James's latest rant, "Trusted Advisor? Yeah, Right," on the other hand, takes the new sales manager's mantra "be a trusted adviser" to task, noting "if sales pros are supposed to be 'trusted advisors' why do so many sales managers treat their employees like wayward, lying children?" Weigh in on the topic--

Meanwhile, what about social media? Can you really trust what someone says online in an anonymous forum? What if Web-based ritual hazing could get someone killed? Our business ethicist, William Baker, asks you how blogs should be moderated--

In addition, what if you can't trust your boss? It may be time to play the Brutus. But what's the right time to do it? Carlos Bergfeld explains--