Web reputation and corporate web marketing: coherence is a value?

Hi, I am currently preparing the Web Marketing course for Jobleader (CUOA University). I have added some elements about the relationship between web reputation and web marketing.

In this regard, there is a topic on which I would like to know your opinion. What happens if there is a lack of consistency between the company’s reputation on the web and its promotional initiatives?

My impression is that very often companies fail to speak with one voice, perhaps because their organization provides several functions that communicate through the web and, at the same time, there is no central direction to define the approach to the web. In such cases it may happen that, under the pressure of the different objectives, a company expresses values of dialogue and collaborative spirit when promoting its products but takes a less open when it comes to economic performance and future strategies.

In short, the consistency between the various items of a company helps to make business? And if so, under what terms?

The web reputation is closely related to openness to dialogue and transparency of communication. These principles are not always applied by companies, especially when their ownership and management have not yet embraced the culture of collaborative conversation (see Paul Grice) that is one the basis of social media.

This may be an additional element of difficulty on behalf of those companies which are not accustomed to accepting the dialogue their external stakeholders and can cast a negative light on the credibility of the companies’ statements.

It would be interesting to see if there are any experiences (positive or negative) of programs with coordinated web reputation of web marketing initiatives, if someone is able to measure the economic impact of possible inconsistencies, and if there are any “good practice” which allow to prevent / solve the drawbacks associated with the “risk inconsistency.”

Comments and suggestions are welcome.