Leaders' personal branding and communication on professional social media platforms: motivations, processes, and outcomes

Abstract

Personal branding is a proactive, planned, and strategic process one makes to communicate their unique value. Individuals engage in personal branding activities to manage their image and reputation that will help them stand out. With the development of digital technologies and platforms, individuals have increasingly taken their branding activities online. Although personal branding has been studied in various contexts, there is a lack of investigation into why and how organisational leaders develop their personal brands and the relationship between leaders’ branding activities and organisational outcomes. Executive leaders of organisations not only represent themselves but also their organisations in personal branding communications. Thus, effective personal branding is beneficial to both the executive and the organisation. The current study aimed to explore the factors that drive executive leaders’ personal branding efforts on professional social media platforms, specifically, LinkedIn. We also elaborated on strategies and tactics that leaders use to build their personal brands as well as different organisation-related outcomes from leaders’ personal branding efforts. Through 25 in-depth interviews with senior organisational leaders in Lithuania, we were able to obtain insights related to the personal and business motivations behind leaders’ personal branding activities, the process of personal branding, and benefits for organisations.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Key interview questions

• What drives you to develop your personal brand?

• What tools do you use to develop your personal brand on social media?

• Please share examples of how you develop your personal brand on social media?

• What do you intend to do for your personal branding in the future?

• When you communicate (create content mainly), what audience do you intend to reach?

• How often do you create content on social media?

• How would you describe your personal brand (on social media)? What keywords would you use?

• What do you do to look credible on social media?

• What tactics/strategies do you use for better reach/visibility?

• What types of content do you create when branding yourself on social media?

• How do you measure your personal branding efforts on social media?

• What shows that your personal branding efforts are paying off?

Appendix 2: Summary of results

Theme	Sub-themes	Description	Category	Industry	Quotes
Motivations (Why?)	Personal-level benefits	Anything that enhances the well-being of leaders or accrues to their personal advantage	Personal recognition	Cyber Security I18	Personal branding helps me get noticed by others
			Achieving expert status	Non-profit I14	Personal branding is like a psychological game that showcases you as a successful professional. Plus, if you establish yourself as an expert in specific areas, people will remember you when they need that expertise. It can lead to exciting new opportunities
			Opportunity to express themselves	IT I13	I enjoy writing and I search for a space to do that
			Opportunity to provide valuable information to others	Legal I6	I want to share my knowledge with others because I enjoy it and at the same time, I believe it can be valuable to them
			Self-improvement	Legal I6	Personal branding contributes to my professional growth and self-improvement
	Business-level benefits	Anything that pertains to contributing to business objectives	Increasing brand visibility and awareness	Marketing I1	Personal branding helps others remember you when they think of a certain topic. It helps if you want to gain new clients and attract new opportunities
			Obtaining free advertising	Business Consulting I21	Online social networks allow you to reach a very large audience in a very short time, and they remember you constantly. It ‘s like advertising, but you don ‘t have to directly pay for it
			Increasing business reputation and credibility	Non-profit I14	One reason for this is that people frequently see our work and team activities on social media. They can see what tasks we're completing, the monetary donations we're making, and the social events we attend with our colleagues. These details leave a lasting impression and can shape how people perceive our company
Processes (How?)	Crafting content to build a leader’s personal brand	How leaders develop content by considering their audience, topic, and thinking methods	“Working out loud” method	Business Consulting I17	On LinkedIn, I write what I know. It has to be related to my professional life. It might be related to professional insights about a certain topic, events where I participated as a speaker or participant, or important and interesting meetings. I believe in the concept of “working out loud” when you talk about what you do. It is especially relevant when you work in the corporate world—you need to “work out loud” to be noticed and promoted
			Audience	Education I2	When I create content, it is easy for me to imagine who is going to read. I always have specific people in mind
			Topics/themes	Financial I11	On LinkedIn I share content about professional-related matters and what I learn during the events I attend. I am also interested in art, so I share content about that, too
			Consistency	HR I15	Consistency is most important when it comes to content. I wish I had someone in my team who could create everything for me
	Strategies to increase visibility	Actions taken by leaders to increase the reach of their content	Content structure	Aviation I4	I like to include the first sentence that shows what the post is going to be about. What I realised is that people do not always like reading long posts so I feel that this tactic works for the audience to understand whether it ‘s worth their time
			Personal touch	Education I5	Emotional hook is necessary. It is necessary for me to be in the photo, it works best then
			Hashtags	Logistics I16	I use hashtags but it’s complicated as there are many factors to decide which hashtags to put there
			Timing	Non-profit I14	It seems to me that the hours and days are important, I would not post on Saturday
			Native content	Non-profit I10	I've found that resharing other posts is much less visible, so I'm consciously writing my own posts
	Strategies to increase credibility	Actions taken by leaders to make others see them as credible	Exhibiting authenticity	Non-profit I10	It’s all about being sincere and open. When you tell stories from your point of view, it makes you more credible
				Cyber Security I18	To me, credible people are not only those who talk about how creative they are, but also share stories about mistakes they have made. (…) The fact that you are not afraid to be imperfect makes you credible
			Using social proof	Non-profit I14	When you showcase the people you worked with, it naturally adds to your credibility
				Business Consulting I19	To look credible you need testimonials
			Showcasing expertise	Finance I9	Rather than using my content to sell directly, my aim is to establish myself as an expert in my field. When people read my posts, I want them to know that I have knowledge and experience in the topic. I also want them to feel comfortable reaching out to me if they have any questions or need further help. Basically, I want to be seen as both knowledgeable and approachable
Outcomes (What?)	Marketing	Benefits to marketing function	Business visibility	Banking I23	It’s a fact that personal branding contributes to business visibility. Once they see my content they also see that I work for (name of the company)
				Finance I12	Sometimes I insert links to our company’s career page and I am able to track how many people clicked, so I feel that my personal branding definitely contributes to the visibility of the company. We do special campaigns to recruit interns, sometimes during the interviews they indicate that they noticed our personal content on LinkedIn and were interested
			Organisational image	Cyber Security I18	The content I create is mostly about our company. I believe that those who read my content can form a positive image of our company, which aligns with the image we want to convey
	HR	Benefits to HR function	Talent acquisition	Education I2	We have been searching for high-profile executives. All of the invited candidates came through LinkedIn. I know that my personal communication contributed to that
			Positive influence on existing employees	Education I2	I feel that the way I share content is also important to my colleagues internally. During internal meetings, some colleagues refer to what I shared on LinkedIn, especially if my content was related to the company's values
	Sales	Benefits to sales function	NA	Marketing I1	The biggest impact of personal branding is on sales
				Education I2	Personal brands of our staff influence whether clients will choose us