Actual Reputation Technology of Individual Entrepreneurs: Personal Branding in Social Networks

DOI

https://doi.org/10.2991/csis-18.2019.20How to use a DOI?

Keywords

brand persona; reputation technologies; personal and marketing posts; text emotivity

Abstract

The paper discusses one of the reputational technologies that have been actively used by individual entrepreneurs, namely, personal branding in social networks, which has not yet become the focus of special study. The impacting character (emotiogenity) of personal posts in blogs of individual entrepreneurs is analyzed. The study material is 4 blogs of individual entrepreneurs on Instagram (2 men and 2 women) with 5.000/20.000 subscribers. The number of posts analyzed over September-October 2018 was 266. The analysis methodology employs a cognitive-discursive approach aimed at identifying emotiogenic topics and the nature of their implementation in various types of texts - descriptions, narrations, instructions, arguments, explanations and phatic dialogues. The number of likes, as well as the number and nature of comments to the post indicates its emotiogenity. When interpreting the results of the quantitative analysis, the authors consider the gender factor and status of the blogger (the number of subscribers). The authors conclude that personal posts-descriptions and narratives that show the blogger's daily life have the greatest emotional effect. The paper reveals differences in the speech behavior of male and female bloggers and qualitative differences in perception of posts depending on the status of the blogger. The factor of personal post emotiogenity is of great significance in the reputational technology of personal branding.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license.