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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 (2013) 465 473

9th International Strategic Management Conference

The effect of social media on personal branding efforts of top

level executives
a*

a
, 34295, Turkey

Abstract

Personal branding is the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands and it differs from reputation
management and impression management with its purpose. It is directly intended to create an asset and brand equity
that pertains to a particular person or individual. Usually branding efforts require extensive financial support for
promotion to create brand awareness and afterwards brand loyalty. Social media, with its ideological and
technological structure, gives the opportunity to the people to promote themselves as brands in a relatively cheap and
efficient manner.

Keywords: Social Media; Personal Branding; Top Level Executive;

2013
2013 ThePublished by Elsevier
Authors. Published Ltd.Ltd.
by Elsevier Selection and/or
Open access peer-review
under CC under responsibility
BY-NC-ND license. of the 9th
International
Selection Strategic
and peer-review Management
under responsibility Conference
of the International Strategic Management Conference.

1. Introduction

Personal branding is the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands and it
differs from reputation management and impression management with its purpose. It is directly intended
to create an asset and brand equity that pertains to a particular person or individual. It includes but not

*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ilkaykaraduman@aydin.edu.tr

1877-0428 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the International Strategic Management Conference.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.515
466 lkay Karaduman / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 (2013) 465 473

limited to the physical appearance and personal knowledge, it leads to a uniquely distinguishable and
memorable impression. Usually branding efforts require extensive financial support for promotion to
create brand awareness and afterwards brand loyalty. Social media, with its ideological and technological
structure, gives the opportunity to the people to promote themselves as brands in a relatively cheap and
efficient manner.

Everyone has a personal brand, but having it is not enough. A good and proactive management and a
good promotion make a brand well-known by people. T ing -
are not accepted by a minority of people who are not accepted to call human as a brand.

Within the personal branding movement, people and their careers are marketed as brands complete with
promises of performance, specialized designs, and tag lines for success (Lair, Sullivan and Cheney,
2012). Traditionally, branding literature portrays brand identity as the uniqueness and essential idea of the
brand (Aaker, 1996; De Chernatony, 2010; Kapferer, 2008). The business world is beginning to recognize
the importance of controlling personal brands and offering strategic advice about how to project a desired
personal brand identity through the use of different social media (Labrecque, Markos and Milne, 2011;
Safko and Brake 2009; Schwabel 2009).

Despite the importance of branding and the high adoption rate of social media, very few specific,
empirical studies (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Hsu and Tsou, 2011) have dealt with these issues. So there
is an important need in the literature to explore the effects of branding on marketing variables related to
social media (Laroche, Habibi and Richard, 2012). None of these studies is about personal branding
efforts on social media. But social media gives the opportunity to manage personal brands easily then
manage a product or service brand. Not only famous people use social media for branding but also there
are more than hundreds of social media phenomenons. In this study it is decided to evaluate the situation
of personal branding of top level executives in social media. A questionnaire have been conducted to
evaluate the connections of ten top level executive who are already in social media and hypotheses have
been tested.

2. Literature Review and Hypotheses

2.1 Social Media

Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) describe social media

on the ideological and the technological foundations of Web 2.0, and it allows the creation and exchange
of user- Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2012) imply that the content is not consumed

Preferred social network sites are Facebook (29%), LinkedIn (15%), YouTube (13%), Twitters (11%) and
My Space (11%) and the social networking media rated most useful are Facebook (mean=3.7), LinkedIn
(mean=3.1), YouTube (mean=3.0), Blogs (mean=2.7), Webinars (mean=2.6) and Twitter (mean=2.5)
(Lee, Tyyrell and Erdem, 2013). According to Kirtis and Karahan (2011) promoting brands and other
marketing activities through social media doesn t cost the firm so much then it is widely evaluated as the
most convenient instrument to market products to the target segment especially in these difficult times
and social media which allows anybody to become a producer of such content and deliver it through
interactive communication in the form of pyramid based on relationship is recognized as the most
 lkay Karaduman / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 (2013) 465 473 467

potentially powerful tool in business practice so marketers are intensively using social media to realize
their strategies in a lower cost.

Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) categorize social media into six groups. In this categorization, micro-
blogging platforms (Twitter, Friendfeed etc.) and social media platforms for professionals (LinkedIn,
Xing etc.) have been neglected. Table 1 is created by adding these categories to the classification of the
previous work.

Table 1: Re-Classification of Social Media by Social Presence/Media Richness and Self-Presentation/Self-Disclosure

Social Presence/Media Richness
Low Medium High
High Micro-blogging
Social Networking Virtual Social
sites
Blogs Sites e.g. Facebook, Worlds
e.g. Twitter,
Orkut e.g. Second Life
Self-Presentation/ Friendfeed
Self-Disclosure Low Content Virtual Game
Collaborative Projects Communities Professional Sites Worlds
e.g. Wikipedia e.g. Youtube, e.g. LinkedIn, Xing e.g. World of
Pinterest Warcraft
Source: Developed according to the study of Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook enable the creation of virtual customer
environments (VCEs) where online communities of interest form around specific firms, brands and
products (Culnan, McHugh and Zubillaga, 2010). Social Media is ultimately about interacting with others
with an expectation of getting something in return (IBM, 2011).

The study of Mangold and Fauld (2009) implies that the content, timing, and frequency of the social
media-
Huberman (2010) used social media predicting the future for marketing purposes. It means social media

(2009) shows that social media has an important role as information sources for travelers. Correa, Hinsley
and (2010) explained the relation of personality and social media usage. All these studies show
that social media has a wide opportunities for researchers and marketers.

As social media consistently becomes a more permanent part of the online marketing equation,
companies must start thinking beyond just their websites when it comes to branding (Evans, 2010).
survey results demonstrate that 80.6% of respondents believe that social media is an
important communication channel for CEOs to engage with customers and investors, and 83.9% believe
more, CEO
social media engagement was viewed as a gateway to facilitate deeper connections with customers,
employees and shareholders.

2.2 Personal Branding and Top Level Executives

For decades, brands have been crucial for building relationships with consumers assuring long-term
3). Since the late 1990s, self-marketing and personal
branding have become increasingly popular as subjects of self-improvement books, Web sites and
consultancy services, especially in the USA (Shepherd, 2005). Peters (1997) put the first cornerstone of
468 lkay Karaduman / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 (2013) 465 473

startlingly overt invitation to self-commodification; the phenomenon invites a careful and searching
analysis (Lair, Sullivan and Cheney, 2012). Labrecque, Markos and Milne (2011), examined how people
manage online personal brands in a Web 2.0 context.

Since, the phenomenon of branding online has not been examined from a personal perspective, despite
its growing importance (Labrecque, Markos and Milne, 2011), this study aims to create a roadmap for
future researchers Similar to product branding, personal branding entails capturing and promoting an
individual's strengths and uniqueness to a target audience (Kaputa, 2005; Schwabel, 2009; Shepherd,
2005; Labrecque, Markos and Milne, 2011).

Peterson and Seligman (2004) explains that the relationship between a manager's character strengths
and his or her performance have been examined many times in the literature. Having positive character

inner and outer customers.

his is an ideal time for the reinvention of modern leadership. The

role of the top level executives has evolved to become more visible, social, connected, and accessible than
ever before. The competitive environment has likewise been transformed, and customers, investors and
stakeholders expect to have access to the insights and vision of brand leaders on a continuous basis.
Therefore, top level executives should not stay far from social media a
social media plan as a brand of the firm.

All top level executives bring their knowledge, experiences and leadership styles to the companies
they work for and they all have their own styles. As Bates (2011) mentioned most of them have a unique
value by themselves. This means they are all brands. But being a brand is not quite enough by itself. It
needs a good brand management. The aims of using social media for Top Level Executives are in both
personal and professional context. With a well-defined strategy, social media brand management can
boost customer brand awareness and loyalty so as brands, top level executives need to manage their
brands in social media.

2.3 Developing Hypotheses

Existence on social media is a social media can

provide opportunities for new relationships as well as strengthening existing relationships with business
partners, competitors, customers and prospects. For top level executives, personal branding efforts may be
affected positively with the existence of the executive on social media.

The ever-increasing amount of information flowing through social media forces the members of these
networks to compete for attention and influence by relying on other people to spread their message
(Romero, Galuba, Asur and Huberman, 2011) In this situation, actively involving to social media may
have a positive effect on personal branding efforts of top level executives.
 lkay Karaduman / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 (2013) 465 473 469

Being a customer of the company may have an effect on both social media existence and social media
active engagement of top level executives on personal branding efforts.

H1: H2:
Social Media Existence Active Involvement

H3:
Customer vs. non-
customer
(Moderator)

Personal
Branding

Fig. 1: Conceptual model of the study

Based on these considerations modeled in Figure 1, it is hypothesized that:

H1: Social media existence of top level executives has a positive effect on their personal branding efforts.

H2: engagement in social media has a positive effect on their personal

branding efforts.

H3: The effects of social media existence and active engagement on the personal branding efforts of top
level executives are influenced whether or not their followers are customers of their company.

3. Methodology and Empirical Results

3.1 Research Goal

The goal of this study is to identify the effect of social media existence and social media active
involvement of top level executives of firms on customers and non-customers of the company who are
already followers of these executives on social media.

3.2 Methodology and Research Findings

Before the main study, with a preliminary research, fourteen top level executives who are already
members of any social media platform have been detected by visiting social media platforms. After
choosing these fourteen top level executives, the people who are already connected with them via social
media have been identified and 575 of them have been chosen for the first phase of the study randomly.
470 lkay Karaduman / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 (2013) 465 473

For the first phase of the study, to get a better picture of actual social media usage behaviors of
candidate participants, these 575 social media member accounts examined one by one and divided into
four social media usage behavior categories shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Categories of Social Media Members
Category Percentage Explanation
This category contains non-active social media members who use social media
Casual Readers 45 %
casually to read the latest updates and usually do not share anything.
This category of participants contains social media members who share content
Reactive Authors 20 %
reactively as a reply or as a response to a subject they are interested.
This category contains social media members who usually share different kinds of
Active Authors 30 %
content on any social media platform.
This category contains are mostly idea leaders who put new subjects to the agenda,
Proactive Authors 5% who creates trending topics, admins of Facebook pages and Twitter phenomenons are
in this category.

Preliminary research results show that, not a large number of candidate participants interact regularly

participants of the study have been chosen between reactive, active and proactive authors categories that
are already connected to a top level executive on social media.

Table 3: Social Media Memberships of Participants

Social Media Category Examples Percentage
Social Networking Platforms Facebook, Orkut, VK etc. 92 %
Micro Blogging Platforms Twitter, Friendfeed etc. 78 %
Platforms for Professionals LinkedIn, Xing etc. 36 %
Blogging Sites Blogger, Tumblr etc. 27 %
Collaborative Projects Wikipedia, Eksisozluk etc. 14 %

Hugent CEO Research (2012) shows that in Turkey, 83 % of CEOs are members of LinkedIn, 77 %
Facebook and 48 % Twitter. These three social media platform are where top level managers and other
people meet but interaction with non-business partners (prospects, customers and other people) usually
takes place at Twitter where it is possible to interact with each members of the platform. 62 % of
participants to the research are followers of at least one top level executive on twitter and %12 of them
have been followed back.

The sample was 61% female with 72% respondents aged less than 30 years, 67% respondents aged
between 20 and 30 years, and 28% of respondents aged over 30 years with monthly household incomes
from 1500 TL to more than 15000 TL. Respondents were well educated 75% university or higher level
education students or graduates. The respondents resided mainly in urban and suburban areas (83%), 64%
lives in 5 big cities of Turkey (Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Izmit and Bursa). Almost 55 % of the participants
reach social media both via mobile technologies and traditional computers. 43% of participants were
customers, 57% of customers were non-customers.

To test the hypotheses of the research, an online survey using a questionnaire has been conducted and
data obtained from 201 questionnaires (86 customers, 115 non-customers) have been analyzed through
 lkay Karaduman / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 (2013) 465 473 471

the SPSS statistical packet program proposed relations have been tested. Scale items in the questionnaire
are measured with a 7-point Likert scale (anchored by 1=strongly disagree and 7=strongly agree). Table 4
shows the results of reliability analysis to calc to ensure internal
consistency. final constructs ranged from 0,733 to
0,803, which show satisfactory levels of internal consistency.

Table 4: Results of Reliability Statistics

Reliability Statistics
Cronbach's Alpha Cronbach's Alpha Based on Standardized Items
,795 ,799

To empirically test the hypotheses in the conceptual model, it is employed stepwise linear regression
analysis. Personal branding was modeled as the dependent variable. Social media existence and active
involvement were used as the independent variables. Results shown on the Table 5:

Table 5: Test of Hypotheses

S.E Sig.
Customers 0,694 0,064 0,000*
Social Media Existence
Non-Customers 0,047 0,166 0,677
Adjusted R2: 0,59
Customers 0,745 0,046 0,000*
Active Involvement
Non-Customers 0,611 0,087 0,000*
Adjusted R2: 0,61
Standardized regression coefficients are displayed in Table 5 (*** p<0.001)

On the hypotheses, it is proposed that social media existence (H1) and active involvement (H2) would
have a positive effect on personal branding efforts of top level executives. The empirical results imply
that social media existence and active involvement both can be accepted for customers but social media
existence is non-significant for non-customers. This means for the participants who are not already
customers of the company, H1 is declined. As a moderator for the proposed relationships, H3 is
acceptable according to results.

For the c
on personal branding efforts but results imply that this relation is not effective for non-customers. For
non- level of social media engagement for efficiently
manage personal branding efforts.

Study results show that actively engaging in social media has a significant effect on personal branding
efforts of top level executives.

4. Conclusions

The aim of this study was to understand the effects of social media existence and engagement of top
level executives of the firms on personal branding efforts and addresses the issue of how personal
branding efforts can be strengthened in a social media context. The results of the study are believed to put
significant contribution to practice and literature since personal branding in social media is a very new
472 lkay Karaduman / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 (2013) 465 473

and growing subject and it offers a wide area of research. As any other new tool, personal branding in
social media is an attraction point for both people and companies. This study only covers a small part of
this research area.

The results of this study show that social media creates great opportunities for personal branding
efforts both for personal and corporate purposes of top level executives. With a well-planned brand
management on social media, and with a high level of engagement, top level executives of companies
may create value both themselves and the other brands of their company. But creating value on social
media is not a one way road, to gain customers awareness and loyalty, managers must interact with them
sincerely and should show their concern. This situation makes personal brand management for top level
executives on social media an organized professional team job and an important part of social media
efforts of the company to manage. This paper also analyzed the correlation of social media personal
brand management efforts of top level executives on non-customer followers. A positive relation has been
detected on social media engagement level and personal branding efforts but the relation between
existence on social media and personal branding has not been confirmed.

The results of the study show that, on almost every social media platform, users are ready to engage
with companies and their managers willingly. Managing brands on social media actively should take
place in strategic planning of a company and from top level managers to down levels, all members of the
company must be aware of the importance of social media.

As already noted, a number of articles in the 2010s have reviewed developments in theory and
research in social media area and suggested areas for further work.This is also a preliminary study on the
effect social media on personal branding efforts of top level executives of the company. Researchers may
conduct further research to dig more into the effects of different types of social media platforms on both
personal branding and its effects on the company. In addition, social media platforms are rapidly growing,
dynamically changing and progressively developing platforms. Therefore, every progress must be
evaluated and measured by companies to find out new opportunities and to involve as soon as possible
maintaining and keeping competitive advantage.

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