Personal branding in the age of the social media

Technological advancements have fundamentally transformed the world in the past

decades, especially the way of communication. The way that brands, both corporate

brands and personal brands, are built and managed has also been influenced as social

media affords a low-cost and accessible platform for creating professional images and

managing social relationship.

Today, 69% of U.S. adults use social media, thanks to the growing availability of

the high-speed Internet access and the popularity of mobile devices, while just 5% of

Americans reported using these platforms in 2005. Social media is especially popular

among younger adults, as 86% of 18 to 29-year-olds use social media. It is also worth

mentioning that 80% of those whose age is between 30 and 49 and 64% of those whose

age is between 50 and 64 use social media (Smith, 2017). Social media is so popular

that nowadays even recruiters use social media to include and exclude candidates from a

search (Hood, Robles, & Hopkins, 2014), so it is suggested that job seekers need a

personal brand to help secure employment in today's competitive job market.

Like the United States, the number of Chinese internet users increased greatly in

the past decade, growing from 137 million in 2006 to 731 million in 2016, according to

the 39^th China Statistical Report on Internet Development. In terms of the age group,

those between the ages of 10 and 39 made up the largest share in 2016. Compared with

2015, the number of internet users aged under 10 or above 40 grew gradually in 2016.

With the increased accessibility of mobile devices, 95.1 % of the netizens used mobile

phones to surf online in the same year. Social media is also quite popular in China as

79.6% of netizens ranked Wechat, the largest social media in China, as the most used

application.

Such an evolution did not happen overnight. The Bulletin Board System (BBS)

marked the era of the Internet, serving as a platform to facilitate the exchange of

software, data, messages, and news between users (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

Low-cost, high-performance modems drove the growth of the internet services and BBSs

through the early 1990s. The late 1990s witnessed a popularity surge in homepages,

where ordinary people could share information about their private lives.

Open Diary, founded by Bruce Ableson and Susan Ableson in 1997, was an early

example of social media which allowed users to create diaries that were public, private,

or friends-only and brought online writers into one community. Social media was

defined as a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and

technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User

Generated Content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). To understand what social media is, it is

necessary to clarify what Web 2.0 and User Generated Content are.

Web 2.0 is a term that was first used in 2004 to describe a new way in which

software developers and end-users started to take advantage of the World Wide Web,

meaning “content and applications are no longer created and published by individuals,

but instead are continuously modified by all users in a participatory and collaborative

fashion” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p.61). Applications which were popular in the era

of Web 1.0, such as personal web pages and Encyclopedia Britannica Online, are

replaced by blogs, wikis, and collaborative projects in Web 2.0, serving as the

technological platform for the evolution of social media (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

User Generated Content (UGC) was defined as content made publicly available

over the Internet, reflecting a certain amount of creative effort. It is also created outside

of professional routines and practices (OECD, 2007). In other words, it can be seen as

the sum of all ways in which people make use of social media (Kaplan & Haenlein,

2010).

Social media provides individuals with web-based services that allow them to

construct a public or semi-public profile, build connections and share information with

other users within a bounded system (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).

With the growing number of social media users, companies have placed increasing

importance on online marketing and communication channels and changed the way they

build and manage brands to suit new needs in a world where information is exchanged

freely. For example, AIIC, founded in 1953, established its official website in 1998 and

issued a web magazine named Communicate!, promoting high standards of quality and

ethics in the profession and representing the interests of its practitioners.

Social media also affords individuals a platform which is low-cost and easy to

manage for building personal brands, by facilitating people’s self-expression, helping

individuals make sure that they are seen by others the same way they see themselves

(Bargh, McKenna, & Fitzsimons, 2002; Swann Jr., 1990; Rogers 1951). Individuals

have greater freedom on social media to express their identities where they are allowed

to conceal aspects of their selves that they find undesirable and present constructed and

ideal selves (Jensen Schau & Gilly, 2003). Individuals are also offered one venue for

establishing new contacts and the opportunity to communicate across communities and

cultures around the world, connecting people who are often physically dispersed and

sustaining interpersonal ties (Vasalou & Joinson, 2009; Wellman et al., 1996; Shirky,

2014). On top of that, social media offers people an opportunity to impress others and to

gain attentions of others (Zinkhan et al., 1999).

By assisting individuals to present desirable selves and build connections with

people whom they could not reach in the past, social media helps its users fulfill their

communication goals. Many celebrities, businessmen, entrepreneurs utilize social media

to build personal brands. For example, Tom Dickson, the CEO of Blendtec, made

videos of blending items like wood, marbles and golf balls and posted these videos on

Youtube. The “Will It Blend?” series exploded, attracting over 172 million views.

Blendtec became a household name and the sales of the product that Tom used in the

videos has increased over 1000%. Since social media has played an increasingly

important role in the branding process, strategies which can be adopted by individuals

to build personal brands on social media will be introduced in detail in 2.4.