Successful Personal Branding on Social Media

This thesis investigates the phenomenon of personal branding on social media and, in particular, it examines how successful YouTubers create and build their personal brand via content. The thesis provides valuable input to the existing literature on personal branding, which is predominantly found in self-help books and articles by self-proclaimed gurus within personal branding. Using the method of qualitative content analysis, a total of 72 videos from four different successful YouTubers have been collected and analysed. The analysis of the empirical material revealed that there are three main patterns across the content of the successful YouTubers. That is: Loyal to Personal Brand Profile, Promotion of Multiple Social Media Accounts, and Addressing the Audience and Encouraging Co-creation. Subsequently, these patterns can be understood as the key success factors of personal branding on social media via content. Based on these findings, this thesis proposes a new conceptual framework for personal branding on social media. The framework explains that personal branding on social media via content is a complex and on-going process, in which all elements of the framework should be implemented simultaneously in order to build a strong and holistic personal brand. By illustrating how established branding theories can be extended to include humans, this thesis not only serves as a contribution to the theoretical field of personal branding, but also to the field of branding as a whole