Exploring Personal Branding on YouTube

Abstract

Developing a personal brand in the social media world is now a rapidly growing trend. Existing literature examines how companies can utilize social media to build their brands. However, the phenomenon of branding online has rarely been examined from a personal perspective, despite its growing importance. This qualitative study seeks to address this peculiar absence and tries to understand how and what personal branding can be formed within the social media consumption (e.g., YouTube). The results reveal areas of potential development for personal branding and consumer-personal brand relationships as a result of consumer empowerment on YouTube. The key managerial implication shows that the dynamics of the business-to-branding and consumer-brand relationships have been transformed from a company perspective and a one-dimensional occurrence to a personal perspective and a bidirectional social bond on YouTube.